WIJFR: Mattimeo

Preparations for the feast for the Summer of the Golden Plain are underway at Redwall Abbey, and young Mattimeo’s mother sets him to work with the other inhabitants. His father, Matthias, is the guardian of Redwall Abbey and it is this fact that puts the young Mattimeo in danger as the evil Slagar the Fox plots to kidnap him in a bid to shake the very foundations of the Abbey and its inhabitants.

The third book of Brian Jaques‘ Redwall series, “Mattimeo,” picks up eight seasons (so, uh, two years?) after the events of “Redwall.”

Mattimeo is the young son of Matthias (the Champion of Redwall) and Cornflower. Growing up as the son of the Warrior isn’t an easy thing for Matti, who tends to get himself into trouble. During the feast of the Summer of the Golden Plain, Slagar the fox, a slaver, infiltrates Redwall Abbey, drugs the inhabitants, and makes off with Redwall’s young ones.

Once Matthias and the rest of the woodlanders awaken and realize what has happened, a grand pursuit begins which takes us, the readers, and the rescue party (Jess squirrel, Basil Stag Hare, and some new and old friends) through the southern reaches of Mossflower country to the underground kingdom of Malkariss.

While the warrior party is away chasing Slagar, a second plotline follows the raven General Ironbeak and his army of rooks, crows, and magpies as they invade the roofspaces of the abbey and attempt to take over Redwall from the top down. With their warriors gone, the remaining Abbey residents must come up with different, inventive ways of dealing with the invaders.

As before, my daughter was tired of waiting for me and has already gone ahead and read the next book in the series, “Mariel of Redwall.” She’s promised to wait for me to finish that one so we can read “Salamandastron” together.

I discovered, while perusing the wiki, that there was a Redwall animated series on Canadian public television back in the late 90s/early 2000s. I managed to find the Season 1 DVDs (which basically cover the first book) on eBay and bought a set for my daughter’s birthday (I think she’ll flip out). There is also talk of a live-action/CGI Redwall movie to be released in 2011.

Finally got to use my circular saw

The day before Hurricane Charley hit back in 2004, I cut plywood sheets to protect all of our windows using my tiny jigsaw (which is all I had at the time), and it took forever:

But now that our new impact-resistant hurricane windows are in (partially paid for by the state of Florida thanks to the My Safe Florida Home project), we no longer need them! This:


has been replaced by this:

The boards have been just sitting in the shed (and garage) taking up space and providing a haven for hundreds of cockroaches, ants, and other creepy-crawlies (shudder). Over the weekend, we cleaned out the shed (in preparation for getting rid of it altogether) and moved all of the wood (after I fumigated to kill the insect hordes) into the garage.

After the 2004 hurricane season I purchased a 7″ circular saw, figuring I would need it at some point when it was time to replace the plywood, not wanting to have to use the jigsaw again. Luckily, I never had the need to use the new saw … until tonight when I started cutting up those old plywood sheets for the trash. Wow, it’s like cutting butter … and kinda fun! 🙂

WIJFR: The Mote in God’s Eye

In the year 3016, the Second Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to the faster-than-light Alderson Drive. No other intelligent beings have ever been encountered, not until a light sail probe enters a human system carrying a dead alien. The probe is traced to the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud, and an expedition is dispatched.

Jerry Pournelle is a frequent guest on TWiT. That, coupled with a recent mention by Steve Gibson on Security Now (episode #151) and the fact that I’ve never read any of Pournelle’s work, prompted me to purchase and read “The Mote in God’s Eye” (by Pournelle and Larry Niven). This book is an excellent example of hard science fiction, about as far as you can get from the last classic SF text I read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story is about mankind’s first encounter with intelligent life: an alien probe, having travelled for hundreds of years in “regular” space is discovered. A combination military/scientific/political/religious/commercial mission is launched by the humans to the Mote system, where they meet the Moties and begin learning about their culture, their history … and their dark secret. I can’t even begin to describe the plot here with any justice, so I recommend checking out the wiki page (just beware of spoilers!) if you’re interested.

My favorite thing about this book is that the aliens are … well, alien. This isn’t “Stargate SG-1” or “Doctor Who” or even “Star Trek.” There are no universal translators, the Moties don’t speak English (at first), they don’t look human, they’re so … unfamiliar. Pournelle and Niven do a great job of creating an entirely alien race, complete with physiology, theology, mentality, architecture, technology, the whole nine yards.

They wrote a sequel, “The Gripping Hand,” some 20 years later (“Mote” was published in 1974). I’ll probably read that one as well. I seem to remember reading and enjoying Niven’s “The Integral Trees” when I was a kid, so it’s probably time to revisit his works as well.

Western Digital RMA snafu

So last night my RMA replacement for my failed WD Expander arrived. I opened the box and found … an internal 500gb SATA drive, just the bare drive.

So I called up Western Digital and spoke with a support rep. I explained that I had opened an RMA for my external MyDVR Expander and received an internal drive instead. The rep checked my ticket and told me that I had opened an RMA for an internal drive. I responded by saying I typed in the serial number on the back on my unit. He put me on hold for a few minutes. Then he had me read him the serial number again, which I did. He insisted again that it was an internal drive.

“Look,” I said. “I’m holding my external DVR Expander right now. It’s not an internal drive.” He then tried to tell me I purchased an internal drive and put it in an external case. No, I explained back (getting a little upset at this point) , I purchased this as a complete package … a MyDVR Expander for my TiVo. I finally got him to transfer me to a supervisor.

After some more time on hold I finally re-explained the situation to a supervisor. He was much nicer and understanding and acknowledged that it could be a mix-up in the RMA system, matching the serial number to the wrong product. He said they would e-mail me a return label to ship back the internal drive. Then he asked me to scan the label of my external drive and e-mail it to them so they could verify ownership. He said they would then open a new RMA and send me the proper replacement. So I did all of that … looks like I’ll be waiting a few more days to get this replaced. 🙁

I think the serial number on the back of my expander is actually the serial number of the drive inside the case, which is probably the source of the mix-up. The internal drive they sent me was the same model I recall seeing show up on my TiVo’s System Information screen. If there was any discernible way of opening the external case, I probably could have swapped the drives, but that would definitely have voided my warranty. So I’ll just be patient and wait for the actual replacement.


My enhancement to Galleon’s weather app (officially, this time)

Last month I added a small enhancement to Galleon’s weather app that allowed for a user-selectable range for the radar image (instead of using the default 600-mile one). I published my source code changes and the new jar file here on my blog.

Now earlier this month, jtkohl released Galleon 2.5.3 which contained a fix for the original radar image bug in that started back in July (one I had also attempted to fix on my own). Well, since I didn’t put my code changes into the SourceForge project, my range selection enhancement was obviously not included in the new release and my modified jar file didn’t work properly anymore. After pointing this out to John, he was nice enough to add me to Galleon’s developer list on SourceForge which gave me access to make changes to the code repository.

I hadn’t used CVS in a long while, so I took some time this evening to re-familiarize myself with it and how SourceForge uses it for repository control. Once I was comfortable with that, I checked out a copy of the code, re-applied my changes, and checked them back in. I didn’t rebuild the entire package, but now the next time a new version is built, my changes should be included.

In the meantime, you can download my weather.jar to replace the one that comes with 2.5.3 or check out my code changes directly in CVS:

  • Weather.java rev 1.27
  • WeatherConfiguration.java rev 1.4
  • WeatherData.java rev 1.25
  • WeatherOptionsPanel.java rev 1.7

My WD Expander has died

Last night I found my TiVo HD just showing a black screen and it was unresponsive to the remote. No big deal, I rebooted it and it came back up fine. Then I tried to play an HD recording and it spontaneously rebooted. This time it got stuck in a reboot loop. So I let it sit unplugged for a few minutes, tried again and it booted fine. I tried playing the recording again, bam, reboot.

It got stuck in a reboot loop again, so I tried leaving it uplugged for a while like before, but no luck, still the reboot loop. Sometimes it would get to the “almost there” screen, other times it would just keep repeating the “powering up” screen.

Then I remembered I had the Western Digital MyDVR Expander connected. So I checked all the eSATA cable connections and they were tight. I tried booting without the Expander connected and the TiVo got all the way to the “external storage not detected” screen so that pointed to the Expander as the issue.

I wasn’t ready to divorce the drive just yet, so I unplugged the THD and the Expander and let them sit off for a while … but was still unable to get the box to boot with the external drive attached.

When I power up the Expander, it makes a slight vibrating buzz (like a pager) then I can hear the drive spin up. Then I can hear a clicking noise (which doesn’t sound good) and then the drive sounds like it spins down. I also can’t get into any of the TiVo’s kickstart modes to run a drive check. I suspect the box is hanging when trying to read the Expander and thus not getting far enough in the boot process to look for kickstart codes from the remote.

I’m not sure this is the same problem described in this thread on the TiVo Community Forum … it could be an actual hardware failure. I don’t have an eSATA connector on my PC, so I can’t run any diagnostics on the drive without it being connected to the TiVo … unless I rip open the enclosure. I checked my drive’s serial number on WD’s warranty site and it’s still covered, so maybe I’ll just try the RMA route.

Luckily I don’t think there’s any real backlog of shows I wanted to watch on the box, so if I end up returning the drive it’s no big loss (it’s just TV after all, right?). Hopefully I’ll get the replacement drive before the new fall season really starts up.

Interesting analysis of Gates/Seinfeld commercial

By now you’ve probably seen the new Microsoft commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld which premiered during Thursday Night Football last week.

When I first saw it, I wasn’t impressed. “The future. Delicious.” Seriously? This is Microsoft’s counter to Apple’s hilarious “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC” ads? Churros, shoes, and moist, edible PCs? What? (Ok, I did laugh at Bill’s mugshot on his Shoe Circus Membership card).

That being said, Ryan Block (formerly of Engadget and now part of gdgt) had an interesting analysis and breakdown of the different elements of the commercial on this week’s episode of TWiT (#159). Some of it actually made sense to me, though it still sounds like a bit of a stretch. The gang starts the analysis at the 1:10:13 mark. Judge for yourself … I’ll wait for the next one.