Posted on: March 28th, 2009 by Famous Phil

Over the past few days, I’ve ordered about 75 bucks worth of x10 modules and controllers to make my computer control my lights more efficiently (Yes, I know that the website looks like  a scam, but it is legitimate, I used ebay though just incase).  As a few of you might know, I’ve been using a clapper with a speaker script to simulate a clap and control my lights.  I decided that that script wasn’t efficient enough for me, and therefore I’ve gone with X10 for its price and expandability.

Anyways, I got a great deal on ebay with a usb controller/trasceiver, a light socket and 2 remotes, I also bought a 3 pack of light sockets separately and had them all shipped here.  I got them here and it worked perfectly with about 20 minutes of figuring out how to program each light socket.  Needless to say, I now have all the lights working and my 1 computer that remains on all the time working in harmony.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to replace my existing clapper system because I had a web interface where my pocket pc phone could operate my lights.  After a bunch of digging through documentation, I discovered a software development kit that allows me to program for my x10 system.  A few hours later, I now have a server working perfectly that will execute commands based on a php script.  To execute my php script on the server without a password, I use a local html file that has the password in it.  I can also view what the status is of my room lights from this html file.  This html file exists on my phone, which now solved my original problem of I wanted a better system for controlling my lights.

Overall, I highly recommend x10 to anyone who wants automated light control.  My next project will deal with voice activated lights.  I also plan on releasing my code with semi detailed instructions so that others can have a similar system, that will become available on dev.matthouse.us sometime within the next month.

Tags: automation, control, light, x10
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration, Mobile Technology, Programming, Technology
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Posted on: March 24th, 2009 by Famous Phil

About 3 weeks ago when I was building a new server, I put 2 identical SATA drives in the server (500GB each), each capable of 60MB/s transfer when clocked.  I had a fair amount of data (250GB) to share on these 2 drives.  I normally would opt for a raid mirror (hardware based mirror), however I have this data backed up else where, so I decided that I would combine the disks using a span to make a 1TB partition.

I transferred the data to the partition in 2 days and really thought nothing of it because I was busy with other stuff.  However when I got back to college with this server, I found that most of my local file operations would take 10 times longer than they should take.

Therefore, I decided to ditch the span.  To copy all of the data off the span took 4 days to an external hard drive (capable of 20MB/s).  To copy from the external to a simple dynamic volume took a little under 2 hours.  This proves to me that spans just plain suck.  I’m now using just 1 disk and use the other as a weekly backup disk.

I did discover after a little research that Windows treats spanned and stripped volumes differently although they both combine physical disks to make bigger partitions.  Windows NTFS (NT File System) has a 2TB physical limit that it can handle, and NTFS starts becomming inefficient after 500GB to 1TB.  Since a span treats 2 physical disks as 1 physical disk, this explains the slow down.

However, I did learn that a stripped volume will treat each disk as a separate disk and combine the storage into 1 logical partition.  I have yet to try this with another disk and I may comment on this if I ever try using a stripped volume.

The bottom line is, you will have a major performance problem under server 2003 x64 bit if you opt for a spanned dynamic disk, not to mention 20 to 30 server crashes while getting your data off to undo it.

Tags: 2003, disk, dynamic, dynamic volume, server, span, x64
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration
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Posted on: March 17th, 2009 by Famous Phil

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been unusually busy with schoolwork and comptuer repair work even though it was spring break.   Unfortunately, during all of spring break, I managed to get 20% of a single school project done, and the rest of my time was dedicated to mostly computer repair work.  I also didn’t really look at email or my personal site due to how busy I’ve been.

During the break, it was also my birthday.  For those of you who were wondering how it was, it was great, I got a little relax time in and did stuff that I wanted to do, and I didn’t look at a computer all day!

Now onto the main topic of what I’m writing about, Erlang.  Erlang was developed for concurrent processing and is used mainly for communication, mostly in phone switches.

As you may know, when you pick up a phone and place a call, you have a constant connection to the other end.  This connection could be broken if the software connecting you has to be restarted, recompiled, etc.  If your software is written in C, C++, Java and more, this situation is a real problem to consider.

The beauty of Erlang shines at full intensity here because you can recompile an entire module (program) and any existing connections will continue running on the old version until it is finished, then it will restart with the new version.  With erlang, code can be modified without affecting existing use.

As you may have guessed (or not), I have been programming in Erlang (20% of a school project).  Erlang is a very elegant language and very simple.  It does have its faults, however it is becoming more popular as time moves on because it supports multiple processors and processing clusters.  Although I only have 40 hours of Erlang experience, I would always recommend it for any application that has users that require that it cannot go down while they are using it.

You should try Erlang sometime, I’m sure you will also find that it is an elegant language.  Take a peek at their site: http://erlang.org

Tags: birthday, erlang
Posted in Programming
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Posted on: March 4th, 2009 by Famous Phil

IMPRESSIVE.  That is the first keyword that comes to mind when mentioning this router.

Instead of talking about what this router is capable of, I’m simply going to link you to Jordan’s blog for all the details and his experience.  Jordan convinced me to pick up this wireless router for my verizon wireless connection.  I was hesistant at first due to the price, but after finding an excellent deal on ebay, I decided to pick one up with 2nd day air for 200 bucks on the nose.

I was not let down when it arrived.  Out of the box, I connected my phone and computer and it immediately picked up my vx8000 model phone’s data connection and connected my network to it.

As for the failover capabilities of this router, I tested this with a super high speed connection that the University at Buffalo provides (100mbps, true LAN connection with 100Mbps speed tests).  I disconnected my phone and immediately my router started using the UB wired connection and although I changed ips, my aol instant messenger and other messengers switched immediately to the wired ub connection with no real issues.  My browsing and sessions were NOT altered in any way (I had my email open and it continued to work over the failover).

I am aware of the dynamic dns capabilities of this router, and hope to test them more fully when I get home, however I’m sure that they will work flawlessly.  I wish that dnsexit was supported, however I will likely try dyndns and like thier service.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this router to anyone who has a wireless phone with a data connection, it is just simply impressive!

Tags: broadband, cradlepoint, internet, mobile, router, verizon, wireless
Posted in Mobile Technology, Technology
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Posted on: March 1st, 2009 by Famous Phil

So, after a year of looking for a solution, I finally made my screen caps program written in PHP function correctly and order images appropriately.  I offer many thanks to my friend John for helping me discover an elegant solution.

Because of this, I can now release my High School Musical 3 High Def caps based on the original idea of capping episodes of Kim Possible.  You can view the caps at: http://hsm3.famousphil.com

For those of you who wish to use this gallery, You may get the latest code at: http://dev.matthouse.us/caps/caps.zip.  Please link back to famousphil.com if you use this gallery unless you get my permission not to do so, it does help my site become more popular!

Tags: disney, high school musical 3, images, screen caps
Posted in Personal
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