Road Scraps

Read about bike messengers in Austin Tx. here

I say early season but I mean almost a few rides early when the legs are weak and its better (for me at least) to just spin about 40 miles and come home, also its winter and cold, once I feel like my legs can take it (and make sure my riding partner, if there is one, can take it), am going to add about 15 or 20 more miles for a nice base. Here is the map of one of my routes, I like it because there is not much traffic and there are bike lanes pretty much almost all thru out the route. Also if I feel too out of shape, there aren't that many bike riders passing me and making me feel bad, he he, although it's usually nice to find riders on the way to draft. If you try it, make sure you carry tools and stuff since there aren't too many bike shops till you hit Northbrook, and there is a few more on the way back on Green Bay rd.







Click on the blue text above where it says Northbrooks edge and the map will open with the route. Here is a pic of it for quick viewing

Yes, more people out of the tube, this time, its some kind of news thing, not a very good one but it has some of the people I used to see for 8 years. Here we see my good friend Will Berry and Larry?!!, some other guys and girls I saw or met, I see Burt's (Burguess) name there on the credits. Funny. Enjoy.

It's funny how one click on the inernets and you see a face you know and you go, is that/...?, any way, look at that who just appear out of nowhere on youtube, Nestor! and even James was there, of course, hiding, funny. :D



I guess that is a part of a news cast or something.

It's been a while again since I wrote anything in this blog, so many things have happened, one that is worth mentioning is that I started working again as a bike messenger, and one of the nice things about having to go in and out of virtually every building in downtown chicago, and specially the dock areas, is that I get to pass by the giant garbage containers, you know the industrial ones that get filled with anything that this corporate society throws away. One of those times when I peaked inside one of this garbage containers, the one inside the dock of the Chicago Board of Trade , I managed to see a thin gray thing that resembled a laptop, I went past it on my way to the messenger center inside that dock. After I had delivered my package, I passed thru again and took a look, there was a dock station for a Compaq Armada sitting at the top of a bunch of construction debris, I looked around and not seeing anyone, I reached inside the humongous trash can, as I did this I saw a few more thin gray things all around that look the same, I grabbed all of the ones I saw, and stuff them in my bag, at the end I managed to rescue form sure destruction 4 laptops and one dock station, all Compaq Armada m300 600mhz with 360mb of ram or so. The dock station came with a dvd rom and a zip drive, no power cable or hard drives or caddys for them. I bet if I jumped inside the garbage, I would have found more, but not wanting to press my luck (as I discovered later when in the same trash I found a mac quadra that weighed 50 pounds), since the guards would surely ask what I was doing. I left the building and all day I wondered if they worked, with a smile on my face. Once home I looked on ebay for a caddy and a power cord and found both for about 30 bucks all together. One week later I powered the machines, and to my surprise and joy, all of them worked, although two of them had some dead pixels, but nothing to be upset about. I have this kanotix livecd from 2004, it booted fine and knowing that one of my wifi cards worked with it I got on line and checked all the features. At the end, one of my dreams came true, since all the time I have been a messenger I have looked inside this trash containers hoping to find computers. So far I had only found dying crt monitors and broken furniture.
So the next thing I did was to download the latest Sidux livecd, I have been trying most of them, but haven't had the chance to try the latest one called "Gaia" . If you never have burned an linux iso, do it on a slow speed, I usually do it at 4x, otherwise you can run into trouble.
Once i had the cd on my hands I booted it with the default parameters. It booted flawlessly, at the end I had a nice kde desktop .
Usually the first thing I do is to get the machine on line, I have two wifi cards, and one of them is natively supported by "Gaia" to my fortune, the smc2635W 2.4Ghz 11Mpbs with a rt2400 chipset. I could not use the Sidux network card configuration tool for some reason, so I just opened a konsole (or terminal) and use the iwconfig command to get on line, for someone that never have done this here is an example: (it has to be done by root #)

#iwconfig eth1 essid (name of your network) mode managed key s:(you key)
#dhclient eht1

The eth1 name of the card can change depending on the card so to discover the name of a card just type iwconfig by itself and it will tell you the name, if nothing appears then you have to install your card.
Once I got on line I used gparted to format the hard drive. Gparted is a very easy tool to partition hard drives.
The installation tool for Sidux is very easy as well and once everything was partitioned, it only took a couple of minutes to get the installation going, at the end it only took about 17 minutes to finish. I have to mention that the installer is so nice since it only takes a few keystrokes to instruct the machine to do what it has to, and then you are done and just wait for it to finish, compared to the ubuntu or the debian installer that will have you sit thru all the steps and consume all kinds of time to get the installation going, and also Sidux has the nice touch of always being on a desktop on the livecd (and knoppix and kanotix for that matter since sidux the installer is based on the knoppix one I belie ve) so while you wait for the machine to install, you can be surfing the net or listening to music, etc.
I rebooted.
Update:
After installing a few computers with sidux I think now that is best to at this point dist-upgrade the system, meaning to update the system all the way. So all there is to do is to go to init 3, so I either boot with grub parameters 3 (which means that if u put a three at the end of the instructions to boot for grub it will boot directly in to init 3, and is the easiest way to do it), also at any time once booted you can press ctl-alt-f1 at the same time and you will be in console mode, be sure to turn all applications off before you do it, but don't worry because if you forgot to do it, you can always go back by pressing ctl-alt-f5 or f7, any way once there log in then become root (or get administrator status), you do that by typing su and then your password for root. then type init 3.
enter
then type smxi and follow the instructions. Using the smxi script is the way to upgrade in sidux and you can learn all about it at the sidux project.

The next step is to install all the basic software, but first I updated my repositories to include the debian-multimedia one of Christian Marrillat . This repository has all the needed software to play dvds mp3 and a lot of more fun stuff (some of it might be illegal on certain countries).
So next I opened a Konsole, here is all the steps from updating the apt sources.list, to installing all the software one might need, for other stuff just look in the repositories with synaptic ( synaptic is a download package manager). All of it is done by root (#).

#apt-get update
#apt-get install gui-apt-key
#cd /etc/apt
#vi sources.list

Once inside Vi or Vim type I for inserting the repository and type
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org sid main
Then type Esc and :wq to save and leave Vi

Next I did a apt-get update and installed the key for the repository I just added, the apt-get update tool tells the key that is missing, it is at the end of the thread, copy it then fire up the apt key manager (find it in K>system>apt key manager) paste the key (numbers only).

#apt-get update

Now to install all the stuff for multimedia viewing and streaming, also java and audacity for music recording. Anything else can be found by searching the repositories with synaptic.

#apt-get install synaptic streamtuner streamripper mplayer mozilla-mplayer xmms xine-ui vlc audacity sun-java6-jre flashplugin-nonfree libdvdcss2 w32codecs

(note that the last 2 could be illegal in some countries, but they are the ones that make dvd's, mp3's, avi's and other windows formats to work).
One thing I noticed is that the install has no sound as default, so I just went to control center (in the k menu) and in the sound and multimedia button is the sound system, I enabled it and in the hardware section selected ALSA or Advance Linux Sound Architecture .
Once I did all this, I fired up konqueror and updated the plugins since I just installed flash, on the settings section > plugins> there is a button to automatically look for new plugins. Done.

So now I have three more laptops, I ordered some hard drives from a friend on ebay (its cheaper that way), I'll decide what system to install on them and I will be selling them. I'm keeping the dock station though.






Here's a picture of the actual laptop.

I bought an ibook on ebay last year, it had os 9.1 on it, it felt sluggish and had a sad aura to it. Its screen was kind of dark and seemed frozen in some parts, not pixel problem but like a color blur. it had stains and sticky glue form some sticker from the public school from which it had come at some point. The cd drive was holding closed by a piece of duck tape and with out it, it would not close and be usable. Interestingly it worked with cds to play music. But when i tried to use a mac os cd to install os x 10.2 it would freeze and stop the install in the middle. I tried changing the memory dims, using other linux cd-rs (later i learned the cd-rom wont recognize cd-r's), and no luck. i could not get to install anything. After using the laptop a little more i found that the screen became more normal until it looked fine. The poor ibook must have been lonely in that closet for so long.
For a while i was happy with the laptop, the battery was still really strong (2hrs) and the internet worked pretty fast with os 9, if with out flash and other goodies, but i could listen to itunes radio (itunes 2.0 mind u) stations on the internet.
one day i was searching the net and came across this web page , it explains how to get tiger to install on an old unsupported powermac.
Time passed and little by little things came in to place; i found a cd-rom on ebay and installed it on the ibook, only to realize that i still could not install anything, so i started to worry i had a bad logic board. More time passed by and i was lucky to find a motherboard just like the one on my ibook on ebay for only a dollar, and ten dollars after for shipping i had the last part i needed to upgrade. I installed it, (which deserves its own post), lets just say that if u have installed a hard drive in a ibook clamshell, you are a step away form being able to take the logic board off and
replace it. It took about 2 hrs to figure out, and some fear to get over at first. But now it only takes me about 45 min. (since i have done it a few times now) and i find it fun.
The main thing about installing tiger on a clamshell g3 i have is that it has a 300mhz processor and no firewire or dvd. Tiger comes on dvd so that is the first of my problems, the other is that mine is kind of scratched and did not want to work with my g5 anymore. No problems there since it would boot on my g4 powerbook.
An other of the problems people are going to run into when installing tiger on a first generation ibook is that its not supposed to be possible to do. Apple has put restrictions to the media that tiger comes in (dvd's), since it has lines on the code instructing the installer to check for certain systems that are missing dvd and firewire. so a lot of computers are not supported by tiger. Some people get around it with software , its not completly free, so the way to do it is by hacking the dvd that i already own. The way i did it is i think the most elegant and simple.
The first thing to do is we are going to hack the tiger dvd with an other mac. I used Disk Utility to make a DVD/CD master disk image. Then I mounted the image. I opened Terminal and typed >cd /Volumes. Then typed >ls to view the contents of the directory. Found the “Mac OSX Install DVD”. Then typed >cd ‘Mac OSX Install DVD’/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg/Contents. Typed >ls to view the contents and saw the “OSInstall.dist” file. I simply Then I typed >vi OSInstall.dist . This allowed me to edit the file in VI. Near the top of the file is a line that specifies a list of “badMachines”, or some such. In that list is “PowerBook2.1″, the model code for the ibook g3 300mhz, i just erased all the machines listed and left the commentary empty between the <>. It’s easy to navigate using the arrows and delete. press “i” to enter Insert mode to type characters. Then type :wq to write and quit. After I made my edits, I quit Terminal, put the mounted disk image in the trash, then used Disk Utility to create a new disk image from the modified OSX Install image.
So for me, the next step was to take apart the ibook. it took 47 minutes to have the hard drive off.
Once i had the hard drive out of the ibook, i put it inside a g4 powerbook i have that has screen problems (future proyect), it installed with no problems the hacked version of tiger, (a good thing to do at this point is to take the hard drive out before it boots back to tiger and ask you to put your info, since it will then recognize the ibook instead of the machine you used to install, so once it rebooted i stopped the process on the g4 so the data from the ibook was collected instead of the g4).
So im very pleased.
A strange problem i encountered after the logic board exchange was that my battery stop charging and became useless; needlees to say i tried a lot of things, from putting it in the freezer, to installing os9 and downloading a firmware from apple to fix this kind of problem with this particular battery but no luck; not until i made a PMU reset with the special button in the motherboard and got it stuck accidentally, leaving it pushed as i tried to boot the machine (which wouldn't), after i realized what happened and pushed it back, the computer came back to life and to my surprised gave me a 100% battery with 2 hrs of life!. So this confirms my suspicion that it was the logicboard inside the battery compartment that needed to be reseted either to be able to speak to my motherboard on the laptop or just to reset and forget the notion that it was dead.
Check out the screenshot of the specs:



If u decide to do this know that you can kill your machine if u don't know how to work safely in computers, also i am not to be blamed if anything goes wrong, i have found this to work for me but it can be that it doesn't work for you. But if u do it know that is worth it and fun to do and it will make your old ibook feel new, and have some cool features like dashboard.
:)
i used the ibook to post this :)

For some time i have been thinking of getting a virtual machine going inside my ubuntu laptop. when i was first getting the little a21m thinkpad p3 set up, i thought i wanted xp in there side by side with ubuntu or kanotix, i like both systems (the linux ones) and thought to just leave a little partition for windblows just in case i wanted to use it for Reason or some other program that would not work on linux. so i installed windows, but when i was trying to get it to install the wireless card i have (linksys) it made me super mad after a while of trying and not being able to get the drivers to work, the card was not recognized and the install was erased and ubuntu came to be in my hard drive.
After a week or two, i came across a guide at the ubuntu forums on how to install a virtual machine , so i got exited since that was my idea a while back and i had not tried it. so i got going and started my console, followed all instructions and after a few snags and about 4 hrs. i booted the virtual machine, then i got the windblows cd and installed it there. i got the vmware tools going after that and then i had a windows machine inside my ubuntu one sharing the same card i could not get installed on windows thru vmware. funny. after a virus software cd and some more time. i was surfing the net with explorer!. haha.
so there it is, i took some screen shots of the process.







i have to say, it was pretty easy and even if it took about 6 hrs. (my laptop is not very fast or equiped with a lot of ram: 750mhz with a 256mb ram chip, and ubuntu only registered about 596mhz so i imagine my processor is not in great shape.), and the guys at ubuntuforums.org are pretty nice to answer any question u can come with. at the end i started at 10:30 (ish) and by the time i realized it was five in the morning my eyes were so dry they felt like there was sand inside of them....
A
update: this will also work for kanotix (am running 2.6.17.13-kanotix-2 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Sep 12 12:38:45 CEST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux) following ofcourse the guide for brezzy/edgy.