Category Archives: geek

LEGO Set 21200, Life of George, Parts List

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We had a mix up with our pieces being combined with the boys personal creations which made playing Life of George difficult.

So I went to lego.com hoping to find a published parts list for the set. Unfortunately, LEGO does not publish a parts list with quantities. They do have a list of replacement parts though. You’ll have to put your age in and then use set 21200 to see them.

So with the above list of pieces, Guy and I figured out the quantities to put our set back in order.

Serialize/Deserialize POCO’s

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Short and easy way to to generically Serialize/Deserialize objects.

  1. public static string SerializeToXml<T>(T value)
  2. {
  3.     StringWriter writer = new StringWriter(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
  4.     XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
  5.     serializer.Serialize(writer, value);
  6.     return writer.ToString();
  7. }
  8.  
  9. public static T DeserializeFromXml<T>(string xml)
  10. {
  11.     StringReader reader = new StringReader(xml);
  12.     XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
  13.     return (T)serializer.Deserialize(reader);
  14. }


Usage:

  1. MyObject myObj = new MyObject();
  2. string xmlAsString = SerializeToXml(myObj);
  3. …
  4. MyObject newMyObj = DeserializeFromXml<MyObject>(xmlAsString);

Getting iOS 4 and Google Calendar Sync to Work

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After upgrading my brides iPhone 3GS to iOS 4 and getting my new iPhone 4, I noticed that Google Calendar was now only syncing our primary calendars. After several attempts at trying to get all the calendars to sync, I’ve finally found a solution.

YMMV, but this is what has worked for me.

  1. Starting with no accounts on the phone.
  2. Add a new Gmail account (this is for your email, I don’t sync contacts)
  3. Add a new Exchange account (this is for your calendar).
  4. Open Calendar and validate that it is pulling down your primary calendar. Close calendar.
  5. Follow these instructions from Google.
    1. I had multiple “devices” listed, and chose the device that had the most current “Last sync” date/time.
  6. Close Safari
  7. Open Settings
  8. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars
    1. Open Fetch New Data
      1. Turn Push On
      2. Open Advanced
        1. Set your Calendars to Push
  9. Close Settings
  10. Open Calendar and wait for it to sync
    1. I had to force quit calendar from the “running” programs dock and then re-open calendar before it would start to sync with the new settings.

iphone & at&t

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I am still getting used to the new iPhone but overall I am pleased. the ability to let the boys watch a movie has already come in handy. downloading applications could get me in trouble with amy so I will have to pace myself.

one thing that so far has surprised me is at&t’s cellular coverage. I was not expecting it to be so good. what shocked me was that I am getting better coverage now than I was with sprint. granted I have only stayed in the city, but for my day-to-day usage this is a big positive. data speed has been okay and I only hope that it gets better once Omaha goes 3g.

bye sprint, hello at&t

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after being a sprint customer for ~10 years, i am leaving them to give at&t a shot. i’m doing this for a few reasons.

  • i do not travel for work anymore, so coverage is not as big an issue as it was
  • my sprint contract is up, and i can keep my number
  • i no longer call anyone that is on sprint, other than amy
  • i have had “issues” with sprint customer support
  • at&t and verizon have better coverage at the in-laws
  • iphone 3g is at at&t

at&t has said they are upgrading omaha to 3g before the end of the year, which “should” help with their coverage around here.

so today, i stopped by the at&t store and “reserved” my iphone and did all the preliminary “paperwork”. i will get everything switched over on friday.

i am not converting the family completely over, amy’s and the “home” phone contracts are not over until february. if all goes well with my conversion, we will move both of them at that time. if not i guess she can be a guinea pig with verizon.

new router

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last night my wireless router died. okay, died is a little harsh… it’s looks to be in a continual reboot cycle. anyway, this gave me an “excuse” to pick up a new router. so today, i picked up an apple airport extreme. setup took all of 5 minutes, and amy and i are back online.

i have aspirations of sharing our printer through it as well as picking up a raid 1 array for the household backups, but will need to get the home network “ironed” out first. if you have do’s/don’t around this please clue me in.

howto install subversion on bluehost

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i have finally taken the time to get subversion installed and running on my bluehost account. what follows are the steps i took. these steps assume that you have ssh access and your account is on a 64-bit server.

ssh into your account and create a directory to store all of the sources:

mkdir src
cd src

next download the sources for subversion:

wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.5.2.tar.bz2
wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-deps-1.5.2.tar.bz2

untar and extract the sources:

tar -xjvf subversion-1.5.2.tar.bz2
tar -xjvf subversion-deps-1.5.2.tar.bz2

lets start with getting the dependencies configured, built and then installed:

cd subversion-1.5.2
cd apr
./configure –enable-shared –prefix=$HOME
make
make install

cd ../apr-util
./configure –enable-shared –prefix=$HOME –with-expat=builtin –with-apr=$HOME –without-berkeley-db
make
make install

cd ../neon
export EXTRA_CFLAGS=”-L/usr/lib64 -fPIC”
export CFLAGS=”-L/usr/lib64 -fPIC”
./configure –enable-shared –prefix=$HOME –with-libs=$HOME
make
make install

now configure, build and install subversion:

cd ..
./configure –prefix=$HOME –with-apr=$HOME –with-apr-util=$HOME –with-neon=$HOME \
–without-berkeley-db –without-apxs –without-apache –without-serf
make
make install

now edit your .bash_profile in the $HOME directory and replace:

PATH=$PATH

with:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

and save the file. now either “source .bash_profile” or logout and then back in.

verify subversion is working:

svn –version

and should see something similar to:

svn, version 1.5.2 (r32768)
compiled Sep 7 2008, 11:55:08

Copyright (C) 2000-2008 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.tigris.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

The following repository access (RA) modules are available:

* ra_neon : Module for accessing a repository via WebDAV protocol using Neon.
– handles ‘http’ scheme
* ra_svn : Module for accessing a repository using the svn network protocol.
– with Cyrus SASL authentication
– handles ‘svn’ scheme
* ra_local : Module for accessing a repository on local disk.
– handles ‘file’ scheme

the following sites helped get everything installed, unfortunately none of them worked out of the box for me: site 1, site 2, site 3

go

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i’ve casually looked at the game of go for a couple years, never getting further than saying “i’d like to learn that.” well, i’ve taken the leap and have started learning. i am by no means good, and i am very much a beginner. i am having fun though. i’ve found a few books to help with my learning.

- the way to go
- go basics
- teach yourself go
- learn to play go
- go for beginners

i hope that one or all of these will start me on the right path learning this game. i’ve also played a couple games on kgs and was very humbled. if you see me on kgs, ask me (legobuff) to play, but please realize i am new to this so do not expect a challenge.

more restlessness

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more restlessness has resulted in more playing around on my mbp. right now i have the following sitting in my dock:
mail, safari, delicious library, vmware fusion, remote desktop, transmission, gimp, handbrake, xcode, terminal, addressbook, iphoto, cyberduck, textwrangler, skitch, twitterrific, firefox, thunderbird, ibank, cuppa, ical

these have made it to my applications folder:
adium, appdelete, coconutwifi, colloquy, ffmpegx, flip4mac, google earth, gpsbabel+, growltunes, istumbler, magic number machine, mainmenu, mindnode, neooffice, sketchup, skype, vlc, xact

and these are in my preferences:
busysync, divx, geektool, growl, smartsleep

what am i missing?