Matthew Steven

I started with the very nice ping script from the consttype blog, but I didn't like that the graph was so hard to read with multiple ping hosts that had similar latencies, and it would time out with more than three IP addresses, and that it took the best ping rather than the average.   So I have changed it to use a faster ping, report a ping of 1000 when it fails to connect (so you get a spike rather than a gap) and be linkable with ping_ipaddress format.

I wanted to dump Qwest.  That's the root of it, I really don't dig their way of handling customers.  I wanted to take advantage of my really nice internet connection, and use VoIP.  The only major hurdle seemed to be the use of my credit card terminal, and the occasional fax.  After a few evenings of struggling, I achieved success.

Copying a Logical Volume or Partition over SSH

This should only be attempted on either a snapshot lvm volume, or an unmounted hard drive partition!

Using ssh and dd you can copy any LVM or (unmounted) hard drive partition over the internet to a new machine easily.  You can do a "push" or "pull" copy.  Here's a "push" copy:

dd if=/dev/vg0/partition-snapshot bs=1k \
   | ssh remotehost dd of=/dev/vg0/partition-destination bs=1k

This review gives the story of my initial experience with the Flex 3000, followed by the Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

In choosing a Linux desktop, I want something both highly stable and great looking.  I stare at these monitors for 10-14 hours a day!  Speed and ease of configuration/use are also important.  This post is about my journey from KDE4 to XFCE4, and is also a review of sorts.

In the last few months I've been building a new site for Sirova, a group selling Raw Food.  Raw foodists believe that food that hasn't been treated with chemicals and excessive heat is more nutritious than foods that have not been subjected to such treatment.

Admittedly I've been a little bad about writing ham radio posts lately.  Leave it to the ARRL to shock me out of my complacency.

Last year, on a lark, I sent in my log from my participation in the IARU International DX contest.  And I thought no more about it until today.  Turns out you can win a certificate even if you're the best in your state in a certain category.

I think I'll be posting my logs more regularly, and definitely contesting more this year.  Bring the sunspots!

Using jQuery's .get .post or .ajax features to parse xml results, you may find that only Internet Explorer 6 fails to parse your xml result in the callback function.  You can always count on your friend IE6 to crush productivity!

"Six gallons (22.7 L) of water evaporating has the same cooling effect as a typical (3.5 ton-hour) home central air-conditioner." - Alliance for Water Efficiency

Here's how you can save a lot on your summer water bills and help the environment a little at the same time.  The system I built stores 165 gallons of water, which is enough to water our large garden pr