To unlock all songs:
Blue, Blue, Red, Green, Green, Blue, Blue, Yellow.

This was tested on my Wii, and should work on all other consoles as well. You get here by going to Options->Cheats->Enter new code. Once you enter it, you have to find it in the list, and turn it “on”. I.e., if you just enter the code, the cheat is by default off.

Other cheat codes can be found here:
http://gosublogger.com/2008/10/guitar-hero-world-tour-cheats-for-xbox-360-playstation2-playstation3/

So, here’s the procedure I am using to sync my logs using my iDisk included with my MobileMe subscription. It is pretty rudimentary, but works nicely for what I want it to do.

Here are the relevant references I used when putting this process together, as I didn’t feel like spending much time on this:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2008071710372562
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020207214002198&query=dd
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=2185
http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html
http://lingon.sourceforge.net/

First, I built the latest rsync based on the link above - not that its really needed, but I figured it wasn’t a bad idea to have the latest, greatest, and most efficient.

Second, you need the actual script, here’s mine, with some names removed:

#!/bin/bash

exit 0


Now, I created a new job in Lingon to run the sync script. I named it com.myname.idisk.rsync, selected the script I had created (saved in ~/bin), and set it to run every 2 hours. After logging out and back in, everything was up and running. Status can be checked in the log file - after a long initial run, things run very quickly.

You’ll want to repeat this process on any other computer you have for it to work properly. After spotlight reads in all the new files, you should have searchable chat logs on all your macs.

Notes: You’ll need to create the appropriate directories here (idiskmount), and the funky webdav password file. This process is detailed in the macosxhints forum post, it involves typing a few non-std characters in your editor of choice.

In celebration of the release of Firefox 3 yesterday (and since I had forgotten to install my extension previously), I am posting this quick, dirty, and oh so helpful firefox extension.
Firefox has long been my preferred browser, although for the last year or so Safari had been gaining ground. Firefox 2 was just to bloated and slow, especially on OS X, and Safari was much faster. I always had a hard time choosing between the additional functionality Firefox provides, and the simplicity and speed of Safari. With Firefox 3, that’s pretty much over, and it is back in its place as my primary browser.
However, one thing that has always bugged me about firefox on Mac OS X was that you can’t open a URL in a new tab using Command+Enter, it only works with Option(alt)+Enter. I couldn’t find a fix a year or two ago, and with some quick searching today, I still did not find a good way to reassign the key sequence. So, I looked up a couple howto’s, found a sample/donor project, and whipped up a simple extension with a single purpose - remap Command-Enter to open a url in a new tab (i.e. when typing in the address or search bars). As expected, no support is provided, no warranty intended, etc., but if you’re using Firefox on OS X, I highly suggest installing this.

For some reason, I called it “UseMetaKeys”, and now, a year later, I am too lazy to change the name.

On to the issue at hand: we recently received some new server models that we’ll be supporting, both which have hardware not supported in CentOS 4.4. One machine has a RealTek RTL-8110 ethernet chip, and the other as a 3Ware 9650SE Raid controller. As I later discovered, this presented two unique problems with the kickstart - without the proper storage controller driver, one server didn’t find any disk to install on, and without the proper network driver, the other server couldn’t even connect to our kickstart server at all.

So, as you might guess, there are two different solutions here. The more elegant is for the storage controller, we can create a driver disk with the proper drivers, and make it available on the network during the kickstart. The network driver is more difficult - we need to insert it into the initrd image we provide for PXE boot, and then somehow copy it over after installation (this is an updated driver, r8169.ko, that exists in CentOS 4.4 but doesn’t support our newer card).

Adding a RAID/Storage Card Driver to the Kickstart:
For the driver disk, things are especially easy, as 3Ware provides a driver-disk compatible download, although not yet in the correct format to share over the network.

The driver provided by 3ware (http://www.3ware.com/KB/article.aspx?id=14546 ) includes the following:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 stever stever 66B Oct 10 2007 modinfo*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 stever stever 249B Oct 10 2007 modules.alias*
-rw-r--r-- 1 stever stever 377K Oct 10 2007 modules.cgz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 stever stever 28B Oct 10 2007 modules.dep*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 stever stever 463B Oct 10 2007 modules.pcimap*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 stever stever 192B Oct 10 2007 pci.ids*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 stever stever 339B Oct 10 2007 pcitable*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 stever stever 37B Oct 10 2007 rhdd*

This is all you need on a driver disk, so all you need to do is create a disk image, and copy these files over:

#Create a blank, 20MB image
dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/driverdisk.img bs=1M count=2
#Format the image with ext2
mkfs -t ext2 -q /root/driverdisk.img
#mount it and copy the files over
mount -o loop /root/driverdisk.img /mnt/tmp
cp /root/3ware/* /mnt/tmp/
umount /mnt/tmp

Now, copy the image over to somewhere accesible on kickstart, and update your ks.cfg with the following:
driverdisk --source=nfs:servername:/vol/kickstart/CentOS-4.4-x86/drivers/driverdisk.img

On network kickstart, anaconda should grab the driver, load it, and proceed normally. This should work for any non-network-card driver you need.

Adding a Network Card Driver to the Kickstart:
This is considerably more arduous, but not too difficult with the magic commands. Much of the information here comes from my friend Steve, www.kehlet.cx.

There is no nicely package/built driver provided by RealTek, just some source code with instructions for compiling.

I downloaded the driver here:
http://wiki.centos.org/HardwareList/RealTekr1000
After untar’ing unzip’ing, I ran make with the default settings, and manually changed the kernel version to build a smp driver as well (assuming you’re building on a single-cpu system):

[root@lb4 ~]# cd r8169-6.006.00/
[root@lb4 ~]# make
[root@lb4 ~]# mv src/r8169.ko r8169.ko.2.6.9-42.EL
[root@lb4 ~]# make clean
(edit src/Makefile, change the line “KVER := $(shell uname -r)” to “KVER := 2.6.9-42.ELsmp”
[root@lb4 ~]# make
[root@lb4 ~]# mv src/r8169.ko r8169.ko.2.6.9-42.ELsmp


Now you should have two .ko module files compatible with the different kernels - we need to get these inserted into the initrd image. An initrd is basically a disk image that holds various drivers and programs needed to pre-boot your system. It is usually a gzipped disk image file, so its nothing too special. Basically, you need to unzip & mount the initrd image, gunzip/cpio the modules.cgz file in the initrd, make the required changes, and package everything back up.

Here’s those steps in gory detail:

mkdir /mnt/tmp
mkdir /mnt/initrd
mkdir /var/tmp/work
mkdir /var/tmp/work/bootnet
mkdir /var/tmp/work/drvnet
gunzip < /root/tftpboot/initrd.img > /var/tmp/work/bootnet/initrd.img.ungzipped
cd /var/tmp/work/bootnet/
mount -o loop initrd.img.ungzipped /mnt/tmp2
cd /mnt/tmp2/modules
gunzip < modules.cgz | (cd /var/tmp/work/bootnet && cpio -idv)
cd /var/tmp/work/bootnet/2.6.9-42.EL/i686
cp /root/r8169-6.006.00/r8169.ko.2.6.9-42.EL r8169.ko
cd /var/tmp/work/bootnet/2.6.9-42.ELsmp/i686
cp /root/r8169-6.006.00/r8169.ko.2.6.9-42.ELsmp r8169.ko
cd /var/tmp/work/bootnet/
find 2.6.9-42.EL | cpio -ov -H crc | gzip > /mnt/tmp2/modules/modules.cgz
#edit /mnt/initrd/modules/pcitable
#add this:
0×10ec 0×8167 “r8169″ “Realtek|RTL-8110 Gigabit Ethernet”
umount /mnt/initrd
gzip < initrd.img.ungzipped > initrd.r8169.img


I had to boot up DSL, run lspci & lspci -n, to get the ID to put in here - third column has 10ec:8167, which is what we need
https://lists.sdsc.edu/pipermail/npaci-rocks-discussion/2007-September/027142.html

So now you can replace your initrd.img with the one you just created. The kickstart should work fine now, but upon reboot, the system will not be able to find the right driver. After the kickstart, you need to copy over the .ko files to the appropriate directories - we added a line in our post-install script to do this for us, it simply copies the .ko file to the appropriate directory (/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/)

Hopefully this is useful to someone, I couldn’t find a good, comprehensive guide on how to do this, I had to pull data from a bunch of different sources.

All of them are available on my main picasa page,
http://picasaweb.google.com/stevendavidruiz

And now for individual galleries:
I added some underwater photos to our snorkeling gallery:
http://picasaweb.google.com/stevendavidruiz/SnorkelingInMalaysia

A great Hike we went on in Taiwan - Caoling Historic Trail
Along the Chao Phraya in Bangkok - River Cruise
Pattaya, Thailand
Misc Thailand Photos
Around Taipei

Picasa Photo Gallery

The OPV, or over-pressure valve (also known as pressure relief valve), is fitted to most mid-level home machines with vibratory pumps. Vibe pumps aren’t really precision adjustable devices, so they are basically either on or off, and inside an espresso machine, whatever pressure they’re operating at is the pressure you’re getting through your espresso. In most espresso machine marketing literature, they advertise the power of pumps, 16 bar in this one, 18 bar in that one, but this really doesn’t matter - espresso needs about 9 bar, give or take, to be brewed properly, and this is where the OPV comes in. As the pressure raises, it will gradually open up to maintain a set pressure, usually about 9 bar in an espresso machine. Excess water is routed back to the reservoir, and the group head, and thus your espresso puck) see’s the proper pressure. Gaggia Baby and Classic models are fitted with an adjustable OPV, other models don’t have one, but if you can find one its a great upgrade for a Carezza or Espresso.

As you can read in some other posts here, the Gaggia machines are very easy to take apart and repair/clean, so while going through that process, I spent extra time on cleaning / restoring the OPV valve. It turns out that mine was completely sealed shut from past years’ scale deposits, and it wasn’t opening at all. I took the valve apart completely, and soaked it in a durgol bath and in a citric acid bath about 5 or 6 times - there was a lot of crud on there, and it took a while to get it off. Afterwards, things looked pretty good, and it was very easy to put back together.

When my machine re-assembly was complete, I hooked up my newly built pressure gauge, and proceeded to dial in the correct pressure. This is a bit complicated because the valve is not easily accessible, and adjustment requires disassembly of the valve. So its turn on machine, read pressure, turn off, unscrew valve, adjust (while not burning hands on hot boiler), reassemble, and repeat. It took 4 or 5 iterations to get it the way I wanted, I was moving about 1/2 turn of the adjustment nut each time. I think these come from the factory set very high, so I’m guessing you could improve your results just by loosening the nut a turn or two from factory tight. Espresso is now much easer to make (and much better tasting), and with the pressure gauge, I know any problems are my fault, and not the machine’s.

Details of the pressure gauge: I had a friend weld a piece of stainless tubing to a blank filter basket (could probably get this done at a welding shop for $10 and a six pack as well), and attached to a tee, a needle valve, and a liquid-filled pressure gauge. I can adjust the flow to approximate espresso flow rates, and dial in the pressure from there.

In the weeks to come, we’ll be installing new plumbing (fixtures, etc), new tub, drywall/backer board, tile, new pedestal sink, wainscotting, etc. We’ll post photos and notes along the way, here are some pics of this weekend’s adventures.

[Show as slideshow]

I recently purchased an espresso machine to fuel my addiction - a Gaggia Baby circa mid 1990’s. You might wonder why I bought such an old machine, but it was a smoking deal - I got the machine and the grinder for a super-low price, and then sold the grinder on ebay to basically pay for both. So, it was worth it to put some time and a little money into making it like new again.

Gaggia home machines are pretty ubiquitous, as the internals have been the same for 20 years or so, with only cosmetic changes outside - so parts and instructions aren’t too difficult to find. My particular model is a “Baby”, which includes the 3-way valve and an adjustable OPV (over-pressure or pressure relief) valve, otherwise all models are basically the same. Being about 15 years old, it was showing some wear and tear, and was also showing that it hadn’t been cleaned in a LONG time. Before I noticed how much gunk was built up on it, I tried to pull a few shots - they all came out way too quickly, even with the grinder burrs basically touching.

So, I did what I usually do, and took the whole thing apart :). Gaggia machines are very easy to tear down, all it takes is a couple screwdrivers and allen wrenches. When you do take these machines apart, just be sure to label all the wires and take some photos to reference when re-assembling - a little masking tape and a sharpie can go a long way.

Once everything was apart, I started cleaning. The group (part the holds the portafilter) needed a ton of cleaning and scraping, there was years of coffee gunk in there. All parts got a few soaks in descaling solution and citric acid baths, there was quite a bit of scale on everything. It took about 5 soaks to get everything cleaned up, and a bit of scrubbing inside the boiler as well. I purchased a complete Gaggia rebuild kit on ebay from “supercoffeeman”, which includes all seals and gaskets needed to make the machine like new. For an older machine, its safe just to replace everything, for a newer machine all you may need to replace is the group gasket. In any case, if the rubber is brittle or cracked, its time to replace- mine certainly was. In subsequent posts, I’ll go over the details of the mods and adjustments I went through to get it dialed in pefectly…

However, this behavior stopped when I upgraded to Leopard - it includes a built-in option to use IMAP IDLE, but it never seemed to work right - I would receive email only when I hit the “Get Mail” button, or my client checked on its specified interval.

I thought I had figured out how to make it work properly, it seems there are two settings that should impact this, but neither work well. Under Mail.app Preferences, under the Accounts Section, Advanced tab, if you select “Use IDLE command if the server supports it“, and you un-check “Include when automatically checking for new mail“, things work ok for a while.  After making the change, restart Mail.app.  However, if something happens, i.e. you close the lid on your laptop, lose the connection to the server, etc., it no longer works.

Why can’t apple get this working as well as the plugin was before?  No good solution at this point…