It was a bit of a struggle to get it all working properly, but I can now report absolute 100% success! At first I tried using a DLNA server thingie called EyeConnect which was “meh” to begin with, ate $50 of mine, and still was throwing errors while streaming on the PS3. Hopefully I can get a refund for it, and won’t bother linking to it because it is a “meh” product.

On the other hand, MediaLink from Nullriver Software worked superbly, out of the box, and was only $20. Sure, there are open source options as well like MediaTomb or some PS3MediaServer thing but they are ugly and not incredibly user-friendly. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time to get it working, and MediaLink provided me with that ease-of-use I so desired.

So.

Yeah.

See you again in another two months, dear readers.

A few years ago the idea of moving across the country with nothing but a suitcase would have seemed impossible. I couldn’t imagine how to proceed or how I would survive. Clinging to the expected and the risk-free were things I did to avoid introspection. I knew what I was capable of because it was all things I had done already. A lack of challenge leads to a lack of ability to see any distance ahead. It was only when I set my sights on moving to Seattle that I was able to once again begin challenging myself in unexpected ways.

My primary motivation was thus: anything but here. I had hit the bottom and anything at all in Seattle would be at least a half-step above where I was before. Being in a place where I essentially knew no one would give me a chance to redefine myself by the challenges I faced and overcame. I had done what I had never expected of myself, and was free to continue on that path, exploring what I had as of yet not acknowledged the existence of. Each day I find myself waking up happier to be alive than I ever had felt in Minnesota, and excited about what lays ahead for me here.

All has not been champagne and roses, though. There has been drama borne of miscommunication and my own occasional boneheadedness. There has been heartbreak. All in all, though, the calculated risks have been well worth the cuts and bruises I’ve endured so far. I’d make some sort of mountain-climbing analogy but it wouldn’t be adequate, as you can’t really stay on top of a mountain and so it is an empty accomplishment. I’d say my move to Seattle is more akin to having been lost in the desert and finding a beautiful and lush oasis. That is really what Seattle is — an oasis for those of us who are tired of who or what we were and wish to become what we had thought impossible.

Each day I silently thank those who have helped me along the way. You should know who you are if you’re reading this, and now it’s on paper sotospeak. Thank you for putting up with me as I improve upon my former self, little by little. Thank you for introducing me to worlds of experiences that I otherwise would have avoided like the plague. Thank you for pushing me to succeed, and to enjoy that success.

And to cap this post, a poem from Robert Frost, appropriately titled “Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length”

Oh, stormy stormy world,
The days you were not swirled
Around with mist and cloud,
Or wrapped as in a shroud,
And the sun’s brilliant ball
Was not in part or all
Obscured from mortal view–
Were days so very few
I can but wonder whence
I get the lasting sense
Of so much warmth and light.
If my mistrust is right
It may be altogether
From one day’s perfect weather,
When starting clear at dawn,
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
I verily believe
My fair impression may
Be all from that one day
No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude.

I have only one complaint in general, which is that there are a couple of snicker-inducing moments which kind of break the mood. An unfortunate side-effect of less-than-superb editing I suppose (along with some subpar translation with the subtitles which can be excused.) All in all, it’s great and definitely worth a watch. I even bought the DVD for my dad when I got home from seeing it.

I really don’t want to ruin anything by divulging details other than suggesting that if you like androids, jet-powered robotic suits, and anime-hair, you should definitely check it out. It’s not a stinker like Advent Children, I promise. Cross my heart.

I rate Vexille 4 out of 5 SWORDs.

Google and the X Prize Foundation have announced that 10 teams will compete to put a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon.
The Google Lunar X Prize, announced six months ago, offers $30 million worth of prizes for the first teams to create a machine that can travel at least 500 meters on the lunar surface and send video and other images and data back to Earth.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said the two organizations received more than 560 letters or inquiries of interest from more than 53 countries.

“By comparison, at the six-month point of the Ansari X Prize, we had only two teams registered,” he said in this week’s announcement. “I think we’re going to see an exciting and very competitive race to the moon, highlighted by some very creative designs unlike anything we’ve seen come out of the government space programs. Many of these teams represent some of the most creative and entrepreneurial minds in space exploration today.”

This is great. I was a big fan of the Ansari X Prize (the competition to create a craft capable of suborbital flight) and this will hopefully be as successful. These pots of gold help to create and stimulate new markets, and provide much needed incentive for R&D in those areas. It is market stimulus in a similar way that a tax refund is economic stimulus — give back some tax money, and people will spend it; put forth a $20 million prize, and people will compete for it.

These market stimulus prizes put forth by private ventures are precisely what we need, and are 180 degrees from the government standard of no-bid contracts. The Google X Prize will help bring about practical and efficient methods of space travel and exploration of the moon. I have no doubt that the hundreds of billions poured into NASA will be looked at in stark contrast of what private ventures can do for < $20 million.

• You own a Mac or will be using one during the jailbreaking process.
• You are a legitimate AT&T customer and wish only to jailbreak your phone, not unlock it.
• You have an iPhone, NOT an iPod Touch.
• You have at least a little familiarity with How Things Work™

Okay, so to get started, there are some things you should do in preparation for this procedure:

• Legitimately upgrade your iPhone to 1.1.3 via iTunes but be sure to backup/sync first — this will allow, if nothing else, for you to restore to a working 1.1.3 with your contacts and such intact.
• Download the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware from Apple
• Download lockdownd (you may need this for activation later.)
• Download the Mac 1.1.3 jailbreak package maker
• Download iNdependence v1.3.2 beta

And now on to the fun:

1. If you updated to 1.1.3 as you should before you started, you now have a legitimate, activated, jailed 1.1.3 phone. Congratulations, you’ve made it past the first step.
2. Now, go to this wonderful illustrated guide to downgrading and follow ONLY steps 1 and 2.
3. After you complete step 2, you now have a jailbroken 1.1.1 phone with Installer. Do not be frightened if you get messages about your SIM not being recognized, and that you do not have phone service yet. We will deal with that later.
4. Open Installer and, under System, install BSD Subsystem, OpenSSH, and vt100-term. Close installer — springboard (the main menu program thing) will restart.
5. Now, open the jb113 image and run “Run_This” — follow the instructions and hit enter when prompted, to patch and upload your 1.1.3 firmware image.
6. When prompted by “Run_This” go back into Installer, find and install the “1.1.3 soft upgrade” package under System. The correct one has Nate True as the contact. It will take more than a few minutes to install, so be patient. It likely will delay half-way, that’s fine. If you get a “main script execution” error, just dismiss it.
7. Your phone should now reboot (you may need to do so yourself in some cases), and when you get back to springboard you will see a message informing you of how to use your new jiggly icons, and you should see Installer next to your iTunes Store icon.
8. Dance a little jig of 1.1.3-jailbreaky-success.
9. Open up Installer and re-install BSD Subsystem, vt100-terminal, and OpenSSH.
10. If your phone is not activated and you have no phone service as a result, SCP that lockdownd file you downloaded earlier to /usr/libexec on your phone. Then, restart your phone. iTunes should open and you should automatically activate.

You should now have a jailbroken 1.1.3 phone with the Google LocateMe-compatible baseband, and phone service.

Update: Steps 5-7 have been deprecated, you should use the “official” jailbreak method instead of Nate True’s.

I am never touching this phone’s software again.

However, the issue remains that if something happens to that machine, somehow zapping both harddrives, we would be fucked. So, I needed a way to get those backups from the server and onto my machine on a nightly basis. Initially I wrote a little PHP script to make use of the FTP functions and just get things that way. FTP turned out to be disabled on the server, which led me to use the more-secure SCP. As SCP doesn’t have a way to pass the password within the command, I needed a way to run the command, then provide a password, then wait for it to trasnfer the files I wanted. Enter, expect.

Expect provides a way to run a command and interact with it as if you were at the keyboard. It is pretty nifty, and I ended up using the script below to SCP relevant archives onto my machine on a nightly basis. All automated scheduling thanks to cron of course.

#!/usr/bin/expect —

set timeout 1200
set USER “username”
set PASS “p4ssw0rd”
set HOST “host.name.com”
set REMOTEPATH “/home/username/location/of/files”
set LOCALPATH “/home/othername/place/to/put/files”

spawn scp $USER@$HOST:$REMOTEPATH/*.tar.gz $LOCALPATH
expect “Password:”
send — $PASS\r
expect eof

It is sexy as hell. No longer are there bland “moderator” and “admin” roles — you can assign combinations of privileges and limit access to specific features of a control panel as your heart desires. Here is a full feature list in comparison to phpBB 2.x.