When I found out I could use my Canon A2000is point and shoot to create a time lapse, i was floored. I owe it all to the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK). With this nifty piece of software, your Canon camera can boot a whole new feature set from an SD card. Most importantly, run Ultra Intervalometer script.

One gotcha with CHDK is that it will only boot from a FAT16 partition. So if you have a 4gig+ SD card, you will need to jump through some hoops to create a bootable FAT16 (32mb will do) and a larger FAT32 partition for storage. MacOS and Linux read the partitions no problem, if you are using Windows… SDM Installer will help you create and switch between partitions.

The next thing you need is power, after all your wimpy lithium-ion or in my case NiMH’s won’t last all day. This is where an AC Adapter comes in. Mine didn’t come with one, so I found a HQRP AC Replacement Adapter for my camera. Get the one with the transformer in the middle, it has a longer cord.

Once you get all your images together, you need to make the video. For this I used Quicktime 7 Pro. It was super easy and imported directly to iMovie for transitions, audio and text. When creating the video, I used the default 15fps photo sequence.

It’s hard to believe that my sub $200 Canon A2000IS camera is capable of such amazing things. Many more to follow, stay tuned.

Just remember… time is relative.

Pros:

• Tags along with something I already carry and keep track of, my keys… never leave home without them.
• Plenty of space to include a live CD and all of the diagnostic utilities you could ever need.
• Reasonably Priced for such a unique flash drive.
• So far the construction and materials seems very durable.

Cons:

• Not the fastest flash drive at 26 mb/s Read and 16 mb/s Write
• Doesn’t have hardware level encryption (wishful thinking), but nothing TrueCrypt can’t take care of.

Conclusion:

I would highly recommend this to anyone that wants to have a flash drive with them all the time. I have been carrying the drive for about two weeks now and it’s been great. I have actually found that I am using flash storage more because it is so convenient. Stay tuned for what I loaded it up with…

This was the first time I used the GPS on my iPhone for tracking and marking waypoints. I stuffed it in a pocket on the top of my backpack and I must say it worked quite well. I used the iPhone app Trails to record the hike. The battery life was great, it only used about a third of the battery for the 3 hours it was tracking. One nice feature was the use of the light sensor (near the ear piece). When it was covered, the screen automatically shut off to help save the battery. The accuracy seemed quite good as well, there are even posts saying the phone/app bests a $200 Garmin.

Here are some pictures from our hike on the Merryman Trail at the Loch Raven Reservoir in Timonium, Maryland. We parked on Warren Rd. and had easy access to the trail. We got side tracked at the feeder stream waterfalls and took the fire road up to a neighborhood and decided to turn back (as you can see from the maps). Overall it was a nice hike and beautiful spring day. You can view more details on our Hike In and Hike Out @ EveryTrail.com.

More information about the trail can be found here.

This past month Amazon sent me an early Christmas present, their very own content deliver network (CDN). Adding to their already robust line of “cloud” offerings, Amazon Cloudfront brings edge server routing to the mix. I have been using Amazon S3 for static content delivery since my most recent hello world. Cloudfront takes the highly scalable and redundant S3 and puts it closer to the end user, thus distributing throughput and reducing latency.

When it comes to web development, one of my driving forces is performance. I love seeking out and shaving milliseconds off page loads and network requests. One of the best ways to do this is to put the content as close to the source as possible. Content Delivery Networks do just that. If my viewers are in Asia, I don’t want my server in New York and vise versa. With a CDN data is cached at several geographically optimized locations as needed. When a request comes in, it is routed to the nearest location.

The quickest route to the Jungle

A good tool to analyze network routing, latency and a bunch of other stuff is pingplotter. They have a free version and pro version. The free version works great for my purposes. Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Pings are a lightweight and predictable way to provide insight on latency and network conditions. Here is a comparison of my routes between Amazon Cloudfront and my standard web server.

As you can see, with Cloudfront I scream right to Amazons Newark, NJ server as apposed to going through McClean, VA, then ATL, and finally to my server in Dallas, TX.

How Cloudfront performs in the CDN storm

Pingplotter works great to determine *your* route and latency.

Just-ping.com provides a great way to test your host/cdn from many geographic locations at once.

Disclaimer: The below analysis was put together to illustrate a general concept. Accuracy and real world conditions will vary.

.	Geographic Location	Single Web Server	Amazon Cloudfront	Akamai	LimeLight

. Florida, U.S.A. 34.4 29.4 36.5 36.9 . Chicago, U.S.A. 34.5 6.6 19 1.3 . San Francisco, U.S.A. 43.6 2.2 3.6 2 . New York, U.S.A. 43.9 5 8.9 6.6 . Santa Clara, U.S.A. 47.1 3.9 2.8 6.9 . Vancouver, Canada 73 52 4.5 95.6 . Austin1, U.S.A. 102.4 38.1 5.2 76.3 . Austin, U.S.A. 102.7 38.1 5.3 76.4 . London, United Kingdom 108 13.2 1.8 1.6 . Amsterdam3, Netherlands 114.3 19.9 0.7 7.4 . Amsterdam2, Netherlands 115.8 20.6 1.5 8.1 . Amsterdam, Netherlands 118.6 0.9 0.5 0.7 . Lille, France 120.3 12.9 14.2 110.9 . Munchen, Germany 129.1 7.6 10.2 7.7 . Zurich, Switzerland 130.8 10.6 2.8 25.7 . Cologne, Germany 131.8 9 5 20.4 . Groningen, Netherlands 133 4.3 5.7 4.3 . Copenhagen, Denmark 137.9 15.6 4.1 25.3 . Antwerp, Belgium 139.7 5.5 4.2 4.4 . Stockholm, Sweden 142 32.7 5 23.6

. Madrid, Spain 142.4 45.2 2.5 25.1 . Paris, France 149.9 8.3 17.5 1.4 . Cagliari, Italy 165.5 30.1 29.5 30.4 . Auckland, New Zealand 173.7 159.8 1.1 161.4 . Krakow, Poland 174.1 31 8.8 43.6 . Haifa, Israel 177.9 78.1 0.5 64.5 . Porto Alegre, Brazil 179.1 149.9 30.2 169.9 . Nagano, Japan 185.8 4.8 13.1 4.7 . Sydney, Australia 204.8 159.2 3.3 166.2 . Hong Kong, China 206.8 2.3 2.2 65.6 . Melbourne, Australia 207.6 177.9 1.7 166.6 . Singapore, Singapore 238.7 137.1 13.3 3.5 . Shanghai, China 249.1 153.5 308.3 87 . Mumbai, India 280.3 259.1 1.6 263.5 . Johannesburg, South Africa 304.8 293.2 19.3 274.7 . Average (miliseconds) 144.1 57.65 16.98 59.15

Setting up and configuring Amazon Cloudfront

Setup was super easy with the latest S3 Organizer Firefox Add-on. You can also complete the setup with a Curl Script.

Are you sick of playing target practice with your remote controls?

I tried several “remote control extenders”. Most of them relayed the infrared signal from one room to another. You still had to point the remote at the sensor and in most cases aim it. When I stumbled across the Next Generation Remote Control Extender I was skeptical. “You put the what where?” Yes… you put a Radio Frequency (RF) transmitter in place of one of the batteries in your Infrared (IR) remote. Don’t ask me how the thing works, but it transmits the signal to the odd looking receiver in the other room. At first I thought the receiver was battery powered. But it comes with an AC Adapter and actually charges the second smaller battery that powers the transmitter. This way you always have a battery ready to go, brilliant.

I am currently using Microsoft’s Media Center Remote Control and Keyboard with it and that they both work WAY better. I was on the verge or replacing the keyboard because you really had to point it to have fluid mouse movements. Now both remotes work on command and flawless in any room in my house!

Pros:

• Super easy to setup.
• Works like any RF remote, no direct line of sight required, thought walls – up to 100′ away
• 433.92 MHz – seems like a good frequency with little or no perceived interference.

Cons:

• I have heard it doesn’t work with all remotes, but it has worked with ever one I have tried.
• Battery doesn’t last long with one battery remotes.

Conclusion:

The technology and engineering behind this device is award winning. It does exactly what it claims to do, convert almost any IR remote to RF. I have been using it for about a month with great success!

Get yours here:

No my site isn’t broken…

Today I am observing CSS Naked Day to help promote web standards. Not that I am completely compliant, but who really is when you have browsers that don’t want to play nice.

The topic of CSS for me always brings up the great debate of CSS vs tables. You will notice that I use a mixture on this site. That is because I absolutely hate absolute positioning in css. Another thing (that is gone with no css) are my sprites. They are great to cut down on requests and improve site performance. Here is what you are missing:

Now that I am looking at my site without css, maybe we should start an advertising naked day to show how cool our sites would be without them.

Fore more reading take a look at: What are web standards and why should I use them?

Just as the news that the Microsoft Xbox 360 external HD DVD drive was declared extinct, I found a use for it: load up my new Asus Eee with Windows XP. It is hopefully the last OS that has to be loaded from an optical drive and lets not forget about the F6 floppy driver loading routine (thankfully not needed for the Eee).

I was going to use a Bytecc IDE to USB with an old drive I had laying around. But why not let this already defunct technology marvel go out with a bang. It worked great.

Anyway, I loaded up the Eee with an nlite-ed version of XP for a mere 480mb footprint. I followed this great tutorial over at i64X.com, thanks Jason!

My first impressions of the Asus Eee are very good. I am finding all sorts of uses for it. I already voided the Newegg warranty by installing a gig of Geil RAM, we’ll see about voiding the Asus warranty and installing some hardware hacks (maybe GPS, bluetooth and 3G?). I promise, this isn’t going to turn into a Eee blog, but I will have more on it soon. This thing is amazing!

“A study conducted by IDC determined that only 41% of small companies and 35% of large organizations monitor Internet DNS response times.”

“DNS failures account for as much as 29% of system downtime costing companies millions of dollars.”

The Domain Name System (DNS) is arguably the single most important part of the internet. Just think: If websites only had a numerical lookup… our Rolodex’s would be massively confusing. Why don’t webmasters/hosts treat DNS with the same priority? DNS servers carry such a high importance. Without them, no internet. They are often the target of massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. Are your DNS records configured properly and secure?

DNS Performance & Security Enhancements

Most of the Internet is run on Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) based servers. There have been a lot of failed attempts to create a BIND alternative (GnuDIP, MooDNS, Dents, OakDNS, CustomDNS and dproxy). A couple of active projects are PowerDNS, NSD, djdns and MaraDNS. All boast better security and performance improvements in different environments. If you are hosting your own DNS, you owe it to yourself/network to review your options.

Another performance and security innovation that is becoming increasing popular across many stateless services on the internet is IP anycast networks. It is a network addressing and routing scheme where data is routed to the nearest or best destination. It helps provide higher availability and load balancing. Many of the TLD servers name servers are already running on anycast networks. In fact these servers survived the massive DDOS attack last year. UtraDNS, Netriplex and DNS Made Easy are among the few providers to deliver DNS over an anycast network. I imagine many more fill follow suit.

Minimizing down-time with TTL

Most of us have been effected by DNS outages. There is not much you can do when a record gets out of whack or a server goes down. You can flush your local cache, maybe even try to resolve against a different server, but the only real cure is time. That is because each DNS record has a setting called Time to Live (TTL). This is how long the record should persist. Once this time expires, a new record is fetched. Also, if the servers aren’t available, you don’t get a record.

A good rule of thumb when setting your TTL is to use your average visitor time. For example, if the average visitor spends five minutes on your site (check your analytics), you should set your TTL to 300 (in seconds). The idea is; in the event of a failover, it has the least impact on visitors and doesn’t require a performance hit for numerous DNS lookups. Some DNS providers won’t allow a TTL setting this low. A lower TTL mean more DNS queries and ultimately more expense.

Should I outsource my DNS?

A lot of network architects will actually advise webmasters to host their own DNS records. The route/latency will be the same as HTTP traffic, thus making lookup time approximately the same as a web requests. It also reduces the risk of outages caused solely by DNS. If they are hosted on the same subnet, routing glitches are minimized. If they are on the same server as your website, it will even further reduce the risk of DNS only outages.

However, if you don’t have the time/experience to monitor, review logs and maintain your DNS servers, outsourcing is a great option. But beware, all DNS networks/servers are not created equally. If you are hosting your records with a budget registrar, chances are you are at risk. They are often the target of DDOS attacks, endure lengthy outages/maintenance and have congested networks. Security by obscurity; in the last two years I have had clients with DNS outages lasting greater than 6 hours at two of the major registrars.

The Cadillac of DNS currently is NeuStar’s UltraDNS. They have a globally redundant/optimized network with proprietary DNS software powered by Oracle replication. However, they charge by the query, so if you have a busy site, it will get expensive in a hurry. Another high-end service is Netriplex. For small to mid size company’s the only way to afford either of these services is to increase unfortunately to your TTL.

The best budget priced service with high-end features/support I have found so far is DNS Made Easy. They have a great feature-set, excellent and knowledgeable staff all at a great price.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

There have been reports of falling Search Engine Results Placements (SERPs) taking drastic drops soon after a DNS change. Changing just the IP address has not caused any notable problems. It is domain contact and name server changes that have have caused the speculation. Many claim it resets the sites Google “trust points”. There are many influences on SERPs and SEO is always a moving target, so take this warning with a grain for salt. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

For More Information

DNS Wiki – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system
DNS Forum – http://member.dnsstuff.com/forums/
Web-based DNS Tools – http://www.dnstools.com/
DNS Surveys – http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/dns/surveys/

Whoa, easy on the Acronyms….

One of my biggest challenges setting up my Small Office and Home Office (SOHO) Voice Over IP (VOIP) network has been related to Quality of Service (QOS). Have you ever been on a VOIP call and had people complain that you sound like you are in a tin can? Most residential broadband connections have a capped upload speed. If your internet habits are anything like mine, at times you can max your connection in both directions. Creating room for voice traffic can be a challenge. Current voice coding algorithms require 16 – 80 kbps for a single voice connection. If the throughput is not available or the latency is too high (> 250ms one way), voice quality will suffer or with some clients completely drop. A lot of routers/switches claim to come with QOS, most of them are pretty crude and require bandwidth/node fixing. There are also a number of plug and play solutions claiming to clear up the problem. They are generally expensive and do not offer custom traffic shaping.

The Solution

A couple years ago Linksys went open source on one of their most popular broadband routers firmware, the WRT54G. There have been a number of different firmware releases. I tried everything I could get my hands on. The one that stood out from the pack with both features and usability was Tomato by Jonathan Zarate It has a number of enhancements from the default firmware, the most notable being:

• AJAX enabled interface
• Sweet bandwidth usage monitor
• Advanced QOS
• Access Restrictions
• New wireless features such as WDS and wireless client modes
• Raises the limits on maximum connections for P2P
• Allows you to run your custom scripts or telnet/ssh in and do all sorts of things like re-program the SES/AOSS button
• Adds wireless site survey to see your wifi neighbors

Installing Tomato

Jut a couple of notes here. Make sure you check your device’s hardware version number. Unfortunately you can’t walk into your local computer superstore and pick one up anymore, v5+ hardware is not supported. If your WRT54G is a couple of years old, chances are you have one of the supported devices. Installation is pretty straight forward, just flash it with the latest firmware. This will wipe your settings, so make sure you grab screenshots/write them down before you get started. The default GUI username is “admin” or “root” (username is required), ssh and telnet username is always “root”, and the default password is “admin”.

Configuring Basic Firewall Functions

This step will vary depending on your ISP, network configuration and VOIP provider. WAN/LAN configuration is straight forward and should be configured the same as it was in your default firmware. Port Forwading depends on what VOIP gateway hardware you have. The standard signaling port for SIP is 5060-5063 UDP and RTP voice travels on 16384 – 16482 UDP (some phones may need ranges up to 10000 – 20000 UDP). I have setup a Trixbox PBX locally for handling calls (thinking of trying asterisk on linode). Forwarding the above ports allows me to authenticate a trunk with my provider, voip your life. Make a couple of test calls over a quiet internet connection to insure everything is working. Audio in both directions should be without glitch.

Setting up Quality of Service

With tomato you can classify data by IP or Mac Address, Source/Destination Port and how much data is being transfered. You will want to adjust these setting to match your usage. For example, I am digesting a shoutcast stream 24/7 and have set 8000-8006 to highest priority to avoid interruptions.

Enabling QOS

• Log-in to your router
• Open the QOS > Basic Settings Menu
• Check “Enable QOS”

Note: if you use applications that do a lot of ACKnowledgment requests (BitTorrent), you might want to consider turning this option off

Outbound Rate / Limit

• Max Bandwidth: this is your maximum outbound (upload) bandwidth. You can determine your speed at DSL Reports, SpeakEasy or Speedtest.net. A hack to ensure you have enough overhead is to intentionally low-ball this number. You would only want to do this if absolutely necessary as you would not be fully utilizing your bandwidth.

Note: These are the settings that work for me,
you will most likely have to tweak them

Inbound Limit

• Max Bandwidth: Use the inbound (download) results from your tests above.

Note: These are the settings that work for me,
you will most likely have to tweak them

Classifications

• Open the QOS > Classifications Menu
• Add Entry for Any Address, TCP/UDP, Src or Dst 5060 (your SIP Signaling port), Highest Priority
• Add Entry for Any Address, TCP/UDP, Src or Dst 16384-16482 (your RTP Voice port range), Highest Priority
• Move them to the top of the list
• Note: If you have any other traffic (P2P) on ports these ports, you should try the SIP I7-Filter.
• Note: Another solution is to setup a QOS classification for the IP/Mac addresss of your standalone VoIP phones or adapters if they are connecting to a trunk over the internet
• Note: Some phones require a different RTP range for example, my Linksys SPA942′s call for 10,000 – 20,000 UDP. Check with you phone or ATA documentation to determine the actual RTP port range.

Testing, Testing, Testing

Now that you have established a baseline for your QOS, it’s time to see if it works. First, if possible test on a clean connection to make sure nothing is out of whack. Now for the fun part; max your connection out. Start your P2P, BitTorrent, Large file Uploads, Video Streaming and anything else you can think of. You can check how much you are using in the Bandwidth > Real Time menu. Tomato also comes with two very useful tools to debug your QOS settings.

Distribution Graphs

• Use these graph to determine where your connections are being classified. If you see something out of balance, you can adjust your classifications accordingly.

Detailed View

• This shows what traffic is currently flowing and how it is being classified. Take a look at each of the connections and make sure it is classified correctly. This report is also useful for determining the source of rouge traffic.

The Downside…

Yea, there is usually a con with every pro. To make this setup work correctly, you are essentially capping your throughput. Some networks offer pooled connections and have “boost” speeds. You will not be able to take advantage of these features. Most of the bandwidth related troubles with SOHO VOIP is outbound, so one workaround is to turn off the Inbound Limits. It is not fool-proof, but in some setups will work just fine.

Summary

As you can see, the Tomato firmware gives you granular traffic shaping control. Implementing these QOS settings has not only eliminated my VOIP problems, it has also made a noticeable difference in the overall speed and consistency of my connection. DNS queries resolve faster, multiple HTTP requests are balanced and I can transfer large files in the background. Even if you are not ready to take the leap to VOIP, I highly recommend Tomato Firmware.

This is a classic…

“Matt, Hi it’s Rob. I wanted to give you an update on the power point projector that we loaned out. We haven’t used it yet, and there is a reason. Um… Before, we were going to use it for a client presentation, we had a supplier come in and borrow it to present some of his own things to us… and the stink in the room was so bad, we thought it was the guy. Today we tried the power point… lcd projector again and it is the projector. Matt, I don’t know what it is, but the… ventilation of this projector is blowing out a stink like BO like you would not believe. We can’t even sit in same room with it. So I just wanted to give you a heads up. I don’t know what is wrong with it, but I can’t see anyone being able to use it… for a presentation. You might want to look into maybe cleaning the filter or something on that thing. That was it, thanks bye.”

This is a real voice mail I received a couple of years ago when I was an IT Manager for a media buying company.

Welcome.

If you are reading this post, the migration is complete. As promised, an all new site, with all new content.

With this much needed upgrade, I chose Linode.com as a host. They have many distros to choose from and a great management console. I am also partial to hosting facilities located in Texas for the geographic advantages. In the migration, I implemented Amazon S3 storage for all my static files. I have also scratch built a wordpress theme with minimalist styling and speed in mind. I still have a lot of tweaking to go, but it was time for launch.

More to follow…

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chd=s:cEAELFJHHHKU
ju9uuXUc&chco=76A4FB&chls=2.0,0.0,0.0&chs=200x125&chg=20,50,
1,0&chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|0|1|2|3|4|5|1:|0|50|100

… turns into this …

… beautiful isn’t it.

People have been asking what I am running for my current system so here is a post dedicated to just that. Several of the components have been carried over from many configurations ago. I have been through many iterations and a lot of research to derive this system. Suggestions and Questions are welcome, please comment.

System:

Intel D975XBX (Rev A0)
Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo @ 3072mhz (1365.7mhz FSB, x9 Multiplier, 1.259v Core)
Scythe Ninja Air Cooler w/ 2 x Thermaltake 120mm 95cfm
4Gb Geil @ 853.8Mhz 5-5-5-15 (4:5 FSB:DRAM)
EVGA GeForce 8800GTS @ 576Mhz 640MB @ 1.7Ghz
Biostar GeForce 8400GS 256MB (KVM Display)
SuperMicro 5bay Hot Swapable HDD Enclosures x 2

Drives:

NEC ND-3520AW DVD_RW
Plextor PX-W5224A CD-R
NewEgg 4Gig USB2 (ReadyBoost)
IronKey 4Gig USB2 (Portable Storage/Apps)
Western Digital 74Gig 10,000 RPM Raptor (Primary OS)
4 – Seagate 320Gig 7200.10 (Raid 5 Storage)
Old SATA drives for backup

Peripherals:

Color Balanced with Pantone Huey Pro
Microsoft/Razor Reculsa Keyboard
Logitech G5 Mouse
Func F30.R Mouse Pad (Get one while they last)
IOGear Miniview Symphony Multi-function 4-Port KVM Switch

Sound:

Swan M10 2.1 Desktop System
Sennheiser HD580 Headphones
Shure E4c Sound Isolating Headphones

Software:

Micorsoft Windows Vista 32-bit (Yuk, if only 64-bit software was up to par)
Editplus (By far my favorite text editor)
Microsoft Office 2007 (Love it!)
Virtual Ubuntu and Red Hat Distros
Various Virtual Development Environements (clients, servers, stress-tests, etc)

Network:

Linksys WRTG 54 v3 – Tomato Firmware (QOS rocks!)
Linksys EG005W Gigabit 5-port Workgroup Switch
Pure Cat6 Cables

Power:

Monster PowerCenter Hts 2000 Mkii
CyberPower CP1350AVRLCD UPS Battery Backup – 1350VA

Printer:

HP LaserJet 1020 (B&W)
Target/Kinkos (Color Photo Prints)

After a week of listening, these speakers definitely fit the bill. The imaging and balance is amazing. I had never heard of Swans or the new holding company HiVi. They have built their reputation with the slightly more expensive M200 model. From what I understand; what they lack in customer support, they more than make up for in build and sound quality. So far I have not had to use their customer support channels, but I have been thoroughly enjoying listening to these speakers. The sound is truly amazing.

Pros:

• Build Quality – These things are solid.
• Sound Quality – They are not true monitors, but have a balanced and for the most part accurate sound. If you are looking for big boomy bass, these are not the speakers. If you like Jazz, you are in for a treat.
• Packaging – First class packing all the way. They even come in cloth bags, to protect them from scratches.
• Interface – The back of the speaker has RCA connections for easy speaker extensions and stereo hookups. They include a stereo RCA to 3.5 mm Minijack plug.

Cons:

• Volume control on sub-woofer – This is not necessarily a negative if the speakers are used as intended.

Summary:

If you are looking for a close range desktop speaker system, these are a great option. The highs are amazingly crisp, the mids are nicely filled in and the lows are adequate and pronounced.

I have been looking around for a good secure USB key/Software solution for quite awhile. I have used TrueCrypt for years and it works great for what it does. But I wanted more. One watch of the IronKey demo and believe me, you will want one.