John Brier

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.

This mix is part of a 4 CD net release that was initially offered for free download from a web site. The site has since been taken down, probably due to bandwidth costs but the set can still be found online easily. Even though there are 4 CDs in the set it is only one that is my favorite Happy Hardcore mix. CD 3 Mixed by Entity.

I think my favorite part about this mix are the first five tracks. They just go together so well and really setup up an incredible hardcore mix. The mix starts out with some really good Drum n Bass in the first track and breakbeat based hardcore shortly after that. In the fourth track,  “Absolution,” the 4/4 commences and it doesn’t let up for most of the mix. Next “Move as One” produced by Entity himself comes on.  Out of the transition of Absolution and into “Move as One” we hear “Tonight, we come together as one.” Silence then leads to warm floating synths. Suddenly a totally uncheesey(seriously) piano solo comes on. This all builds incredible tension and then it just blows up into a trancesplosion. Super stabby trance synths are what make up this trancesplosion. Shortly after the stabby synths come the 4/4 kick drum. It cycles up and down for a few iterations and the goose bumps come and go. During the warm floating synth based builds there are even some breakbeats. I love this track. From here on out in the mix the energy is maintained at the same level. There are vocals and there are female vocals but somehow to me they aren’t cheesey. Some mixes (Happy 2B hardcore series) use female vocals in almost every track and it just gets to be a bit much. This mix has a lot of good melody and that is important to me. It also has variety.

CD 3 - MIXED BY ENTITY
Mastered by Colin Meon at CLSM.net (www.CLSM.net)

1. Entity 'Fallout (The Acolyte's Slamming Remix)'
2. Kid Hattrixx 'Crazy Mental Bonkin' Future'
3. SMS 'Another Nite (Breakbeat Mix)'
4. Frequential 'Absolution (Ionosphere Remix)'
5. Entity 'Move As One'
6. Entity 'Touch The Stars (Album Mix)'
7. Chwhynny 'My Love (Darwin Remix)'
8. Mark Brown featuring Sarah Cracknell 'The Journey Continues (DeejayBee & D-ice Remix)'
9. SMS vs Entity 'Lost in Balham'
10. Himbo & Deanne 'Looking Into Your Eyes (The BIG Mix)'
11. DJ Cruze & DJ Breaks 'Phatt Track'
12. Brain Blessed featuring Kelly C 'Unrequited (Ponder Remix)'
13. CLSM 'Hardscape'
14. Entity featuring Hattrixx 'Parasite (VIP Mix)'
15. Firefly 'Transmission (Exclusive COH Mix)'
16. Lost Soul 'Artificial Universe'
17. Lee UHF & Devastate 'Warped Disturbance'
18. Tabz 'Turntable Destruction'

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Crush-On-Hardcore-3-A-New-Era/release/128498
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4327372/Crush_On_Hardcore_3_-_A_New_Era_%5B4CD%5D_%5B2008%5D

I just struggled to get wireless working again after a reload of Debian Lenny 5.0 after testing Fedora 11 beta on my Asus U3S laptop. I noticed these messages in dmesg output:

[ 731.855177] iwl4965: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
[  731.855177] Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.
[  780.507448] iwl4965: Error sending REPLY_STATISTICS_CMD: enqueue_hcmd failed: -5
[  893.786560] iwl4965: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
[  893.786560] Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.
[  893.793209] iwl4965: WARNING: Requesting MAC access during RFKILL wakes up NIC
[ 1005.863767] iwl4965: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch

okay seems pretty straight forward right? There is a bluetooth on/off switch on the left side of the U3S which only controls bluetooth even though it has the bluetooth symbol and wifi symbol on it. As it turns out I had been messing with the function keys on my laptop the night before. I actually had to pull out the manual and look at the section on switches and function keys before I realized I had probably inadvertantly turned off the wireless when playing with the function keys on Fedora 11 beta the night before. So now I realized FN + F2 would toggle the wireless RF.. However when I did this it would turn on the wireless light indicator for just a short bit.. a fraction of a second. I got it to stay on for a few seconds one time.

After messing with a bunch of stuff I wondered if the asus laptop specific modules loaded to support the specific features of my laptop (function keys in particular) might have something to do with this issue.

# lsmod | grep asus
asus_acpi 13852 0

so I removed that module
# modprobe asus_acpi -r
hit the FN + F2 and it stayed on and restarted network manager and i can get on wireless. I reloaded the module afterward and wireless kept working. I’m honestly not sure what exactly is going on but that fixed it. Normally the kernel module asus-laptop would be loaded as well but it wasn’t. This might be part of the problem. Either way I hope this helps someone.

rpm -qi shows Vendor so you can see who built the package and usually what repository it came from. To see similar info with Debian use ‘apt-cache policy package’ This will show an http:// url so you can tell what source it came from.

I passed a certificate of expertise exam on clustering and storage today. I didn’t take the class, rather studied with associates and by myself on my own time. This is my first RHCA level exam that I have taken.

Here is the course outline if you’re interested in what the class/exam covers:

436 outline

I got this error after installing:

$ ioquake3
./ioquake3.i386: error while loading shared libraries: libopenal.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Make sure you have libopenal1 package installed and then make a symlink from /usr/lib/libopenal.so.0 to the actual library file.

# ln -s /usr/lib/libopenal.so.1.4.272 /usr/lib/libopenal.so.0

Run ldconfig just to be safe.

# ldconfig

ioquake3 now works.

Well  I didn’t believe it but it happened. It snowed enough to stick and is still snowing in Raleigh, North Carolina. I woke up at 5:30 am dreaming of snow and decided to take Maggie for a walk and take some pictures along the way. Road conditions are pretty bad and sometimes it’s windy. Reminds me more of my college time in Boone, NC than the piedmont.

Pictures of Snow in Raleigh North Carolina 2009-01-20

I am most familiar with RHEL/Fedora and I commonly use autofs with direct maps to mount NFS servers. Direct maps are not well supported in autofs4 but work great with autofs5. In fact on RHEL 4 and Debian Lenny/testing which both ship with autofs4 you have to manually enable direct maps in either /etc/sysconfig/autofs or /etc/default/autofs configuration files.

I’m used to using autofs5 in RHEL 5 and newer Fedora versions but as it turns out autofs5 is not included in Debian Lenny/testing which I’m trying out at home. One of the issues I ran into with autofs4 is that you can’t mount the key directly under the root filesystem. You have to make the key under some other directory first. This behavior is described really well in this bug report against autofs4 on Fedora Core 3 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=145533

Anyway if you want to get around that issue on Debian Lenny/testing it’s easy to just install autofs5 from the unstable branch this way:

# aptitude install autofs5/unstable

That command/syntax is explained on this page, section 6.2.6:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-package.en.html

EDIT 2009-08-09:
You don’t have to do this anymore. Debian Lenny stable still seems to include autofs4 by default though. On Debian Lenny which is now stable just do ‘aptitude install autofs5′

Sometimes when people are explaining things to me or when they are teaching me I get a slight tingling sensation in my entire head. I’d definitely compare it to a mild buzz from a drug of some kind. It feels so good yet so mild and unobtrusive that if you could easily and regularly reproduce it from taking a drug without any negative side effects it would surely be a very popular drug.

The first time I noticed it I was in kindergarten. It was a Montesorri preschool in Durham, NC where I was born. A female classmate of mine was demonstrating how to assemble or use some sort of toy. I believe it was puzzle like. She was speaking about it while she did it and explaining very well the steps you take, in what order and how to complete each step. I remember getting the tingling feeling and noticing it and suddenly becoming less interested in what she was showing me in the foreground and more interested in the buzz that started in the back of my head and slowly consumed my entire head.

Today I most often notice the buzz at work. I work in tech support and often have to listen to customers explain their computer network/servers/internet services and environment in detail. Sometimes when they explain it the right way I will get the buzz. I love it but it never lasts more than a minute or so. The fact that it never lasts more than a minute I think makes it more enjoyable too. Knowing that I only will get to enjoy it for a minute or so makes me concentrate on it more and makes it more special.

Sometimes I try to explain it to friends but no one I’ve ever explained it to has ever been familiar with anything like it. I think it’s really odd that it is a specific feeling that I only get during really specific interactions with other people. I wonder if I’ve learned to expect it or create the feeling around those specific interactions because I first felt it under that type of interaction. Who knows?