Schwie’s Pad

OK. No more fooling around this year. After a few years of riding to work, I’m no longer tolerating cold feet (ok, usually just the toes). I’ve triedtoo many things without success: chemical packs, wool socks, neoprene booties, Burley overshoes, two pairs of socks, pre-warming of shoes, plastic bags, etc. Nothing seemed to help. After reading a few forums on the web, it appears that bicyclists in colder climates have had good luck with battery powered heaters from two manufacturers, Hotronic and Therm-ic. More specifically, I narrowed my search down to a couple models, the M3 from Hotronic and the Max+ from Therm-ic. I perused the web looking for the best prices, typically $179 for for the M3’s and about $119 for the Max+, but the cheapest price was in my backyard. Joe’s Sporting Goods in St. Paul had a tent sale with 20% off their list price for both models ($165 for the M3’s and $140 for the Max+). Since the M3’s came with insoles, I opted for the Hotronic model. The M3’s have 4 heat settings. I fooled around a little when I got ‘em home and setting number 4 is too hot to touch after a couple seconds. I’m impressed, but I’ll report back more later, like how they perform when it gets down to -10 F.

A couple times when I’ve used Time Machine on OS X Server to take the machine back in time to a previous state, my Spotlight index seems to get corrupted as searches on the machine reveal nothing. At this point, I have tried erasing the Spotlight index using the command line, but I hit a dead-end here too:

[toughguy@schwie]% sudo mdutil -i off /
Password:
/:
        No index.
[toughguy@schwie]% sudo mdutil -E /
/:
        No index.

The fix for me was to complete the following steps:

1. Disable Spotlight in Terminal.app with: sudo mdutil -i off / (somewhere along the line, Spotlight was disabled, despite the message above).
2. Delete contents of “/Library/Spotlight”.
3. Delete sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*.
4. Repair disk permissions on Mac OS X boot partition with Disk Utility.app.
5. Reboot machine.
6. Enable Spotlight in Terminal .app with: sudo mdutil -i on /.

Within a minute, the Spotlight icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen should begin pulsing to indicate that it has begun creating an index again. Woohoo!!!

I was having problems making a connection to a MySQL 5 database from CocoaMySQL, both running on Mac OS X Server 10.5. I fired up Terminal, punched in the following line of code:

sudo ln -s /var/mysql/mysql.sock /tmp/mysql.sock

and all was good.

Argh…  I’ve got an iMac G5 in the office that, when booted in single user mode, is spitting out messages like:

AppleSMU : CallPFPerformer ‘platform-doorbell-ack-ff977ab0′ got NULL target !
AppleSMUsendMISC: doorBell in bad state !
0×00AppleSMU COMM ERROR - RETRYING AGAIN WITH IODELAYS…

I may get this into the Genius Bar @ an Apple Store today, but I’m fearing a dead logic board. I’ll report back… Anyone else seeing this? 

** Update **  Darn…  An archive and install fixed everything.  I should’ve tried booting off the Leopard DVD instead of horsing around with single user mode.  Doh… 

So, I started taking apart our KitchenAid refrigerator (Model #KSCS25FJSS) to figure out why the water spigot on the front stopped working. Years ago when we first installed the refrigerator, I broke the rules in the manual and tapped into a galvanized cast iron pipe. Today, using my trusty multimeter, I traced the issue back to the solenoid valve. Sears wanted $55 for the pesky thing, so I decided to take it apart (only 5 screws). I cleaned some gunk out of the inside and put it back in and everything is back to normal! Woohoo! Here’s a picture of the valve if you’re interested in what it looks like.

When I watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as a kid, I almost felt sorry for the geeky principal played by Ben Stein. Little did I know he was even more pathetic in real life. Don’t be fooled by his latest flick. Get the truth about Expelled before you go to the theatre. While you’re at it, pay tribute to David Bolinsky by watching his teaser displaying the inner workings of the cell on the internet rather than allowing Stein to spoof it.

I’ve been struggling with getting video from a Linksys WVC54GC web camera directly onto a machine running OS X. The only half-hack I’ve been able to come up with is, oddly enough, using QuickTime (no luck with VLC or MPlayer).

1. Open QuickTime Player.app.
2. Choose File->Open URL…
3. Type in the link to your camera: http://camerip:1024/img/video.asf (I’m using port 1024 for my camera.
4. Click OK and wait for the desired amount of time you’d like to record for.
5. Press Apple+A to select all, Apple+N to bring up a new viewer, and Apple+V to paste in.

QuickTime Player is highly non-responsive while this is occurring, but it seems to pull it off. Let me know if you have a better way.

I usually pride myself when I share that I am from the Twin Cities. I think of it as a progressive area in the heart of the Midwest.  Thats why I was dismayed to read that the Mall of America theatre manager catered to the religious right last night:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

I mean no slight of hand to the brilliant PZ Meyers, but can you say “Wrong man!?” Go RD and thanks PZ for being such a sport and entertaining such a distinguished guest!

I’ve bonked my head on a wall for a while helping people to send multiple attachments with Mail.app in Mac OS X to an AOL email account.   I think this is a working solution, although it is not very elegant in the Mac-sense. Before you read the solution, here’s the problem, as documented by AOL: http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/#attachmentsThe workaround is a cute two-step procedure if you have the appropriate software installed. So, if you want to attach a single file to an email message going to an AOL user, try the following:1) The attachment must be the very last thing in the message. Before attaching files, place the cursor at the very end of the mail message (keep using the down and right arrows to make sure the cursor is at the end of the document or in Mail, just choose Edit->Attachments->Always Insert Attachments at End of Message); and2) Erase the resource fork from your file before sending it by right clicking on it and choosing “GrimRipper” from your contextual menu.Before you try this for the first time, you’ll need to install “GrimRipper” using the link below (to install, download the file from the bottom of the linked webpage, and from the disk image on your desktop open the file called “Install GrimRipperCM”, and click the blue buttons whenever you’re prompted by the installation):

http://www.abracode.com/free/cmworkshop/grim_ripper.html

What’s going on behind the scenes? By doing these steps, Mail should be able to skip the appledouble encoding when you send an attachment and send a single base64 encoded data fork (i.e. your attached file)… Please keep me posted if this works for you. I believe you’ll still only be able to send one attachment at a time. 

As I was pulling my bag out of the car yesterday to begin my ride, I knocked the headlamp for my bike’s NiteRider Evolution Smart, from the inside of my car, about 12 inches above the ground, to the frozen asphalt near the Stone Arch Bridge.  Unfortunately, it was unable to withstand the fall and I found the bulb cracked loose inside the housing.  Desperate calls around the Twin Cities later that day to NiteRider “dealers” yielded no replacement bulbs and only promises of 7-10 day waiting periods.  I could have purchased a 35mm replacement bulb, Model #1063, directly from NiteRider for about $30 with shipping included, but my Dad recommended that I call Freewheel as they have had drop in/similar replacement bulbs that worked for him in the past. Lo and behold, he was right! They set me up with a Luks, PD23987, MR-11, dichroic, 6 volt, 15 watt, 20 degree 3200K replacement bulb that has a bluish white light and is apparently meant for NiteRider and Marwi light systems. It fits just as snug as the NiteRider one and cost significantly less (under $19 with tax). Thanks Kevin and Freewheel!