• Motion recognition through a web cam
  • Pros
    • already available (many computers have webcams)
    • fairly easy to implement
  • Cons
    • processor intensive
    • not able to wake automatically (since computer is asleep)
• Device in seat cushion
  • Pros
    • Extremely easy to implement
    • Can wake computer
    • cheap
  • Cons
    • additional product to connect to computer
    • if wireless needs power source
• RFID tagging
  • Pros
    • Available technology
    • can be used as login
  • Cons
    • short range
    • security concerns

Now personally I think the best idea runs along the seat cushion monitor. Using extremely low powered components a li-ion cell battery could probably last close to a year. You would only need to shoot out a signal when a status change happens (someone sits down or stands up). Now also it wouldn’t be a bad idea to shoot out a heartbeat signal every 30 minutes or so to make sure we’re synced up with the computer. Now the idea is that any time someone gets out of there seat the computer would go into sleep. This would be a great way to sell a cheap *green* product that has a great ROI. Now if anyone wants to get this idea rolling feel free to contact us

Now one day I was at a bar talking to a few of my friends about the under utilization of the wii (a.k.a. wii has no games)
Well I think I may have come up with possible the greatest possible killer app for the wii. You probably guessed it from the title.

Pop Hero
the utter demise of all gamer dignity

Basically take the guitar hero mechaniks and convert them to dance moves. Using the incredible motion sensing capabilities of the wii to full
capacity allows you to dance in sync to the screen! Pop and lock to the best songs of the late 90’s!

Now seriously who wants to make this happen. I’m all in if I can get some support.

the prep

Boot up the xenix computer and make note of the Hard disk parameters. During the boot process you will see it mention

%disk someHexCode type=W0 unit-0 cyls=????? hds=?? sec=??

The cyls hds and sec are what we need.

Shutdown the xenix computer.

Plug the drive into another computer using a usb adapter or such.

make an image of the drive

dd if=/dev/disk2 of=xenix.new.img bs=512 conv=noerror,sync

Make a backup of this image in case anything bad happens

the emulation

Create a raw qemu image that is big enough to store the information you need off that disk. In my case it was a 250Mb disk so I made a 250Mb file

qemu-img create -f raw backup.img 250Mb

(creates a 250Mb image for files)

now boot up qemu using this line

qemu -M pc -m 16 -hda xenix.new.img -hdachs 1024,13,51 -no-kqemu -hdb backup.img

What this is doing is loading a qemu instance using hard disk 1 as the xenix image you made earlier and disk 2 as a blank hard disk.
Note the 1024,13,51. Those were my settings for cyls, hds, and sec that you should have written down earlier.
Hopefully at this point your computer will bring your wonderful xenix system up in front of your eyes
Now what needs to be done is to get those files off that system.

Well the xenix box now has two drives, but it really can’t use the second one quite yet

In the qemu instance type

mkdev hd

Run through all the questions basically answering using the defaults.

Now the blank drive you made should be recognized and available as block device /dev/hd10

the backup

Go find the directory you wish to backup and type

tar cvf /dev/hd10 “directory you wish to backup”

This will write directly to the blank disk with no formatting.
Once that’s completed shutdown the emulator.

the recovery

Now on your pc type

tar xPvf backup.img “directory to extract to”

booyaa! you just pulled files off a xenix box using just a disk image!

denon ah-d2000

ibasso d2

laser etched skateboards

First of all I’m running a completely standard install, original apache. I know a few of the tutorials out there have you installing a new apache. You don’t need to do this any more. All you need to do is install the gem using

sudo gem install passenger
passenger-install-apache2-module

Once that’s done without error (You will need the developer bundle installed as it compiles a bit of c++) you need to change some apache settings.

Open up /private/etc/apache2/user/yourUserName.conf using your favorite text editor

now inside this file you should have

<Directory "/Users/userName/Sites/">
     Options Indexes MultiViews
     AllowOverride None
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
</Directory>

To this add

<Directory "/Users/userName/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

LoadModule passenger_module /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.5/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
RailsSpawnServer /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.5/bin/passenger-spawn-server
RailsRuby /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName demo.test
  DocumentRoot "/Users/userName/Sites/demo/public"
  RailsEnv development
  <Directory "/Users/userName/Sites/demo/public">
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

now this is assuming you have a rails app named “demo” in your Sites directory at ~/Sites.

Now open up /private/etc/hosts

add this line to the bottom and save

127.0.0.1 demo.test demo2.test demo3.test

this will allow you to have rails sites accessible from your browser
demo.test
demo2.test
demo3.test

Basically when you want to add another site fire open your userName.conf file and add another

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName demo2.test
  DocumentRoot "/Users/userName/Sites/demo/public"
  RailsEnv development
  <Directory "/Users/userName/Sites/demo/public">
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

changing the directory and Servername.

Type
sudo apachectl graceful
Then open up your site
open http://demo.test
and all should be good. If you want to move out of the Sites directory or a directory that isn’t shared and ACL is enabled on your box, please refer here
ACL Issue