TechieM2's Blog

So you may be wondering what my Lair looks like these days.
Well, here is a brief tour.
Enjoy!
Continue reading "Welcome to The Lair"

UPDATE Notice:
We have decided to hide the program window when the system is unlocked. So instead of 320x240 Unlock images I would like images to be used as the system wallpaper instead (i.e. corresponding to the same resolutions as the Locked images).
I am updating the appropriate parts of the post.
End UPDATE Notice:

We are currently nearing completion of the initial release of LatteLock, a new FOSS (GPL3) cross-platform net cafe system, which will be put into place in a local shop owned by my friend once it is ready.
The server component is a PHP/MySQL setup that controls the client app which will run on any platform it can be compiled for.
We are developing on Linux of course but will be compiling the client application for Windows as well.

I am requesting submissions of Image sets to include with the system to make it more interesting for others who download it and do not wish to create their own images.
Above is the current not-so-awesome logo I am using for it for now.

If I receive several sets I will make the one I like the best the default set included with the system.
All eligible sets will be offered in an archive separate from the main client and server downloads.
All included sets will be acknowledged in the documentation.
Continue reading "Calling Graphic Designers!"

So you may be wondering what a crazy geek like me carries around in his kit.
Well, read on for a tour of my Geek Kit!
Warning! Geekiness and Pictures ahead!
Continue reading "My Geek Kit"

I recently took on the task of converting our old family video tapes into DVDs.
To start out, I pulled out my old tv and tape recording scripts and fixed them up a bit (and made them work again...).
tvrec is designed for recording directly from my tv tuner.
taperec is designed for reading from the composite input on my tv tuner.

Both scripts record directly to 720x480 mpeg2 video with ac3 audio.
And yes, I know it's overkill but I like it. :P

The problem I then ran into was that the recordings were simply too big to fit on DVD.
I noticed that most of the available DVD creation programs don't re-encode videos down to fit on the disc.
This led me to searching around for a way to re-encode a video down to a specified filesize.

After reading around I decided that the best option was write another script to run the calculations and re-encode the video with the (hopefully) optimal video bitrate to get the desired filesize.
Thus was born resizevid.

The main issue I ran into with this was that you can't easily determine the size of the audio stream in order to determine the video stream size to use for calculations.
My work around is to rip the audio stream out with ffmpeg in order to get an accurate size to use.
This file is then deleted at the end of the script since it is not used.

The desired filesize and the audio stream filesize are used to determine the optimal new bitrate for the encoding.
The video is then re-encoded with the new video bitrate out to a new file.

The scripts are available in this archive.

I of course welcome any improvements.

Ok, so Carla Schroder just HAD to ask about our setups in her latest article here.

So, just what DOES this crazy geek's setup look like you may ask?

Well, welcome to the tour of my LAN.
Continue reading "Ph34r The Lan"

Yesterday was the second anniversary of my second kidney transplant.
Hooray for being alive!
Thanks bro!

I added a new article to the wiki: How To turn your laptop into a wired and virtual machine to wireless router

http://bit.ly/M2Bwo

For those who may be wondering, here's a short overview of how the church internet stream is setup.

The church router/firewall is running IceCast 2.3.2 to do the streaming.
It is using a fairly plain configuration defining the admin, source, and relay authentication information.

The server is fed from the PIII-866 that sits in the church balcony with the sound equipment.
The feed that goes to the building also goes to the line-in on the feeder box.

The box is running IDJC with Jack for controlling the stream.
There is a playlist currently consisting of a couple CC licensed albums from Jamendo, with a short feed introduction message mixed in every several songs.

During services, we switch IDJC from sending the playlist to the feed to sending the line-in stream to the feed.
During service parts we cannot legally broadcast (such as special music numbers that use a CD background), we switch it back to the playlist.

That pretty much covers the setup.
There's really not much to it.

So some of you may wonder how a crazy geek like me keeps in contact with everyone, so I figured I'd give you a little overview.
As you probably know, I am a Linux Geek and a Console Lover, so I'll cover my clients and integration methods after the main content.
Continue reading "How I communicate online"

So I figured I'd try out this newfangled Twitter thing.
Maybe I'll update it a little more often than the blog. :P


http://twitter.com/techiem2

Update:
On identi.ca now too. :P

http://identi.ca/techiem2

I've switched to using my install of Dokuwiki that is on my other host.
I've changed the link in the sidebar to point there.
It has all the same content that was on the Twiki install here.

"My name is Legion: for we are many." (Mark 5:9, KJV)

No, this isn't a sermon. Legion is my new virtual machine server.

So I finally did it. I broke down and built my new virtual machine server.
I'd been meaning to for quite a while, but other things consumed my time and money.
However, recently the old IDE hard disks in the virtual machine server and fileserver have started dying off on me. I'd also been having some problems with the network services virtual machine not responding when I'd have it do heavy work such as trying to update portage. This appeared to be an issue with the host machine.
Those factors combined with me having the money to spare inspired me to finally build a new vm server.
Continue reading ""My name is Legion: for we are many.""

I realized that the .bash_profile I created was broken and would loop infinitely if the keyfile was not found.
This kind of defeats the purpose.
My new version checks for the existence of the key first before trying to mount the partition and drops to a normal environment if it's not found.
Here's the updated version:

if [ -f fs/YourDesiredMountName/devicenameyouwant.key ]
then
sudo /sbin/cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda5 devicemapnameyouwant --key-file /fs/YourDesiredMountName/devicenameyouwant.key
sudo mount /dev/mapper/devicemapnameyouant /home/youruser
cd
source .bash_profile
clear
else
[[ -f ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc
fi

Anyone that carries confidential data around on their laptop has probably considered encryption at some point or other.

However, the typical methods seem to generally entail either manual mounting of your encrypted volume (a pain) or volumes that automount when you login based on your login information (not exactly secure as anyone who forces you to login will have access).

So what I have done is to set up an encrypted volume that mounts using a keyfile that is stored on my flash drive.

The volume will automatically mount when I login IF the flash drive with the keyfile on it is plugged in.

If not, the volume will fail to mount and I will be logged in with a standard non-encrypted home directory (that obviously should not have any sensitive data stored on it).

The volume could still be mounted manually using the password if desired.

Obviously there are other ways to do this, but this works for me. :)

So here we go:
Continue reading "How to set up an auto-mounted keyfile based luks partition for your home directory"

Merry Christmas to all!