John Croson's Blog Home

Back in 2005 when I started work at a Milwaukee area technology consulting company I was asked to develop a kiosk system that could automatically copy images from a digital storage card to a CD . Image via Wikipedia The business idea from our customers perspective was to provide an iMac G4 with a handfull of cheap waterproof digital cameras to a water park free. The water park would then provide a camera to their customer during their stay, and when they returned the camera they would have the option to purchase a branded CD of all of their pictures for $20. The problem was that even though the iMac was easy to use, staff still had issues at times with dragging the images to the proper template folder for burning the project to CD. That's where I came in. I started to research the needs and available GNU projects that could do what we needed: Automount BashBurn Festival We spec'd out a Shuttle Box and had one purchased for testing. My first distro chosen was SuSE...

Image via CrunchBase We've been backing up to LTO2 tapes for years using a Dell PowerVault 132T with an internal IBM Ultra drive. Differential backups from our SAN don't take too long, but full backups take nearly an entire day. The backup set has grown as the business has, and it's rapidly approaching 1tb, spanning 3-4 tapes. About 10 days ago the internal drive finally croaked. Swallowed a tape and wouldn't let go. I was able to retrieve it using some directions found on IBM's website, but after trying another backup, only to have it fail with the same results, we realised a change was needed. What we needed was a reasonably priced, reliable destination for our data. I knew that a replacement LTO2 drive was going to be expensive, and probably needed to be a Dell approved model that had the proper firmware to work; picking up just any internal SCSI drive wasn't going to cut it, and this was confirmed after poking around in Dells support area. I was able ...

Image via Wikipedia Some time ago, I installed the SUA package with the thought I might use it for scripting and other tasks that I find easier to accomplish using GNU -like tools rather than Windows . Recently I needed to run a batch script that programatically checks for the evidence of some data files and injects them into MS Sql via DTS . This script worked fine on another server for years with a few tweaks now and then, and suddenly during my tests on this machine, it was failing. What I found was that my script was using the Windows FIND command, which is also installed by SUA. When I used FIND in my script, it was using the SUA flavor, and not the Windows version. I checked my PATH environment and saw that SUA's path was listed first, then %SystemRoot% , and %SystemRoot%\System32 where Windows FIND is installed. If I were a betting man, I'd have to say that since the SUA tools are listed before Windows, they get processed first. I've not tested this, but really...

Last week Friday, a tape got stuck in our Dell PowerVault 132T Library. Luckily, I was able to remove the tape and resume order to our backups ...or so I thought. After checking in Saturday it was clear that we were going to be without backups, something that makes my skin crawl. Image by artescienza via Flickr So promptly after our return to work after a nice long Labor Day weekend, I rushed out and to purchase an external drive to backup data to. My choice for such emergency trips is usually Milwaukee PC , since they are likely to have what I need in a pinch even if it is a few more dollars. Image via Wikipedia They indicated there indeed was a 2tb drive in stock, so I bought an enclosure and we headed over to the display case to retrieve the drive. Unfortunately the drive was no where to be found...bummer. A 1tb drive was likely not going to be quite large enough, but it was going to have to do. I started planning what data to trim from the backups to make room, then sudd...

Today during errands, we stopped by Goodwill and picked up this excellent enameled cast iron stew pot for $10. It inspired me to cook up an Indian stew for the family. My wife liked it so much she suggested I blog what I did, since it was all spur of the moment, like so much of my cooking is. The ingredients are as follows, in what I remember to be the approximate quantities... 1/2 vidalia onion diced 2 stalks celery chopped 2 medium carrots chopped 1 green chili pepper chopped 1 green bell pepper chopped 1 1/2 large tomato chopped 2 small white potatoes diced 2 cloves garlic minced 2 teaspoons minced ginger 3 or 4 mint leaves 3 or 4 bay leaves 4 or 5 small green leafy nutty spice I picked up at an Indian store, but have NO idea what it is... 1 teaspoon cardamom powder 1 teaspoon tumeric powder 1 teaspoon coriander powder 1 teaspoon cumin seed 2 teaspoon mustard seed 1 teaspoon fish sauce 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 can coconut milk 2 teaspoons chicken bullion 1/2 lb cub...

What a PITA. I have a cool smart phone that takes video, and can't get audio to work in Ubuntu , since Intrepid and Jaunty don't appear to come with AMR codecs compiled in ffmpeg , or gstreamer. Now, you can try to compile your codecs from source, and I've certainly done this sort of thing before; I can build my own kernel (In the days BEFORE xconfig), run Slackware/Gentoo, etc. This just didn't work for me. BUT, there is an easy solution. YOUTUBE.COM Image via CrunchBase That's right. Upload your video to YouTube , wait for it to process, and download the resulting MP4 from the My Videos area of the control panel. Presto, you've got your audio converted to something usable in short order.

I haven't had to do a migration for some time, since the days of consulting have been over for 3 years now. Image by mooing brontosaurus via Flickr Even then, I'd only done a couple of 2000 to 2003, and one SBS 2000 to SBS 2003 migrations. This project involved moving from SBS 2003 to a Standard 2003 environment. I was a bit intimidated, and purchased the excellent Swing It! SBS Migration kit from Jeff Middleton . One good thing about it was that Exchange had been moved to a hosted solution last year, and they didn't use Sharepoint . Turns out this was a good purchase for a guy doing a solo project with few peers to bounce questions or ideas off of. Jeff freely provides answers and guidance in his forums, and his expert help is just a phone call away if you are current with your subscription. Pre-pay, and your support requests are responded in an even quicker manner. Fortunately, I didn't need to ask but a few questions, and I was on my way with the docs, and...