Lieberland http://www.lieberland.com/blog Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:26:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 en Building Scalable Websites http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=43 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=43#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:24:21 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=43 I’ve recently had to become more familiar with how to scale up a website to take more traffic and have some redundancy.  I hadn’t touched this since my Classroom Connect days, and it was a disaster back then.  So back to school I go…This book seems like an excellent way to learn webserver load balancing and scaling of web applications:Can’t wait to get my copy!

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=43 The right coffee maker! http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=42 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=42#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:28:11 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=42

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=42 While my Guitar Gently Weeps http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=41 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=41#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:23:25 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=41 nice demo

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=41 Great links for SEO http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=40 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=40#comments Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:34:08 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=40 http://www.webconfs.com/

http://googlerankings.com

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=40 Taking apart an HP DV5000 laptop http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=39 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=39#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:22:52 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=39 Doing this procedure makes me so nervous.  One slip or broken connector and the laptop could be toast.  But this article really helped: http://www.insidemylaptop.com/take-apart-hp-pavilion-dv5000-remove-system-board/

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=39 Look what happened to this poor Caballista! http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=38 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=38#comments Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:50:41 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=38 Wow:http://jalopnik.com/5170063/mystery-nightmare-car-plus-bonus-nhra-pace-car-firebird-down-on-the-spanish-dirt-lot This car was made by Les Dunham of Dunham Coach.  Retrocycle represents Les, which is my connection to this…

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=38 Reordering images drag-and-drop with Ajax and PHP http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=37 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=37#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:21:49 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=37 This article hit the nail on the head:http://webdesign.torn.be/tutorials/javascript/prototype/sort-images-with-prototype/and wasn’t even all that painful to implement.  Big hint here: you must use the prototype.js that comes with scriptaculous or you’ll suffer badly.  Symptom is the browser will take up 100% of the cpu and you’ll get exceptions in firebug.  It took me 2 hrs to figure out! 

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=37 The Great Office War - in HD! http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=36 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=36#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:56:40 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=36 YouTube is now in HD!Now HD is really an overhyped term these days.  But its pretty nice quality anyway!

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=36 Pictures of the Ping Pong Scoreboard http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=26 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=26#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:31:54 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=26 The Brains, the Tunes and the Beer   Scoreboard, running Ubuntu running a Java program   Projector mounting  Drink and Switch Serve: them’z the rules!  Joystick mounting  Pushbutton on ends of table Overview 

]]> http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=26 Java Based Ping Pong Scoreboard http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=25 http://www.lieberland.com/blog/?p=25#comments Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:45:25 +0000 admin http://www.lieberland.com/wordpress/?p=25 I have written a scoreboard my friends and I use while playing Ping Pong (table tennis to some) in my basement.  It is an excellent example of real-world geek engineering gone way too far.Problem: when BS’ing and playing Ping Pong, if we digress from the game for even a few seconds we forget the score.  This gets quite frustrating: its not like we’re playing for money or anything (yet ;-) but having to do all that silly math and such while trying to unwind is just a hassle.  We needed a simple way to keep score while not detracting from the game. 

So was born the Java based Ubuntu fueled techno-hack that is the PingPongScoreboard.  Basically its a simple Swing-based Java application that displays the current score of the game in big retro digital numbers.  The score is updated by the player pressing a conveniently located button on the end of the table to increment their score or reset before a new game.  The system even keeps track of the server and reminds the players when it is time to drink and switch server (an important house rule).

The “monitor” is projected on the wall using a computer projector I had laying around.  I bought this originally with the intent of doing customer presentations (never really happened) and showing movies when I didn’t have a real TV (which I do now).  Using the projector for this purpose makes me feel like I’m getting good use out of it again. Control was done by implementing the JInput Java API for joystick input.  I tore apart a cheap USB joystick and extended the buttons to reach each side of the table.  

I used Ubuntu for doing this project to:

  •  Avoid the evil Microsoft empire
  • Learn new skills
  • Punish myself (sometimes Linux is like standing in the middle of an Anvil rainstorm)
  • Integrate “geek factor”
  • Get excellent performance out of old,  mothballed hardware

 Pics and source code coming soon! 

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