Sheepless in Seattle

Somewhat of a corny title, but what the heck!

Here's a warning - this is full of pictures and Blogger doesn't seem to control pictures very well any more. For that reason you should play with the screen width to get the lines right!

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At the end of last October my wife and I travelled across the country from Philadelphia to Tacoma in Washington. Yes! You know it !! The home of Galloping Gertie!
This (right) is what happens when a bridge gets to undulating along its length (like hills coming towards you along the road) and also, at the same time, develops a cork-screwing motion (think of grabbing the ends and twisting them in opposite directions!).

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Anyhow, such things don't happen in Tacoma any more - it's a nice quiet place. So nice, in face, that many of the AG's relatives have settled in the area from Seattle to Portland, and so we went to visit. I also have some friends there, so we did more of the visiting lark. Finally, as we were where we were, we also went for a visit to Vancouver.

On the very final day of October we arrived in Portland and went to visit Twisted yarns there!













It's a nice, large, airy store with a huge amount of yarn!
Everywhere!

And needles!

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And books!


In fact, there's so much that it seems to be trying to come out to join you as you sit on the comfy couches!

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 And finally two more photos of the yarn. We also met with a good friend of ours, a one-time Knitting PodCastStar ans more recently blown (literally) from her home and out to the west coast.






And here's the beautiful Lady of the Store, to whom we extend thanks for allowing us to take all these photos!

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Could we go south without visiting Voodoo Doughnut?

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Enough said - right???

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TTFN

SQL Saturday

There are a lot of places that you can learn about Microsoft's database package - MS SQL Server. Not much training, as you've probably learned, is just free for the having. Here's the exception!

The PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) is an organisation that you can join for free. It has chapters - mostly local to your geography but some virtual. For me, Philadelphia is my local chapter - PSSUG. Philadelphis SQL Server Users Group runs a meeting monthly, two sub-groups quarterly, and a SQL Saturday annually. The next one is due on June 6th, 2015.

2014 was a bumper year for SQL Saturdays for me:

2014.03.01................ #268 ................North Haven, CT

2014.03.22................ #277 ................Richmond, VA

2014.06.07................ #294 ................Philadelphia, PA

2014.06.21................ #303 ................Rochester, NY

2014.06.28................ #293 ................Portland, ME

2014.07.26................ #302 ................Albany, NY

2014.10.04................ #315 ................Pittsburgh, PA

2014.10.18................ #314 ................Providence, RI

2014.11.01................ #337 ................Portland, OR

2014.12.06................ #347 ................Washington DC

Ten events in all, including 2 pre-con days, as well as going to a full week of Brent Ozar's BDA and Query Troubleshooting courses !

I can't see me doing anything like that many in 2015, but I'll be trying for some!

2015.03.21 ................. #381                 Richmond, VA.............Abandoned for me because of a snow storm!

2015.04.25 ................. #366                 Ottawa, ON...................Coincided with Marillion Weekend 2015 in Montreal

2015.05.16 ................. #383                 Rochester, NY..............This one definitely looks "on"

2015.05.30 ................. #380                 New York City, NY.......Exciting! - last year there wasn't one in NYC!

2015.06.06 ................. #390                 Philadelphia, PA..........My "home" event

2015.07.25 ................. #386                 Albany, NY...................Looks good

2015.10.03 ................. #440                 Pittsburgh, PA..............Looks good

Edinburgh and Dublin on the 13th and 20th of June are looking amazingly attractive - to some extent it depends on what time off I have available, and to some extent it depends on what yarn stores there are in the area !

In addition to the SQL Saturdays, I've also gone to Alan Hirt's Mission-Critical SQL Server training class in Philadelphia on March 30th - April 2nd. That was definitely worth the money and time!

Finally, just to spice up the mix, I'm spending my Saturdays for the next few months taking a Linux Administration course at Avtech in South Plainfield. Looks like it's going to be fun!

Get in contact - meet me there!

TTFN

Linux - Installing a Program By Hand

In Windows you download an executable (.exe) or a .msi installer program, double-click it, and sit back and hope. It used to be that Windows' use of .dll files promised a major problem if your new program wrote a new version over a file of the same name that did something else! All of a sudden installing the new anti-virus program killed the accounting program stone-dead! This was known as "DLL Hell" and there's a good Wikipedia article here about it and how it was "cured", if you're interested!

Of course, Windows itself changes from time to time, as service packs and patches are installed, but Microsoft, being just one company, can make sure that if it replaces version 12 with version 13 then they appear to be identical to the program trying to use them.

Linux operates slightly differently. When I write a program I do it in an environment of different programs that it needs, just like I do in Windows. For example, I might require at least Windows 2000 so that I can use an infra-red device (Windows NT didn't support that). Similarly, in Linux, I might require a certain version of some particular other program in order to support my program's functionality. In order to do this I package my program up with all the pieces with which I can supply it, and then add a dependency list of what versions of what other pieces of software my program will need. For example, there's a nice customisable little utility called Docky, which offers a variety of differing launch bars - Windows style, Apple style, etc. - and my little application might need to live with at least a certain version of Docky.

Once I've made sure that I have listed all the required Dependencies that my program has, I can load it up into a Repository and let people have at it!

When you want to install my program you would normally (for Mint) get it from Synaptic Package Manager, as you can see here. You just click on the item you want and ask to mark it for installation, and the Package Manager reads the package, sees what you don't have installed from the list of Dependencies, and tags them for installation too. Once you're done you tell Synaptic to install everything for you and you let it happen.

So simple! But what if what you want isn't on offer? Then you have to do it yourself. Here's an example.


I have a rather nifty little box (a Canopus ADVC-300 - you used to be able to get them from B&H, but maybe now second-hand) that takes in analogue audio/video (like from a videocam) and spits out a digitised version on an IEEE Firewire cable. Happily my PC has a Firewire socket.

To the right you can see the front (over) and back (under). You plug your RCA jacks into the front and your Firewire cable into the far-left socket on the back. Ever so neat and it gives you 1080p - quality pictures!

Anyhow, the best program for pulling in the feed from this is one called dvgrab (Digital Video Grabber). You run it from the command prompt and it just does its thing until you turn it off. For demonstration purposes this is how you go about it:

Open a command prompt and go to the folder in which you want the incoming files to appear. I start in my own folder ("mirwin") here, so I have to go up one (cd ..  just like in DOS!) to "home" and up one again to the root before I can go down to "media", down to B2 (the name of the hard drive I want to put the video on) and down again to the "canopus" folder. I'm sure that there are easier ways of going directly to it, but I remember the tree structure and find my way more easily like this!

mirwin@Bonobo ~ $ cd ..
mirwin@Bonobo /home $ cd ..
mirwin@Bonobo / $ cd media
mirwin@Bonobo /media $ cd mirwin
mirwin@Bonobo /media/mirwin $ cd B2
mirwin@Bonobo /media/mirwin/B2 $ cd canopus
mirwin@Bonobo /media/mirwin/B2/canopus $ ls

The last command above is "ls", standing for "list" (although there is no "list" command!), and I got nothing back because the folder is empty.

So next to run dvgrab, in the (mistaken) belief that it's installed:

mirwin@Bonobo /media/mirwin/B2/canopus $ dvgrab
The program 'dvgrab' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install dvgrab

So not only does it nicely tell me that I can't run it, but also why not (not installed) and even what to do to go and get it! How friendly!
OK, so I'll type in that weird line and see what happens:

mirwin@Bonobo /media/mirwin/B2/canopus $ sudo apt-get install dvgrab
[sudo] password for mirwin: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  dvgrab
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 50 not upgraded.
Need to get 129 kB of archives.
After this operation, 340 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/trusty/universe dvgrab amd64 3.5-2 [129 kB]
Fetched 129 kB in 0s (204 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package dvgrab.
(Reading database ... 183240 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../dvgrab_3.5-2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking dvgrab (3.5-2) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1) ...
Setting up dvgrab (3.5-2) ...
mirwin@Bonobo /media/mirwin/B2/canopus $ 

As you can see, it's quite verbose, but that's deliberate, so you know what's going on and have some chance of catching it if it goes wrong. As I explained above, and as it tells you as it goes along, it reads the list of everything that the package has and needs, works out what all is needed that isn't actually in the package, and then tells you what has to be installed. In this case just the program itself - dvgrab. Then it tells you how much space it'll use and gets, unpacks, and installs all the bits.

Now to run it:
mirwin@Bonobo /media/mirwin/B2/canopus $ dvgrab
Found AV/C device with GUID 0x0020110113001daa
Waiting for DV...
^C""     0.00 MiB 0 frames
Capture Stopped
Error: no DV

So it ran, found the Canopus box (the AV/C device) and waited for it to send some video. It didn't, of course, because I'd not yet plugged in a videocam to the other end, so the box had nothing to send.

So now I can attach my DVR or camcorder to one side of my Canopus box, using cables with RCA jacks, and feed it analogue audio-video signal. From the other side of the Canopus comes an IEEE 1394 FireWire cable that connects to my laptop. In the laptop dvgrab sucks up the digitised signal and saves it to disc in gigabyte chunks, all ready for me to watch using a program like the VLC Vdeo Player.

So that's how you install a simple Linux program. Not that hard after all!

TTFN

A few photos of Philadelphia

As you probably know, I live on the outskirts of Philadelphia, in New Jersey. What you may not know is that at present I work 39 floors up in the Comcast Center. Here are some pictures of Philadelphia.

To the right we see part of down-town Philadelphia, with the clock tower of City Hall in the middle.


Below is a photograph looking east and a little north, out over the Ben Franklin Bridge and into New Jersey













While taking these photographs a helicopter whizzed past the window! I didn't have a telephoto lens mounted, and it didn't come back, but from this you can see how high up I was!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is engaged in constructing a temple in down-town Philadelphia, and here is a birds-eye view of their progress at the end of 2014.

Right is the Seat of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
























Left is another interesting building in Philadelphia. This is the Cira Center.

























Here's another view.



As you can clearly see, it's designed to "feed" off other buildings around it.

TTFN

Not Dead Yet !

It's almost six months now since my last blog - see what FaceBook does to you?

Anyway, here are some pictures and my wife's recipe for Banana bread. I made it under her instruction last night and, as it came out well, again this evening. This time it has some nuts in it too!

Ingredients

1.75 cups of all-purpose Flour	1.25 teaspoons of Baking Powder	Half a teaspoon of Baking Soda
Two-thirds of a Cup Sugar	One-third of a cup of Butter	2 Eggs
2 tablespoons (1 oz) Milk	1 cup mashed Bananas	Quarter cup of chopped nuts

 Here's a shot of the bananas as they were before starting. As you can see, they're pretty black and soft!
So I peeled each one and removed all the black flesh, all the decayed-looking flesh, etc., and still ended up with a deent amount from each one (except one, which was a complete write-off!).

You can see the result here on the right.

The rest of the ingredients are here: eggs and milk in the load pan, sugar, baking powder and soda, and flour. The butter waits in the mixing bowl.

Instructions

1. Stir together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside.
2. Use a fork to mash and mix the bananas. Continue until as many of the lumps as possibly have been removed - probably at least five minutes.
3. Use a fork to mix the sugar and butter together, continuing to mix and cream the mixture for three or four minutes.
4. Add an egg and beat it in; add the milk and mix it in, and add the other egg and beat that in well too. The mixture should be smooth and creamy to the eye.
5. Alternately add some flour and some banana, mixing them well in to the mixture. 
6. Add the nuts and fold them in to the mixture.
7. Grease a loaf pan (8" x 4" x 2" is about right) (use the paper wrapper from the butter or two or three squirts of Pam-equivalent).
8. Pour the mixture in to the loaf pan. Smooth it out, and tease it up somewhat at the corners.
9. Bake at 350F for an hour.

Let it cool before shaking it out of the loaf pan. Enjoy!!

TTFN

Everyday Work in Linux

Comparing Linux and Windows, there are a lot of things that you may think "I can't do without XXX to get this done", but in reality there aren't that many that are only available in one OS and not tthe other. While the advertising money may be with Windows programs - because the money is available from what you spend on them - what that means is that you see the advert and think about what you can do. You can very often find just as good a product in the Linux world. One word of warning - this blog post is going to be heavily laden with links!!

Examples
Just to start off, and to placate those haters of Linux, I have to say that Apple has not ported iTunes to Linux. In my experience there is a way of doing it, but it's the "normal" cheat - run a copy of Windows in VirtualBox. As I say, it's a cheat, but I don't really mind because I recognise that I need some programs that just don't exist for Linux.

• For one example, I work with Microsoft SQL Server, and there's just no way that that program is ever going to leave the Windows platform. 
• For another example, while I use Thunderbird for my daily email needs, I store all my email in a program called TheBat!. This is a great program and I've been keeping my email in it since the mid 1990s. There's absolutely no way that I could convert! However, it runs only in Windows.

So yes, I also use Windows. And a Chromebook, and Linux, and a Mac at times. I've also used George (ICL), OS/360, OS/370, OS/400 (IBM), rt-11, RSX-11, VMS (DEC), PrimeOS, RT-42 (Siemens), SinTran3 (Norsk Data) CP/M, UNIX, PC-DOS, MS-DOS, and a few computers without any operating systems at all! All in all, they're just a whole load of software designed to do what you need to have done, and a fairly simplistic interface on the front (GUI, text, or toggle) to let you tell it what you want. Pick what suits you. I chose the IBM PC and DOS back in 1980 because I needed a machine with a Fortran compiler, and the Apple, although cheaper, didn't have one.

Anyway, here are a few of the programs I use - daily or from time to time - as examples of how one lives just as well in LinuxLand as in WindowsWorld or the AppleArea.

Graphics
I suppose that everyone knows (or knows about) Adobe's Photoshop. It's taken on a life of its own, really, becoming an ever more expensive package. Photoshop CS6 from May 2012 is still available on Amazon at the time or writing, but you'll have to pay around $1,700 for it!

Photoshop CC, the subscription version, is available (in the US only) for $30 per month - $360 per year. This is much cheaper than upgrading was, as new versions of the CS package appeared about every 18 months.

The Windows alternative is probably Corel PhotoPaint, which has many of the tools that Photoshop has and which comes bundled with Corel Draw!. Also available for a subscription($200 per year), or about $500 for outright purchase, and you get a number of other useful add-on programs.

On Linux the major player is, of course, the Graphical Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Again, with many of the features of PhotoShop, GIMP is a free product, which can be downloaded for any Linux machine. It's also available for Windows, and there's a comparison of it and Photoshop here. Also Google "gimp vs photoshop" and you'll find more comparison articles.

Painting
MyPaint has turned out to be a very easy tool to use with my Wacom Bamboo tablet. It isn't, I think as well-equipped as Painter, but certainly is a very good tool.

Diagrams
For Windows Visio leads, by virtue of Microsoft's overwhelming sales efforts, and also because of its links to SQL Server for database design, which are, quite simply, unmatched elsewhere.

It used to be that a program called Visual Thought was an excellent match for most of what Visio offered, but unfortunately CERN (who appear to have taken over the licence from Confluent) seem to have dropped it almost entirely, so all you get is a few unhelpful pages that you can just about reas (if you read quickly!) before you get redirected

For a very good program for creating diagrams and flows (albeit without database integration) take a look at Dia. It does have some quirks and its own ways of doing a few things, but they're certainly learnable and it's available on Linux and Windows!

WebCam
Cheese! is the thing!

Ripping CDs
RipperX is a great program. You can get mp3 files from it, or just straight WAV tracks.

Making DVDs
Use K3b. This program will burn media or filesystem CD, DVD, and BluRay discs.

Video Chat 
You can get Skype for Linux, and you can use Google Chat. They both work fine.

So don't ever look down on another operating system - it may well be that the programs there are better for their users than in your part of the world.

TTFN

We went to Manayunk

So, after 20 years living in the area (for me - 7 for the AG), we finally wandered off to Manayunk (from the Lenape "Manaiung" meaning "place to drink" or "river") yesterday, not surprisingly because the AG had discovered the whereabouts of a yarn store that she hadn't been to before!

Some Problems

After losing the iPod GPS mapping function a number of times (it kept insisting that we were on I-76 on the other side of the Schuylkill River, whereas we were actually driving on Kelly Drive!) we made it to Main Street, found a parking lot and parked.
The AG was paying when all of a sudden, behind my back, there was this very loud scrunching noise - just like when you stomp hard on a soda can. On turning around I found that the driver of a large Mercury Grand Marquis had backed up (getting out of the lot) and gone way too close to one of a set of yellow posts protecting the wall (see picture). Intimate contact at about ten m.p.h. resulted in abrupt alterations in shape to bumper and one read corner (wing and lights). They got out, looked, muttered, got back in, and drove off. I wonder what the story to the insurance will be.










Yarn Store

Hidden River Yarns is the place we went to, just before getting to the parking lot (as you come from Philly, and on the river side of Main Street.


There's a good selection of yarn to browse through (this is just one wall), and the owner is very friendly and a delight to get to know.



Verdict: I can definitely see return visits in our future. It's on the 61 bus line, I believe.


Happy knitting!!

TTFN