Seeing this response gave me renewed hope for the internet. Sure, there are cesspools of nasty people who couldn’t care less if you die, but then there are masses of normal, caring human beings who empathize with each other and bring the kind of support I saw yesterday and today for Vinay’s family and friends. It is sad that this needed to be brought on by such a tragedy, but it is reassuring that a tragedy could bring on such a reaction.

Rest in peace Vinay. I only met you a few times, but you clearly had a great affect on my close friends. You were generous, caring, and fun to be around. If anything lies beyond death, I hope that it is all that you wished for.

On my drive into work, a rock hit my windshield and put a 5 inch gash in the passenger side.

I had a relatively uneventful day until I started working on getting some test automation code to pass. I had to fix 3 failing tests. I figured out a fix, ran two and passed. The third still failed and it’s in an area of code that I don’t have any experience with, so that’s another day lost while the other team tries to figure it out.

I got hungry around 6:30pm, but no one got their shit together to leave until 8:30pm.

I went outside to wait for a couple friends and pulled out my phone to pass the time. The internet was being a bit flaky, so I rebooted it. On restart, it stopped working because my beta copy of the OS had expired.

Then my friends arrived and I found out that one of their girlfriends now hates me for silly reasons (that’s two for two of his girlfriends to date).

He went to go hang out with her while I went with the other friend to get some food.

We went down to my car which now has a two foot gash in the windshield.

We drove to Seattle, got some tasty beer and wings and then some ice cream at a pretty cool place we hadn’t gone before.

So, to be completely fair, the end of the day has good relatively well. Furthermore, I’m still in a good mood. Take that universe!

UPDATE: As it turns out, the new RAM I bought for my PC is defective too, so I need to return that. Also, it is fucking hot in my place.

This robot contains an electronic and software interface that allows you to control or modify its behavior, and remotely monitor its sensors. For software programmers interested in giving Roomba new functionality, we encourage you to do so.

That just made my day.

Anyway, time to go search the web for cool Roomba hacks!

UPDATE: I just setup my Logitech Harmony remote to control the roomba…awesome.

Yesterday, I went out to Capitol Hill in Seattle with Fred and Joe and took over 150 photos all around the neighborhood. We spent around two hours walking around and finding cool photos. Check out my favorite photos from the set on Flickr.

Also, you can always watch my Flickr photostream on the right side of my blog or at http://www.flickr.com/photos/decompiled.

1. Queens of the Stone Age
2. Mindless Self Indulgence
3. Cake
4. Nine Inch Nails
5. Ashes Divide
6. Radiohead
7. El Ten Eleven
8. Pin Pon Dash (my sushi chef’s band)
9. Death Cab for Cutie (last night)
10. The Killers (last night)

I think that’s it for the year, unless someone knows about a cool show in SoCal between 12/19 and 1/4.

UPDATE: Oh shit, I forgot to list Radiohead…that was the best concert of the year, hands down.

Now, before everyone starts asking me what’s up: there’s nothing strange going on in my life. This time it’s one of my friends. Nonetheless, it’s a good reminder that life can become complicated without a moments notice. And knowing that makes it all the more exciting.

Next, I tried out Volvo on a recommendation from Alex. I test drove a pre-owned S60 T5 that the previous owner had souped up with better exhaust and a turbo. I actually liked the car, but it wasn’t much of a step up from what I have now. In fact, that was my decision that day: I don’t actually need a new car anyway. I love what I’ve got.

Fast forward to this week. My co-worker, Tom, was telling me about his new car: a BMW 335i Coupe. He did the European Delivery Program which lets you buy the car in the US and then go to Germany to pick it up and drive it around for a couple of weeks. Once you’re done with it there, you give it back to BMW and they ship it to the US. The cool part is that you actually get a discount for doing that since BMW is able to ship it into the US as a used car at that point which saves them the tariffs they’d usually pay to import the car. Anyway, Tom convinced me to look into that car and I must say that I am impressed. It looks gorgeous and has a nice inline six cylinder engine with 300HP. I went out today to give it a test drive. Sadly, there are apparently no 335 Coupes within 50 miles of here: The nearest one is in Fife near Tacoma. However, I figured I’d try out the 335i Sedan while I was at the dealership since it has the same engine and handling as the Coupe. Once again, I’m just not impressed. Sure, it is a nice car. It has leather, keyless ignition, iPod integration, and a sexy exterior, but I just didn’t feel a connection to the road like I do in my Altima. I’m reserving judgement until I have a chance to try the Coupe. If Tom will let me, I’ll probably try to take a spin in his. Otherwise, I’m told that there are more in California and I’ll be down there in a few weeks.

For now, the moral of the story is that I love my car. For those who don’t know, I own a 2005 Nissan Altima 3.5SE V6. It’s fast (250HP), has “umph” (249 ft. lbs. torque), and looks sexy. I took it out for a car wash after coming back from the dealership. Sure, she has a few scratches and dings, but she’s mine and I’m glad I have her.

First, a bit about my environment:

• Server:
  • Windows Home Server
  • Debian “Lenny” running in a VM
  • Behind a Linksys WRT54G running Tomato
  • SSH forwarded into the linux VM
• Client
  • Windows Vista Enterprise
  • Behind an ISA firewall

To accomplish this task, I used the following tools:

• smbfs – Samba filesystem kernel module
• mt-daapd – Firefly media server
• Putty - Windows SSH client
• Rendezvous Proxy – Windows utility that proxies the Apple Rendezvous protocol from an arbitrary network address

Here is what I did, step by step:

1) Setup Debian to automatically mount my Home Server’s music share on boot:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/mp3
$ sudo vim /etc/fstab

Add a line to the end of the file like this:

//<ipaddress>/Music  /mnt/mp3  smbfs username=<username>,password=<password>  0  0

Where <ipaddress> is the IP of your media server, and <username> and <password> are a login that has access to the file share

Then, I mounted the share manually to avoid having to restart:

$ sudo mount /mnt/mp3

2) Setup mt-daapd (you can grab this from sourceforge at http://tinyurl.com/mt-daapd):

$ wget <url path to mt-daapd tarball>
$ tar -zxvf <path to tarball>
$ cd mt-daapd-x.x.x.x  # x's are in place of the version number
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Now you need to configure mt-daapd:

$ sudo cp contrib/mt-daapd.conf /etc
$ sudo cp contrib/mt-daapd.playlist /etc
$ sudo vim /etc/mt-daapd.conf

Most of the defaults should be fine, but you’ll need to change web_root from /usr/share/… to /usr/local/share/…  You’ll also want to change the admin_pw to a more secure password.

Next, we’ll make mt-daapd load on boot automatically:

$ cd /etc/init.d
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mt-daapd mt-daapd
$ sudo update-rc.d mt-daapd defaults

We’re now ready to launch mt-daapd:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/mt-daapd start

Ok, barring any errors, you’ve now got sharing working locally.  The next step is to get to that share remotely.

3) Setup an SSH tunnel to your media server.

On your client machine, launch Putty and input the following settings:

• Session
  • Host Name (or IP address): the hostname or IP of your router.  In my case, I have a dynamic IP, so I use dyndns.org along with the appropriate settings in my router’s firmware.
  • Connection type: SSH
• SSH
  • Check “Don’t start a shell or command at all”
  • Check “Enable compression”
• SSH -> Tunnels
  • Source port: 3689
  • Destination: your linux box’s local IP plus port 3689 (ex. 192.168.1.100:3689)
  • Click Add

You’ll probably also want to save this configuration in the Session tab.  Optionally, you can setup SSH Key authentication so you don’t have to type your password every time you connect.

4) Setup Rendezvous Proxy:

Install Rendezvous proxy (download link above) and run the application

Click Add Host and input the following settings:

• IP Address: localhost (we direct the traffic to our SSH tunnel this way)
• Port: 3689
• Host Label: what shows up in iTunes
• Service Type: _daap._tcp. (iTunes Host)

Click Add and then launch iTunes.  You should now see your home media server in the left column.  Have fun!

(Thanks to Luc Dewavrin for his tutorial on setting this up.  It took some extra steps, but his documentation was priceless)