Category: What’s New?

We were out when the crash happened.

There was a brief power outage in our area while we’re away & saw the usual signs:  flashing timer lights in our oven, audio amplifier, coffee maker and the Mac Pro server was off.

The Power Macs had been hosting my website since 2004 as well as a Movable Type blog that I included in my “Kupitero’s Keep“ website (as an ‘offsite page’) in late 2004 (I started with MT version 3.121) .

I started hosting my website in 2004 using a Power Mac G4 (with OS X 10.3.x aka Panther) and upgraded to a Power Mac G5 (running OS X 10.5.x aka Leopard) in late 2006.

After I had saved enough money, in January 2010, I upgraded to a MacPro Dual Quad since the latest incarnation of OS X during those days – yes, until today – only supported Intel processors.  And, that was the server I was using when the power outage happened.

I powered the server back on – no problems with the hardware – but the OS just won’t load. Uh-oh, here comes the hard part.

I worked frantically the rest of the day & managed to load the OS from the Time Machine backup I had.  Great.

Everything seemed back to normal until I tried to make a new blog post in  Movable Type that fateful day in 2012.  There were errors here and there.  The Movable Type installation was busted and the related MySQL database & PHP scripts were all messed up.

I was able to restore the database and the Movable Type installation several weeks later but there was still a minor problem with one plug-in: Image::Magick.

And, that was the day I decided to do the following:

• Buy a UPS (uninterruptible power supply)
• Have a backup for the server – I got a Mac Mini (quad-core Intel Core i7)
• Move my blog from Movable Type to WordPress
• Revamp my website so that it will be more accessible to the latest and greatest browsers found on phones, tablets, and computers.

I accomplished all these until early December of this year with the exception of the 3rd one on the list above: porting my blog from MT to WordPress.

And, that will be my topic for my next post.

On Valentine’s Day of 2010, immediately after I ported my blogs from Movable Type v. 3.38 to v. 4.33, I made an entry that documented my key observations during the entire transition process.

Although optional – but it will make your main blog page livelier – one of the most difficult tasks was how to insert an image on the main style sheet.

I even wrote on that very same blog that I will try to make another entry on how I managed to do it.

Well, life goes on and people forget but here it is anyway.

However, after looking back at the entire process, it was really simple.

The simplicity was emphasized after I re-coded my main website to render it in the HTML5/CSS3 version.

So, here’s how I did it (note: your MT blog must be up & running already) on my MT 4.xx blog site, so just change the URL, the image size, position & alignment on your own blogs:

—-start tutorial—-

• On the server hosting your MT blogs, go to–>mt-static–>support–>themes folder.
• Depending on your blog theme, you will see the folder of the one you used.  In my case, it was minimalist-light-green
• Open that theme folder and you find the exact .css file that you’re using.  Again, mine was minimalist-light-green.css.
• Open that .css file, go to the /* Header————————-*/ section and add these lines:

#header-content {

width: 925px;

margin: 25 px 50px 26px 15px;

background: url (“enter your website link here“) no-repeat bottom right;

padding-right: 1px

padding-left: 0 px

}

—-end tutorial—-

Note that the key entry line is the background: url since it is where your image is to be looked-up by your main style sheet.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

The hard part in Movable Type is just in what folder where to look for the right .css file to insert and edit your image since there are so many files and folders after the installation of the software.

Hope this helps all MT users who like to put up an image within the style sheet !!!

On February 9 of this year, I bought a remote-controlled micro helicopter, the Syma 107G,  for $17 at a discount store near our house in one of the cities comprising the East Bay of California.

I had so much fun flying this 7-1/4 inch long toy which I had mastered in just a few minutes.  And this was when my obsession began.  I ventured into aerodynamics, physics, chemistry, and microelectronics.  And countless Google searches.

To start with, I had a brief fling with R/C back in 1982 when I was a contract worker in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  To kill my boredom, I bought the glow-powered Cox Cessna Centurion set, the radio system (made by Sanwa of Japan for Cox), and the maintenance kit, all for about $300.

I had memorable days flying this molded-foam glider (powered by the Cox 0.049 ORC engine)  in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, especially when the wind was almost at a stand-still during the hottest months.

Fast-forward to 2004.  The guy I purchased an Apple PowerMac G4 from somewhere in Lodi, CA, just gave me all his truck R/C stuff, including all accessories & transmitters – – for free!

As a concession to his generous gesture, I bought his still-in-the-box HobbyZone Firebird Commander ready-to-fly (RTF) R/C plane for $30.  He informed me that he only flew it once and crash-landed without damage.  The set also included a brand-new, molded-foam wing – as spare – for this beginner’s R/C glider.

I played with the R/C truck – powered by a ROAR-approved, 4000Kv brushless motor that ran on Dyna-Sport 1700 mAh NiCd batteries – for a few days with my niece and just got bored with a land-based R/C afterward.

The beauty of R/C airplanes & helis – let alone flying a kite – as a hobby is that it seems you’re also trying to control your destiny.  Nothing can compare to the feeling you get when you have that plane or heli up in the air and that you’re now using your skills to command it to the direction you want it to go.  It’s simply exhilarating!

After getting my feet wet again in R/C with the Syma 107G heli, I bought E-Flite’s RTF Blade 450 3D.   The set came with Spektrum’s DX6i transmitter  –  a popular 2.4GHz, 6-channel programmable radio.  It is  compatible with newer R/Cs using six (6) channels or less) – with the glorious thought that I could quickly fly it outside my backyard.

I was wrong; that was lesson #1:  The Syma 107G is co-axial while the Blade 450 is a collective pitch helicopter.

A collective pitch heli has a single set (if you consider a pair of blades to make one straight helicopter blade) of non-curved rotor blades.  Changing the blades’ angles by tilting them along the longitudinal axis lifts the heli.  Hence, the altitude is governed by how much pitch you apply to the rotor blades while in flight.

A co-axial helicopter is the easiest to fly since it has two sets of rotor blades that spin in opposing directions.  Hence, the torque generated by the spinning blades cancels each other out, resulting in a very stable helicopter.

But, all this type of heli can do is hover up & down, move forward & backward, and forward flight is generally on lower altitudes.  You can’t bank the heli as it makes a turn.

My attempts – both inside & outside the house to hover my Blade 450 3D a few feet in the air resulted in costly trips to several hobby stores – to replace damaged rotor blades, main gear, and just about all the small parts above the swashplate.

Frustrated and humbled, I Googled to find out what would be the easiest way to fly a collective pitch heli without having to learn the technical details – I just wanted to get one up in the air & control it!

I was so wrong again, and this was my lesson #2:  You can’t learn to fly a collective pitch R/C helis unless you’re willing to learn & understand the underlying science and art of the hobby.

During my continuing education, I also purchased John Salt’s e-book “Setup & Tips For Electric Collective Pitch RC Helicopters.”  I tried as best I could to understand all the new terminologies and jargon in this now getting-to-be-complex-and-expensive hobby.

So on February 23, I purchased the E-Flite Blade SR (RTF) – there is no BNF (Bind and Fly) version – plus an assortment of extra parts at a HobbyTown branch in Vacaville.

Learning from my Blade 450-3D fiasco, I also ordered the Phoenix RC Flight Simulator V3 from Amazon to hone my flying skills on a computer screen before I even attempted to hover the new Blade SR.

Wrong again, and that was lesson #3:  A simulator can help you learn how to control your transmitter and pilot your model heli.  But, in the real world, no flight simulator can genuinely recreate the environment you’re flying your model R/C.

And so, just as I had with the Blade 450, my dream of simply hovering a collective pitch with my new Blade SR (which E-Flite touted as “the heli to make your transition to a collective pitch as smooth as possible“) ended with “shattered results” also.

I broke the wooden 325 mm rotor blades, bell mixer & pushrods and almost broke my right middle finger when I tried to stop the erratic heli while spooling it up.

Back to the drawing board, I assumed I was trying to fly a big-sized CP heli too fast.

So, why not try a small collective pitch heli – so I can even try practicing with it inside the comforts of the house?

And so, on March 3, I went to a discount hobby shop – Low Price Hobbies – in Newark, CA, and purchased the E-Flite Blade mCP X2 (BNF version), plus an assortment of spares for the Blade SR.

I also bought an aluminum case for my Blade 450 3D.  I knew it would take some time to fly this bird, so I wanted it protected from the elements.

The Blade mCP X2 is a small collective pitch heli that measures about 9.5 inches in length.  It is also flybarless, so it only weighs about 46 grams.

A typical collective pitch heli comes with a mix of the Bell & Hiller rotor heads, which has a flybar.  It is oriented 90-degree to the main rotors.   The flybar helps stabilize the heli by changing the pitch angles of the main rotors in gusty wind conditions.

By removing the flybar and placing all the servos in a single system board,  E-Flite made the mCP X2 very light.

And so, was I successful in, at least, hovering this ultra-micro collective pitch heli?

Yes, I was, but the duration of all my attempts never even lasted a full minute.

It takes a finely tuned transmitter –pitch & throttle curve and all other crucial transmitter settings – plus a very steady hand to deftly guide a CP heli.

I had to get home early after our Thanksgiving party in Fremont so that I can get to bed early.

By 10:00 pm, after watching a streaming video – “Bride Flight” – via Netflix, I dozed-off and dreamed about the gadgets I planned to buy for this year’s Black Friday sale, version 2.011.

On top of my list was Roku’s HD-XS video streaming pod.  The only other gizmo on my list was Blackberry’s Playbook tablet.

These two were by painstakingly culled from the numerous gadgets that were playing tricks on my head as Nov. 25 slowly crept in. My reasons were as follows:

For the Roku HD-XS, I plan to give it as a Christmas present.  Two BFs ago, they had a similar sale for their then, top-of-the-line, Roku HD-XR at half ($65) their selling price of $130.

The choice of the Blackberry Playbook was one that was arrived at after days of careful research and thoughtful considerations.

Did I get both?

And so, my biological clock roused me up at 5:30 am. Made and poured me 3 cupfuls of coffee unto my thermos and by 5:50 am, I was already at the front door of the nearest Office Depot store.

At the door, the sales person handed me a piece of paper which served as my ticket to get my Blackberry Playbook 16GB at the limited-time offer price of $200.

Blackberry originally sold their 16GB version of the Playbook for $500. After Amazon began shipping their “Fire” tablet last Nov 15 for $200, Blackberry joined the tablet price-cut fray by offering their Playbooks $300 less out of your wallets.  This offer is good until Dec. 3, 2011 only.

But, I want my Playbook now and so after taxes ($17.50) & the CA recycling fee ($6), my new BF toy set me back at $223.50.

By 6:45 am, I was already back at home.

Got another cup of coffee & checked out Roku’s website.

There was a Roku HD-XS deal but it was not the similar deal they had back in 2009.

You have to buy two HD-XS boxes just to get a $40 discount.

And – this was the part that really turned me off –  you have to kiss their ass via Facebook.

Facebook????  Yucks.

 

Wow, that was fun but a lot of coffee and beer were involved.  I had completed the update of my blog site – which is linked via my website – from Movable Type 3.32 –> to 3.38 –and, now to its current version, 4.33.  I would like to use the latest and greatest version, 5.02, but, I already have my very own web site running on my very own web server – – powered by Apple’s Mac Pro.

It was almost a complete overhaul since MT 4.33 requires MySQL database and no longer supports my old Berkeley DB.

In, short all the installation modules have to be the latest and greatest: Perl,ImageMagick and whatever else were needed to get it up and running quick!

Here are my observations along the way as I installed MT 4.33:

• Installing it was easy but do take a bit of time even on my dual quad Mac Pro 

  

• Install the new version on the same paths and folders as your old version.  Otherwise, all the links will be broken after importing all your entries from the old version – more specially, if you have a separate site linking to the blog.  I had to re-link everything from my website to the new version.  Aarrgg!!!!
• It will take you about a day (or, more) to get use to this version, but, it’s worth it.  It has tons of new features, looks more professional and provides more blog content with the Zemanta plug-in.  Plus, the added security features should not be overlooked!
• You will have to fix the Archive Links as the entries will not show up when you click on the link from the Main Blog Page.
• Don’t expect your previous pop-up images that’s working in older versions will automatically work.  MT 4.33 uses an ‘Assets_C’ folder to speed up image serving.
• The style sheets are better and nicer but requires some patience – specially in putting up your own images on the header.

I will try to put up a separate entry later on how I did my last observation – putting up an image -, the easy way as this was the part where I encountered a lot of editing on the style sheet I chose – – Minimalist Light Green.

For now, let me enjoy my beers and appetizers after all that hours of coding.

Yeeeehhaaaa!!!!  Thanks, Movable Type.

 

Woke up early to smell the breeze on the rain-drenched backyard which I cleaned-up a week ago. The flowers are starting to bloom and the grass are very green! Also, I have to clean the small hot-tub/spa that we have on the patio — ready for spring…after that very long winter!

It had been raining on the weekends which limited my yard-cleaning chores. I need to do some minor work on the bricks that overlay the patio. Some of them have to be cemented back to the base to prevent them from cracking.  Most of the gaps between bricks need to be filled-up with cement as well.

On the serious side of things…California’s economy is in the doldrums these days. More than 10% of the labor force is unemployed. You’ll notice that quickly when you’re driving along the major freeways in the Bay Area. Traffic is very, very light on weekends while the rush hour seems to have disappeared on workdays.

Even though gas prices – around, $2.10 per gallon today…it was as high as $4.50 per gallon – have gone down dramatically during the last 3 quarters, fewer people seems to be driving these days. Which is good. California is probably the most wasteful gas consumer on this planet. I hope this state could be like Japan which is crisscrossed by commuter trains all throughout the islands to encourage more people to take public transportation!

On the tech side of things… with the economy down, I’m buying less gadgets and making full use of my current computers. No more every-quarter-CPU- updates for my PCs. I still have my Phenom X4 8650-based PC as the workhorse. My web server remains the PowerMac G5 that I had put into action more than 2 yrs ago – – it replaced the ancient PowerMac G4 which I kept in the attic to serve as a back-up.

What’s really new? The ROKU attached to the Sony HDTV that streams Netflix’s Watch Instantly movies now also streams Amazon.com’s latest Movie-On-Demand flicks – for a fee! I had to wire a separate gigabit Ethernet cable to the ROKU box – although, it only has a 100Mbps Ethernet port – to get the most out of these video streams.

The other gigabit Ethernet cable I had running to the HDTV was usurped by the DirectTV HD-DVR after I had configured the OnDemand feature a few months back. The catch with DirectTV’s OnDemand is that it will only stream unprotected .WMV files – aside from their default library of movies – to your HDTV. You could get a media server like Netgear’s Digital Entertainer series to stream almost every media format available on the Internet.

A cheaper but time-consuming fix would be to “un-DRM” any protected movies while converting them to .WMV files using software like Daniusoft’s Media Converter Pro. Once unprotected and converted to a .WMV file, any movie will now play back via the OnDemand – under Movies, Photos & More – feature of DirectTV. However, you can’t fast-forward nor rewind the movie via the remote control. Bummer… but it saves you, at least, $200 to $500 by getting that media server box.

What else? I dropped-by the Apple Store along Powell in SFO to get the 16GB iPod Nano after my version 3 Nano dried-up its 8GB space. I love the iPod Nanos because they are so unobtrusive, convenient and cute. The new iPod Nano (v4) has the same screen size as the v3s but comes with new firmware that includes the Genius feature.

The downside is that, you can’t use your old FireWire-based power adapter with these v4 Nanos. I had to go back to the store to get me the Component AV Cable kit – also includes the new Apple USB power adapter – to not only, juice-up my v4 Nano but also to connect my older v3 Nano to the HDTV. Very cool specially if you travel a lot.

iTunes in now on its 8.1 incarnation while the IE browser also sports version 8. But, I’m not very thrilled with the new features I saw on Windows 7 beta.

From here, I’m holding on the few dollars I had saved to buy the upcoming Palm Pre phone. I think it’s time for me to replace my trusty Nokia phone….Twitter.

I love new techs & gadgets. The iPhone craze died-out immediately after its initial release last June 29, 2007. There was

ample supply (hey, it’s only a cell phone) of this new gadget from Apple that prevented ‘scalpers’ (eBay or CL) from wreaking further havoc out of the pocketbooks of ‘techno-lusters‘.

But, no – no matter how compelling this gadget might be – I wasn’t among the folks who lined-up at an Apple Store to be the first one to have the iPhone…which I did with the original iPod release.

I’m waiting for the next release of the iPhone, and I’ll get one, if and only if the ff. requirements are present:

1. Faster data access (the current EDGE/GPRS service sucks).
2. VoIP apps will be available (Skype, would be really nice).
3. An ‘open’ version will be available. No more 3rd-party hacks.

That’s it. Until then, I still view the iPhone as a mishmash of the Blackberry, Palm T|X & Sony’s PSP.

Period.

Another year had come and gone and another one had come along. Whoever invented the concept of time (a Phoenician??) must really be a very calculating person since everything in the universe – according to Einstein – is relative.

Okay, what’s new for 2006 as far as this very small portion of the Internet called Kupitero’s Keep is concerned?

Work had so much preoccupied much of my time and that had prevented me from updating the site as frequently as before when I had been doing it as a hobby even during the pre-browser years – (when this was still an electronic bulletin board service – EBBS) – in carefree Manila back in 1988.

The New Year weekend break enabled this author to update the integrated (thanks to Six Apart for their Movable Type software!) blog site, to the latest version, MT 3.2. The changes may not be so obvious to the web viewers but the new features of MT 3.2 made updating the blog site much easier and faster.

Some streamlining were also done on the site’s graphics to make them load faster. Also, an exclusive listener’s nook (streaming music in MP3 format) is currently in the works. It is my way of sharing (no, downloads, please) some of my personal favorites.

I wish 2006 will give me more than enough time to improve the site as well as add more features as new technology evolves.

Happy New Year to ALL!!!

It had been a perennial mystery for me who dictates the duration of one’s life.

Why do some people die young (by natural or other causes), and some people almost live theirs to the fullest – to the point where their bodies can no longer endure the ravages of extreme old age?

Are these all by chance? Or, for religious-centric people, are these just part of a phase we all undergo in the ‘grand scheme’ of things that nobody will ever comprehend?

Some people will never even see the light of day – babies who will die while still in their mothers’ wombs. In contrast, some people will even beg to end their lives – to escape the misery life brought upon them.

Who controls our fate? Some say that we create our own destinies. But is the human mind too intelligent or too complex enough to be able to control the events that govern one’s fate?

Is life simply an illusion? Do we create all the events of daily living in our brains and interpret them to be the manifestations of our so-called ‘existence’?

Simply thinking about all these things makes me feel very tired. I guess sleep is the closest answer…I can get out of these musings.