For Father’s Day this year my wife and daughter got me a cool toy! The Heli-Max 1SQ V-CAM RC quad-copter. I had a Sears Lobo when I was a kid (it’s probably still in my parents’ basement) and loved racing that thing around in the street, especially with Turbo mode. Now I can take to the skies instead!
Now that the wireless network re-design was done, I wanted to replace my aging Foscam outdoor cameras with newer, HD models. Installing the Ubiquiti UniFi AP was my first introduction to power-over-ethernet and I decided to move to PoE (instead of wireless) cameras. I already had TRENDnet cameras in my current setup, along with TRENDnet switches, so I decided to stick with that brand and selected the TV-IP311PI outdoor cameras and TPE-TG44g PoE switch.
Continue reading ‘TRENDnet TV-IP311PI outdoor camera and TPE-TG44g PoE switch’ »
My current home wireless setup had been in-place and stable for about two years. And while everything was working fine, my incessant need to tinker was overpowering so I decided to do a little re-design and simplification.
The real reason for the re-org was because I wanted to try out the Ubiquiti UniFi AP, an 802.11n wireless access point with MIMO technology capable of 300Mbps speeds with ranges up to 400 feet. Slightly larger than your average smoke detector, it’s meant for enterprises but for $70 if you know your way around network setup it’s pretty simple to set up as a very robust home access point when paired with your existing router.
We got up early this morning with plans to go to Sarabeth’s right when it opened for breakfast. Somehow, however, we unfortunately missed the fact that it’s only open for breakfast on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. 🙁 Instead, we went over to Glazed Donuts on Eaton and picked up a half-dozen and then walked down the block to Starbucks for hot drinks. On our way out of Old Town, we remembered to swing past the Southernmost Point again and this time were able to get a decent family photo with the monument without having to wait in line. Shortly after 9:00am we were back in New Town and on the road back home.
Continue reading ‘Memorial Day Weekend in Key West: Day 3’ »
Our first (and only) full day in Key West started out slowly … which was fine since we were on vacation after all. Despite our success with taking the dog around the city yesterday, we decided it was too hot and too much for our elderly pooch to handle again. Rather than leave him alone in the hotel room (he tends to bark when left alone), we drove him over to Pampered Pet (in New Town) for day care boarding. That freed us up to bike around Old Town during the day doing all the touristy stuff that wasn’t necessarily pet friendly.
Continue reading ‘Memorial Day Weekend in Key West: Day 2’ »
Earlier this week we realized Memorial Day was coming up and we really didn’t have any plans for the long weekend. With limited time to plan, we decided to drive down to the Florida Keys and visit Key West. We’ve lived in Florida for 13 years and have never been there so why not check it out over a holiday weekend? Road trip!
Continue reading ‘Memorial Day Weekend in Key West: Day 1’ »
Ocyrhoe, a young, cunning fugitive from Rome, safeguards a chalice of subtle but great power. Finding herself in France, she allies with the persecuted, pacifist Cathar sect in their legendary mountaintop stronghold, Montségur. There she resists agents of the Roman Church and its Inquisition, fights off escalating, bloody besiegement by troops of the King of France, and shields the mysterious cup from the designs of many.
Percival, the heroic Shield-Brethren knight from The Mongoliad, consumed by his mystical visions of the Holy Grail, is also drawn to Montségur—where the chalice holds the key to his destiny.
Arrayed against Percival and Ocyrhoe are enemies both old and new who are determined to reveal the secrets of the Shield-Brethren with the hope of destroying the order once and for all.
Wrapping up The Mongoliad Cycle, I finally finished reading “Siege Perilous” by E. D. deBirmingham.
Book Five picks up the Rome/Pope/Grail storyline from Books Two and Three, introducing Ferenc and Ocyrhoe to the Shield-Bretheren knights Raphael and Percival and Shield Maiden Vera. Also making a re-appearance is Dietrich, of the Livonian order of knights whom we last saw at the Circus of Swords outside of Hünern in Book Three. There aren’t any more Mongols (i.e., Gansukh and Lian) in this final installment, as that story was wrapped up at the end of Book Four.
First the Cleveland Browns worked their magic and picked Johnny Manziel (aka, Johnny Football or LeBron James in Cleats?) in the first round (22nd overall). Reports have it that Manziel will be hometown hero Brian Hoyer‘s backup, not the starter, but hopefully this time around picking a quarterback finally works out for the Browns.
Then the Cleveland Cavaliers won the first round draft pick in the lottery (a 1.7% chance) for the third time in four years. Who knows if they’ll use it, or trade it, but this has got to be a sign of things finally turning around for the Cavs, right? I don’t really want LeBron to come back (I’d rather see Cleveland win a championship without him at this point) but it’ll be interesting to see what plays out with this fantastic bargaining chip.
Finally a stroke of good luck for my Cleveland teams? Let’s hope they don’t squander it …
My daughter had to do some filming for a class project and the thought of having to transfer her video off of my old Panasonic PV-GS250 miniDV camcorder (in real-time) just wasn’t appealing. I decided it was time to get an HD camcorder. Since I needed it pretty quickly, I did some brief research on Consumer Reports and then purchased the Sony HDR-CX330 at my local Best Buy (online, with in-store pickup).
Yeah, yeah, so it’s getting harder to write these “witty” Ubuntu post titles … 😮
Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) was released today so as usual I upgraded my server immediately. Despite upgrading on the first day the download only took about 30 minutes but then it took a few hours for the “do-release-upgrade” to finish installing all the new packages plus a little more time for me to re-apply my affected configuration changes. This was a pretty smooth upgrade, no issues to speak of yet! I did double-check to make sure the version of OpenSSL included has the Heartbleed patch (which of course it does).
Next up is version 14.10 in October, but it doesn’t appear to have been codenamed yet. The “U” name should be fun, lots of possibility there …