Month: April 2012

  • April 2011 Server Setup with Rails, Ubuntu, Nginx, RVM, Capistrano, Git

    There are other blogs out there telling you how to set up a ruby server install with ubuntu, nginx, passenger, linode ubuntu 10.10, and rvm, but I couldn’t find one that put it all together, so I decided to share my setup from beginning to end. I hope it helps you, but I’m also hoping…

  • reserve questions outstanding

    The mechanics are difficult enough to figure out along with the big picture understanding of how an IMA is different than an traditional reservist. Here are some of the confusions I had to come to terms with: * What is the difference between the reserve and the guard? Why do both exist? * Do you…

  • Building Plots in Visio

    I like to automate Microsoft Visio to draw plots. They look so much more professional and I don’t have to fuss with Excel to figure out how to make plots look like I want. Again, this is me practicing my theory of being in control, not letting software control us. Please let me know if…

  • MacBook Local Link Address — can it be fixed?

    I have a bad, bad networking problem with my wife’s MacBook. She can’t connect to the internet anywhere, but I am working with my Netgear WNDR3300 for this problem. Our wireless router is dd-wrt based (open source router firmware), and works fine for about 20 other nodes (other laptops, guests, mobile devices, etc). A couple…

  • Use Ruby to Clean out bad text files

    How I deal with these will be the subject of a future post. Please let me know any pointers on any of this. “

  • Recovering Rails Data Using Production.log

    So you didn’t set up automatic backups and need to recover your data? Don’t try digging it out of mysql, look no further than your rails production log. OK, try a bit with mysql, because the rails production log is a terrible way to recover your data. Only use as a last resort, but when…

  • Summer Training Plan

    My summer/fall 20 week training plan which is all focused around the Marine Corps Marathon. All long runs will be done with the DC Road Runners. Details on the long runs are at DC Road Runners’ page. CF stands for crossfit workouts found at CrossFit Adaptation. Track workouts done with DC Road Runners Track Workouts…

  • Convert avi’s, mkv etc to the iphone

    Handbrake is amazing with active development and a great community. When I wanted to transfer a bunch of lectures to iphone/ipod touch format, I faced the time-consuming challenge of converting a hundred files using the Handbrake gui and figuring out the complicated set of options for HandbrakeCLI — their nightly build standalone. So, here is…

  • Hard drive mirroring With Unison and the DNS-323

    My requirements: – All files on my laptop will be on my DNS-323 Network attached storage device – Any changes made to the shared drive on the DNS-323 will propagate to my Mac – This happens securely and safely The problem is that there are scant resources online to do this. (Isn’t this done frequently?)…

  • Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

    Jon Krakauer uses 416 pages to make the audacious claim that he has found the Nietzschen Uebermensch in “Pat Tillman”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman — and thus feeds the roaring literary fire of condemnation for the Bush administration in particular and religious conservatives in general. In a facile and sloppy argument that makes liberal use of argument by anecdote,…