Mr. Fixit

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There are 111 posts filed in Mr. Fixit (this is page 7 of 12).

Highlights of 2010: Social media

This year I will once again celebrate my blog highlights, but also will give a nod to the other social media sites.

On the blog front, MT.Net collected 1.73 million hits over this year, translating to 260,000 unique visits. That’s an average of 711 visits per day and about 30% traffic growth from the year before. It’s been a good year, traffic-wise. On the posting side, I estimate I’ve written about 450 new posts this year.

I’m always amused at what brings people to my site, too. I’m still one of the top search results for the Sugarhill Gang’s epic rap song, Rapper’s Delight. I’m also still collecting plenty of web hits for Jefferson’s Bank Quote. I also draw web searchers looking for Bradley Manning, 1Gb Internet, 99% of people can’t watch this video more than 25 seconds, free iPad scam, and TSA cavity search.
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I created my own Roku channel

I am in geek heaven with our new Roku box. This book-sized media player is simple to use and its simple to write applications for it. I signed up for the Roku SDK a few days ago and this evening I began working on a way to get my saved media to play on it. I’m happy to say I succeeded!

I used the homevideo apps by Brian Lane to create the appropriate XML files on my Apache server. It was simply a matter of adjusting the pathnames and everything worked.
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Weather online again

MT.Net weather station file photo

Well, it took me about a year after I set up my weather station in our current house before I actually connected it to the outside world but last night I got around to it. Seeing Travis’s taped-up toy weather station sitting sadly in yesterday’s rain got me motivated to give the kids some weather graphs and statistics to check whenever they want.

Now anyone can check the weather in East Raleigh by clicking on this link. Weather information updates every 10 minutes “on the elevens.” I still have to repair my wind speed gauge but everything else is working. Eventually I hope to upgrade to wireless (and solar) instruments I can mount above the roof but this will work for now.

Fixing GNU Mailman to handle mimetypes

I host a few neighborhood email lists on my Linux server running the excellent GNU Mailman list server software. Part of my setup involves stripping pictures/documents from emails and storing them in the list archives instead. This way 300 neighbors don’t get a 5 MB attachment emailed out to them: if anyone wants to view the picture/document all they have to do is click on a link in the original email and it will be fetched from the archives.

Tonight I noticed that the MIME type image/pjpeg wasn’t being properly parsed by Mailman’s Scrubber.py script. Having dealt with MIME type problems before, I suspected that the problem wasn’t with Mailman itself but the operating system’s definition of the MIME type.

Sure enough, checking the /etc/mime.types file revealed there was no image/pjpeg type defined. A little more Internet hunting brought me to this post on the Mailman list, confirming the missing mime.type info as the culprit:

On Jan 6, 2010, at 8:18 AM, Ralf Hildebrandt wrote:

> * Ralf Hildebrandt :
>> I have a list where the attachments are removed and stored on the
>> mailman server itself.
>>
>> This works like a charm, but SOME image attachments of the type:
>>
>> image/pjpeg
>>
>> are stored as “attachment.bin” instead of “attachment.jpg”
>>
>> Why?
>> Example below:
>
> adding “image/pjpeg” to /etc/mime.types fixed that:
>
> image/jpeg jpeg jpg jpe
> image/pjpeg jpeg jpg jpe

This is because Mailman uses Python’s mimetypes module to generate the file
name, and I believe that consults /etc/mime.types where available. Since
before you edit Python didn’t know anythig about image/pjpeg, it assumed it was
random binary data, hence the .bin suffix.

-Barry

From what I can find out, image/pjpeg is a type that Microsoft products choose to use instead of the image/jpeg that the rest of the world uses. I guess those crazy Redmonders are just trying to keep us on our toes, eh?

Roomba Doom-ba

Roomba-Wheel-Switch

Our Roomba has been doing what I call a “wiggle walk” lately, where it waddles about a foot in one direction then turns around and waddles in the other direction. I contacted iRobot’s support and provided a video clip of our Roomba’s walk. The diagnosis from iRobot was a problem with the wheel sensor. They suggested giving it a thorough cleaning to make sure the internal sensor wasn’t being blocked by dust.

I “popped the hood” today and vacuumed our vacuum out. That’s when I noticed the root of the problem: the left wheel sensor switch didn’t look like the right. The switch was broken, the little arm that goes with the switch was missing. iRobot’s support department told me iRobot can’t send a replacement switch and that the only thing that can be done is to replace the Roomba.

I just bought a new battery for the Roomba and don’t want to junk it just for a little switch. I refuse to believe I have to put Roomba down like a horse with a broken leg. I figure one can’t own a robot without knowing how to fix it, so I’m thinking about how to either fix the switch or work around it. Since Roomba is used mostly on the first floor and has almost no chance of falling, I think I may safely bypass the switch. We’ll see!

Update 10 Feb 2010: I did wind up hardwiring the switch, which breathed more life into my robot friend at the risk of having it run off a cliff someday. Fortunately I only use Roomba on the ground floor. Success!

Summer buzz

I’ve been considering the wet winter we’ve had and the prospect of the warmer weather bringing swarms of mosquitoes. This made me think of buying a mosquito trap such as the propane-based ones, which attract mosquitoes by producing carbon dioxide. As the world has enough CO2 being produced, I wonder if there isn’t a way to create a mosquito trap that doesn’t create more CO2.

It turns out we have a ready source of CO2, courtesy of our gas hot water heater. If I could somehow make use of the CO2 that’s produced by our water heater so that it traps mosquitoes, that would be the best solution. I wonder what it would take?

Porch plastic

When my grandmother wanted to protect her screened back porch from the wind, she put up a sheet of plastic around it. I’d like to do something similar for our porch, but a bit fancier.

What I’d like is to have zippered plastic panels I could install on the inside of our porch screen between my porch posts. In the winter I could zip in a thick, clear poly panel and remove it when spring came around. It would become a quick and dirty greenhouse, which would be a much better place to put my sensitive plants than our garage.

Seems no one makes such a product, as far as I can tell. There is mention here of using greenhouse poly for it, but nothing specific.

Anyone seen such a product, or should I scare up some venture capital and start a company?

Home, but not quite alone

Kelly took the kids up to visit her parents this weekend. I stayed around to get a few things done and take care of our new dog, Rocket .. er, Rocky. He’s been keeping me company and snores below me at this moment as I sit on the couch. Rocky’s been getting lots of exercise this weekend, and by extension so have I.

I took him on his first visit to a Raleigh greenway yesterday, though he opted to drag me along for most of it. I then let him hang out in the backyard while I spread some mulch around in our front flowerbeds (it was a picture-perfect fall day). I felt like rewarding Rocky for his patience so we hopped into the car again for a trip to the dog park. He and I were both ready for bed around 9 PM, though I had to change almost 600 clocks to standard time before going to bed.
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