my so-called blog (redux)

kinda wish i was a unix guy. getting there. vim ftw.

also, I get <20MB a month in hits, and yet still get spam comments. really, you guys should have more constructive things to do.

I set up my own certificate authority a few days ago. This is not something most people have a need to do, but it’s pretty handy if you end up setting up lots of development sites on new IPs and whatnot, or if you’re deploying services that aren’t going to be used by the general public but still need SSL authentication. Having your own CA means you can properly set up SSL for these kinds of resources without having to pay your CA of choice for a real certificate. If you find yourself creating a lot of self-signed certificates, having a CA also means it’s easier to get your client base to trust your certificates: typically, depending on which Google hit you click on, your average self-signed certificate is signed in a sort of one-time-use way. If you have your own CA, then all your self-issued certificates are signed by the CA - so you can install the CA’s root certificate into your OS’s or app’s certificate repository and be done with it.

For this, I mostly used the instructions from G-Loaded verbatim - I changed some paths to work with my environment. The scripts below are new, though.

(This is a pretty long post.) (more…)

I actually remembered to take the VT home this weekend. I opened it up and spent some time trying to figure out what to do with the innards; one of the things about CRTs is that the picture tube itself actually holds quite a bit of charge in it - this being a 12″ screen, we’re talking about 13kV, or thereabouts. Normally, you go about discharging the tube itself and take the thing apart. This is the normal route but I didn’t have anyone at the time to assist in this maneuver - it’s nice to have someone to call for help if you screw up - and I got impatient.

The VT320 is actually put together in a somewhat interesting fashion, given that this is expensive electronics from about 21 years ago. Most everything snaps into place. There’s really only about six screws in the thing total that matter - two remove the case and four more hold the CRT in place. I managed to find the service guide for the unit, and set off taking the PSU out. I removed the CRT and the main logic board as one piece. The case itself is three parts - the front bezel, the bottom tray and the back, and the bottom tray is held to the bezel by snaps (the back comes off), so I could just unsnap the bottom tray for leverage and undo the few snaps that attached the logic board to the tray. Then, four screws and some careful lifting and I had the thing in pieces.

Next, I went ahead and roughed-in the screen. I ran into two problems here - the bottom of the case has a nice foot that allows you to adjust the tilt of the screen. It’s got a pretty powerful spring in it to accomplish this, and, needless to say, iBook innards are much lighter than a full-out CRT and all the associated circuitry that comes with. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get the unit weighted down in the back.

The other problem I had was with the screen. While the LCD itself fit pretty well in there, the CRT screw mounts got in the way, so I ended up totally disassembling the screen. I got it down to pretty much just the panel, and took off the frame that includes the AirPort antennas, a reed switch (so it knows when you close the lid), the inverter and the microphone. With all of that stuff removed, the screen fit in fine. It’s in right now with packing tape.

So, once I got the screen in, I started working on the logic board. For now, I pretty much just dropped it in the bottom of the case. I ran the power switch out the side and taped the speakers down to the grilles in the bottom of the case. I ran a spare iMate into the old contrast wheely thing and into a USB port - with it all assembled, I really don’t have much room for USB devices and whatnot in there.

With all that done, I went ahead and hooked it into power and hit the switch for the first time. Lo and behold, nothing happened. Such a pain in the ass. I tore into it a bit and realized I had loosened one of the cables on the inverter board; a reseat and it was on its way.

So, now I’ve got this thing mostly mounted. I put the back of the case back on, and, apart from the fact that you really can’t see inside to see otherwise, it’s pretty much done. There’s still some to do - I’m waiting on the new battery for the system, I still need to get the new HDD and RAM, the combo drive needs to go back in, and I’d like to mount things a bit more nicely - but it works, and I’m actually using it to type this entry up.

Speaking of remounting things, right now I have the motherboard installed without the magnesium frame it sits in. This is kinda problematic for some things - the hard drive isn’t latched down (ah, the magic of tape!) and the CPU heatsink isn’t really attached to anything. I think I might experiment with the Dremel to see if I can make the frame work and have the board mounted back to the back of the screen. I can use the rest of the case for weights, and maybe a power strip and a couple of nice hubs. It’d also be nice if I could get some of the ports worked out differently, so that they sit more-or-less where the former serial ports and whatnot sit. And, a real power switch. It’s absurdly hard to find a beige or grey momentary on/off switch - I’m going to end up building a circuit to deal with that.

All in all, I think I’m at about 50%. A little hot glue and it’ll be done!

So I figured, new year, nice introspective blog post about the past year. But then, I thought, let’s cut up a bunch of computers instead! So much more fun.

I managed to get ahold of an old Digital VT320 terminal. They’re pretty neat gadgets but not horribly useful nowadays - they have a screen resolution of 80×25 or 132×25 (it’s software switchable) and connect via serial to the host using three-pair cable terminated in DEC MMJ plugs. Originally, I was just going to hook it into a normal computer and use it as a separate screen for the novelty of it, but it turns out it’s very hard to find MMJ plugs nowadays.

So, a plan B was hatched. The screen on the VT320 is 12″ diagonal, which was a pretty popular size for small laptops before the whole widescreen fetish began. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to grab a machine about that size and mount it into the terminal, making a sort-of miniature iMac sort of machine. And, since I evidently have nothing better to do with my time ever, I went ahead and sourced a 12″ iBook G4 to use.

The iBook G4 I have is a 12″ model running at 1.07GHz. It’s got a 30GB disk, combo drive, 512MB RAM and an AirPort Extreme card in it. I set off tonight getting the machine taken apart and kinda roughly reassembling it in a way that would make it into a desktop machine. I pretty much have an iBook G4 tablet now - for the first stab at it, I pretty much just took the machine and flipped the screen around backwards. I think this is essentially how I’m going to have it though I might ditch the frame around the motherboard and rearrange some of the cards instead - certain things like the USB/etc. ports and the DC-In board are situated so things tend to stick out of the sides too much. I also need to find a cheap USB hub to mount inside the enclosure as well, so I can have built-in BlueTooth and whatnot. I’m also thinking about mounting my spare iMate ADB-to-USB adapter in the finished product, just to keep the retro going.

I was actually considering mounting a standard 3.5″ hard drive connected to a FireWire bridge board inside the case. I’m kinda rethinking this plan now, though - it turns out the battery that came with the iBook was one of the recall ones, so I could mount the battery inside the machine somehow and end up with a battery-powered desktop. I definitely want to get a bigger hard drive for it, though, and upgrade the RAM to 1GB. I was also thinking about mounting a webcam in the system, but that’ll depend on how much clearance I end up having in there.

Good enough time to update this thing, I suppose.

Tuesday marks the end of my employment at Apple, Inc. I’m leaving ostensibly to do some more contract work - I can make a lot more money developing web applications for people sitting on my couch than I can selling iMacs to people so they can manage pictures of their cat. It’s kinda sad to leave. In the time I’ve spent there, I’ve gone through a processor changeover, the introduction of two new versions of Mac OS X (I started when Tiger was released), two iPhones, the MobileMe transition, the iPod nano, and probably a whole host of things I can’t remember now. I’ve made a lot of friends there, and have actually watched a lot of them leave as well. (I maintain that Apple Retail is probably among the best to work in if you’re wanting a retail job. But, it’s still retail, and retail sucks.)

So, I’m leaving it to do something fresh and new and more challenging and more sitting-on-my-couch. I’m highly looking forward to having weekends. I may even update this damned thing more than once every 6 months. Maybe - and I’m trying not to get crazy here - I’ll even set up the web presences for the other domains I’ve got. First and foremost, I’m gonna try to deal with the scariness of not having a steady second paycheck for the first time in over 3 years.

please learn how to write using proper English grammar and punctuation. The Elements of Style is not an expensive book, nor is the Hacker Handbook. please, buy one, read it, and then post your blog entry. (yes, I’m quite aware about my lack of capitalization at the beginning of sentences. it’s the e. e. cummings thing i’m going for here, despite his actual use of proper capitalization. commas deserve to be used properly, however. they’ve suffered enough as it is.)

So I’m pretty horrible about updating this.

So in the past month or so I’ve been sick, got mostly better, started doing more interesting stuff at job #2, and caused a whole buncha damage to my car (well, more than I was expecting) by hitting a curb. I can now put Web 2.0 experience on my résumé officially, as I’ve developed something that actually uses Ajax and all that handy spiffness in a pretty horrid way. ‘Course, now that I know how to do it, I can come up with a nice way to do it. The Ajax thing really wasn’t that hard (especially not with prototype) so, other than going back to the good ol’ days of beating my head against the wall because nothing ever renders the same way in more than one browser, it was pretty nice.

I’m really looking forward to getting the 7 back in the next month or so - I had the shop compile a laundry list of things to remedy when I had the 5 in for the damage I did, and there were some things on there that I need but probably can’t do myself, so it’ll be nice to have a car to drive in the meantime. Of course, I’m also tired of having it in someone else’s back yard.

I think I might gather up a whole buncha crap out of my room and have a firesale soon.. I can look around from my desk and see roughly 8 computers that I don’t need, and I’m sure there’s a whole bunch more crap in boxes I can get rid of too. One of these days I’ll take the minimization thing to heart and actually start doing it.

So I scored some new wheels and tires for the 7 off eBay.. actual BMW parts, even, which is nice. 15″ers with Michelin tires on them, so when they wear out it’ll be fairly cheap to replace ‘em. So, I should be able to get the thing home soon, and then start actually working on it. I think most of the things to do on it are cosmetic, so it won’t be too bad.

I actually manage to get on that there web 2.-oh bandwagon lately.. finally broke down and figured out how to work AJAX with prototype and PHP. I’m probably doing everything wrong, but it’s been an interesting learning experience. I’ve actually been thinking about getting Coda and using that - it’s got built-in JS desk references and all that stuff, and I really don’t have anything good for that right now.

It lives! Now, to learn to drive a stick…

yano, there’s something I really like about lights. man’s struggle to be one with the gods by creating itty bitty little incandescent bulbs to resemble the sun. who knows how we ended up exisitng on a planet that orbits the Sun — if anyone can explain that to me, they will become God, because they will have to be in order to answer the question. but, the lightbulb is Man’s answer to its eternal struggle to become the almighty. it’s all about getting brighter and containing more power than the Sun. because, what else can we look to? the vast expanse of night offers little beacons into the vast darkness. we cannot see beyond what offers itself to us. stars that have not supernova’ed are all we can see. it’s an immense system that we can barely understand, yet we try to, each in our own ways. (and I do mean each. neocons with their creation-is-Jesus and scientists with their systems. there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with either approach - it’s just the conviction behind them.) I applaud those that try to reach beyond - metaphysical or physical - because they themselves try to reach God. more can be said to those persons than to most of the human race as a whole. we were given (whether by a sentient god or scientific process) a reason to look beyond and only those deeply involved with science and religion have the guts to look beyond man’s limitations to find out what’s really beyond us. namasté.