John Brier

Almost a year ago I passed my first RHCA level certificate on clustering and storage. This week I took the RH401 Red Hat Enterprise Deployment, Virtualization, and Systems Management aka RHN Satellite and Xen Hopefully the next one I get won’t be a year later. Here is the certificate of expertise..

Red Hat Certificate of expertise EX401

The more I learn about RPM the more I like it. I think it’s one of those things where even if you can’t be sure it’s the best, just the fact that you know more about it than other comparable alternatives makes it the best. That’s not giving enough credit to RPM.. I’m just not here to argue about which package type is the best. Anyway I am studying how to build RPMS in preparation for taking the RH401/EX401 this week. Yesterday I created an rpm, GPG signed it, rhnpushed rpm to satellite, created custom satellite channel, subscribed client to channel and installed rpm.

Today I just ran through recreating that rpm from scratch again (no looking at the book) this includes writing the spec file. Oh, and this is after the instructor tells me today that emacs has a built in template for a spec file.. This template is something I had been searching for before I memorized all this stuff. oh well.

Here is my latest rpm

[john@localhost i386]$ rpm -qip antiword-0.37-.awesome.i386.rpm
Name        : antiword                     Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 0.37                              Vendor: JOHN BRIER YELLING
Release     : .awesome                      Build Date: Mon 04 Jan 2010 11:19:58 PM EST
Install Date: (not installed)               Build Host: localhost.localdomain
Group       : Applications/Text             Source RPM: antiword-0.37-.awesome.src.rpm
Size        : 221844                           License: GPL
Signature   : (none)
Packager    : Totally Awesome
URL         : http://www.winfield.demon.nl/
Summary     : Antiword is a free MS Word reader for Linux and RISC OS.
Description :
Antiword converts the binary files from Word 2, 6, 7, 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 to plain text and to PostScript TM.

I have taken a lot of pictures while I have been in Australia. In order to save time and bandwidth when I upload them to my site I have been resizing them to 800×600 from their normal 2536×1536 resolution. This reduces size per image from 1.4 MB to ~200 KB.

To do this if your images are in ~/Pictures and you want to put the resized images in ~/Pictures/resized you can use a simple for loop like the following with the ‘convert’ command from the ImageMagick suite

Assuming you are already in ~/Pictures/ run the following:

for i in `ls *.jpg | xargs`; do convert $i -resize 800×600 ~/Pictures/resized/$i-resized.jpg; done;

If your original file was named original.jpg it will now be named original.jpg-resized.jpg

There is probably a way to make that output file name cleaner but I haven’t looked into it yet.

As I write this I am staying at my co-worker’s home near South Bank in Brisbane. Ryan Mitchell has been an example of the great hospitality I have received from everyone through work and throughout Australia while I have been down here. At the end of my two weeks of scheduled work I had procrastinated and not made plans for my week off. Ryan and his fiancée Nicole hosted me in their guest room. Today Ryan took me surfing up and down the Gold Coast from The Spit and Main Beach through Surfer’s Paradise and all the way to Coolangatta. I even got to leave Queensland and go into New South Wales. I have a good picture of me standing on the border in both Queensland and New South Wales which I’ll post up later. In Coolangatta while standing next to Ryan watching surfers in the great blue Pacific I was almost attacked by a Dragon, but I’ll save that story for a separate post (including pictures).

As for the surfing, I didn’t really stand up that much, but I did have a good time and even successfully did some body surfing with a few tips from Ryan (who knew you had to hold one hand forward to support yourself and increase speed while continuing to paddle with the other hand?) It looks a little odd for sure, but it really makes you go faster.

I just booked two nights at O’reilly’s Rain Forrest Resort in Lamington National Park in Queensland about two hours south of Brisbane. It should be awesome. On Thursday I’ll head back to Brisbane and spend the rest of my time at Tinbilly hostel right down town in Brisbane. Hopefully I’ll be having Tea a lot with Rain from Raleigh and Eva from Farnborough and the rest of the Red Hat Brisbane folks when I’m back. Friday the Brisbane office is having a Christmas party which I’ll be attending (so early!).

ttyl

JB

As you could probably guess Australia is generally hot. It was weird to go from cool/rainy in Raleigh straight back into August hot summer. It took me about a week to  get past the jet lag but now I am good on that point. (It’s nice not  waking up at 5/6am every morning and being ready to go for no reason,  and also getting sleepy at 2/3pm in afternoon).

Brisbane is a pretty lively place even though Ryan Mitchell keeps telling me it is “small.” Though it is pretty spread out. Last night John Ko took us to Ahmet’s which is a Turish restaurant in South Bank. We got the “King’s feast” which is a  multi course meal and it was very good. At one point jko noticed that all 6 of us were from different countries, James Livingston (AUS), Nigel Jones (New Zealand), Anand Vaddarapu (India) me (US), Jose Castillo  (Spain), John-Bae Ko (Korea).  Jose Castillo is another L2 from the Farnborough, UK office though originally from Spain. We are staying together at the Evolution Apartments on the same block as the Red Hat offices here in Brisbane.

James Livingston and Nigel Jones

I got an opportunity to help out in our Brisbane, Australia support center recently. At different times, a couple people from North America are going and a couple people from Europe are going. Today I started my journey to Brisbane. It hasn’t gone well so far. My flight from RDU to ATL was delayed by over an hour due to rainy and cloudy weather in Atlanta. By the time I made it to Atlanta I had missed my connecting flight to LAX.

However, luckily for me I had planned to have a big layover in LAX anyway. There was another flight to LAX an hour after my missed flight  that would arrive at 10pm with my LAX to BNE flight leaving at 11:25. The exact word I said to the ticketing attendant when she informed me of this was a long exhaling “sweeet.” Well it turned out to be a bitter sweet moment. We boarded early, around 8pm for the 8:20 take off. We sat around idly for 20 minutes while the pilot made really lame jokes about how his plans to go to Miami were interrupted because he had “a job which required him to fly to LA.”  Oh and he also mentioned “but that’s what they pay me for.” haha okay buddy.

At some point the pilot mentioned that one of his mechanics noticed a panel on the plane that wasn’t quite right. It needed to be repaired. The pilot then made a joke about how the panel should take 10 minutes to fix and 20 minutes to do the paper work. In the end we didn’t leave until close to 10pm. I was expecting the pilot to make a joke on us about how he felt bad for us and that we had the unfortunate situation of having to chose Delta for our travels. For some reason he never made that joke.

Now remember my flight from LAX to BNE was scheduled to takeoff at 11:25.. Once we finally take off from ATL the in seat monitor informs me we will be arriving either 11:10 or 11:25. Then the captain tells me we are arriving at 11:05pm. We actually do land at 11:05. It takes until 11:25 to get towed up to the gate.

By the time I’m in the terminal the airline staff are calling out “Brisbane.” When I go up to the guy he shakes his head and tells me he doesn’t think I’m going to make it. (It turns out LAX is so big you have to ride a bus to get from one terminal to the next.) Instead he directs me to the ticketing area to book another flight. It’s so late there is no one even there to book me but I noticed some employees off in a tiny office nearby. They’re clearly finished for the night and are all talking and eating food. I stand there for a bit in the doorway like an idiot while they stuff cheesburgers in their mouths and stare at me. After just a bit too much awkward silence I  just announce “I missed the Brisbane flight.” This Aussie chick “Emma” steps up to help me.. she logs onto one of ticketing computers and books me a flight for 9pm Saturday to Sydney, from there I’ll have to get *another* connecting flight to Brisbane. She also hooks me up with a “distressed traveller” discount at the local Four Points hotel. I asked her about the status of my checked bags. “Will they stay here tonight or can I get them.” She says I can get them and goes off to talk to someone. Oh, turns out the baggage guy is already gone. So I can get them tomorrow at 3pm. Luckily I did end up not putting *all* my toiletries in my checked bag.. I have a toothbrush and toothpaste in my carry on laptop bag. I hope no one notices I’m wearing the same clothes tomorrow that I wore today.

So to wrap it up, in my first day of travel and attempt to get to Brisbane I had two (2) delayed flights, and two (2) missed flights, with one of the missed flights being my final destination. I’m now a day behind schedule and stuck in a hotel in LA with only the clothes on my back, a laptop (thank god ) and a toothbrush.. It’s 1:50 am Pacific but I’m three hours behind and we just had Daylight Savings end so it feels like 4:50am to me. Initially I was pretty frustrated with this bad travel luck but then I found myself grinning because it’s not often you get an opportunity to do something like this.

Hm, what will I do in LA tomorrow?

Oh, Happy Halloween!

Ahh such a nice chill Drum n Bass mix I found wile listening to evolved.fm

Orange n Blue – Clockwork Orange [CIN003]
Mykra – Chimes [FOKUZ013]
PBK – Marslayers [CAMINOCD001]
Tidal – Gemini Force [ADV001]
Pariah – Re-United [SDDB104]
Pacific Heights – The Sorcerer [FRRCD03]
Big Bud – A way Of Life [GLRMA001LP]
Matizz – Soul Spectrum [CAMINODIGITAL001]
Soultec & Joey – In to you [dub]
JCB – Embracing Solitude [CIN003]
Tidal – The Abyss [dub]
Lamb – Gorecki (Global Communications rmx) [LGGC1]
Drum Origins – Mystical Fields [FOKUZ001]
Seba – Your Deepest Love [SECOPS008]

192kbps, 1:04:33
http://pillock.net/soundsurfer/soundsurfer-fading_echoes.mp3

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=29367179&blogID=315150509

I was first introduced to this genre of music on WKNC 88.1 FM here in Raleigh on the Post Rock Block (Sundays 6-8pm). The things I notice and am attracted to in the genre are the long tracks with a strong emphasis on melodies with tension, release and progression. It doesn’t hurt that some of the bands that get tagged with this label also incorporate a lot of electronic instrumentation (Metavari). Also, these bands do not use any vocals which is appealing when you just want to get lost in the melody and not distracted by an over powerful singer.

If you’re a fan of Progressive house or trance and also a fan of rock music like me you may find that this is an incredible combination for your tastes. Definitely check out Metavari if the last sentence applied to you.

I distinctly remember being a passenger in my roommate’s car driving by Snoopy’s on Hillsborough street turning left onto Gorman and hearing “Railroad Cancelation” by Don Caballero. Since then I’ve been tuning in most Sunday’s. Here are some videos from some of the tracks I’m currently enjoying..

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I kept hearing this song on Sears commercials on TV so the last time I heard it I payed attention to the lyrics “let it fall” repeating over and over and googled it.

Turns out she is from Sweeden. Ha, good pop music from Sweeden what a surprise heh. I am going to take the album for a spin from what.cd and if I like it I will be getting it on amazon mp3.

A friend on Facebook mentioned that a local college radio station was the only station around that didn’t have a 5 song playlist. Which started the following rant:

Non-Commercial/Educational radio is the only thing worth listening to with few exceptions. and WKNC is the best station I’ve ever heard. Indie rock in the day, Electronic and underground hip hop at night, what more could you ask for?

The reason commercial radio sucks is that it doesn’t serve the listener, it serves advertisers. The music is just an attraction used to pull in listeners for advertisers. So the music is just catchy and generic enough to appeal to the largest amount of people while not being off putting to anyone. It really isn’t about the music, it’s about getting the most people listening to commercials.

On the other hand Non-commercial/educational stations that already have funding, or are listener supported really do serve the listener, and they have more original and interesting music/programming. PERIOD. F commercial radio.