• Brian C. Lane
  • About
  • Photos
  • Writing
  • Software
  • Blog
  • Tags
  • Archives
  • Transitioning to a New GPG Key

    Posted in Blog on Sat 23 May 2015
    by bcl
    - Linux gnupg

    I am transitioning to a new GnuPG key, here is my transition statement, based on one from Simon Josefsson

    Here is my signed statement:

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    Hash: SHA512,SHA1
    
    OpenPGP Key Transition Statement for Brian C. Lane
    
    I have created a new OpenPGP key and will be transitioning ...
    read more
  • Creating OpenStack images with livemedia-creator

    Posted in Blog on Mon 18 May 2015
    by bcl
    - Linux OS Fedora livemedia-creator OpenStack

    I was going to write about using mock to make live iso's without using virt-install, but this week is the OpenStack Summit and one of the things you can use livemedia-creator (lmc) for is making disk images for use with OpenStack.

    If you followed the instructions in my previous ...

    read more
  • Creating live isos with livemedia-creator

    Posted in Blog on Thu 14 May 2015
    by bcl
    - Linux OS Fedora livemedia-creator

    In this post I am going to describe how to create bootable live isos using livemedia-creator (lmc). It was created so that the same Anaconda installer logic would be used for installing systems and creating bootable media like the live iso. lmc can also be used to create disk images ...

    read more
  • Creating the Anaconda boot.iso with lorax

    Posted in Blog on Wed 13 May 2015
    by bcl
    - Linux OS Fedora Lorax

    Fedora 22 is almost here, so I thought I'd write a couple posts on how to use lorax and livemedia-creator to create bootable Fedora images. I'll start with lorax. It is used to create the Anaconda boot.iso which is used to install systems using a network connection ...

    read more
  • Saving the state for Home Media Server

    Posted in Blog on Fri 02 January 2015
    by Brian C. Lane
    - HMS Roku

    Home Media Server is a Roku application for streaming video from a http server. I started the project in 2009 after Roku released the SDK for their devices. Originally it was a server and a client, but I rewrote it in 2010 as just a client so that the only ...

    read more
  • Setup oath ssh login on Fedora

    Posted in Blog on Thu 01 January 2015
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Fedora Security

    There are occasions where I’d like to be able to ssh to a system without using the password or having to setup a ssh key. Another alternative for authentication is the pam_oath module which allows you to use OATH applications like FreeOTP or Google Authenticator for 2-factor logins.

    Start ...

    read more
  • Deploying clortho with ansible and venv

    Posted in Blog on Wed 31 December 2014
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Python Ansible Systemd

    I have started using Ansible to manage the few services that I still have running around here. I want to deploy clortho to a user on the system I use for serving up movies to my Roku players. I need to copy the source, setup a venv with the dependencies ...

    read more
  • clortho - A simple key/value server

    Posted in Software on Sun 28 December 2014
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Python

    clortho is a very simple key/value server written using python 3.4 and aiohttp

    key namespace is per-client IP address, and there is no authentication. It supports direct connections from clients, and the X-Forwarded-For header for use with proxies. I shouldn’t have to mention that running this on ...

    read more
  • https is now the default protocol

    Posted in Blog on Sat 07 June 2014
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Security

    On June 5th the EFF called for people to Reset the Net and do something to enhance their privacy on the net. I have put off switching to https for my sites because I host them using S3 and CloudFront, and up until recently it was extremely expensive to use ...

    read more
  • Automatic Backup of Files to S3 and Glacier

    Posted in Blog on Sun 23 June 2013
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Python Linux S3 Glacier

    Automatic backups are important, especially when it comes to irreplaceable data like family photos. I have used s3cmd to maintain my website’s static files for a while now, and it was simple to use it to push my 100GB+ archive of photos over to S3. But I needed an ...

    read more
  • Chat with Tor and socat

    Posted in Blog on Sat 22 June 2013
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Tor socat Linux

    It is easy to setup a simple chat over Tor using the socat utility. To receive incoming messages you first need to setup a Tor hidden service. Add this to the end of your /etc/tor/torrc file:

    HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden-chat/
    HiddenServicePort 2330 127.0.0.1:2330 ...
    read more
  • Xmonad on a MacBook Pro with Fedora 19

    Posted in Blog on Fri 21 June 2013
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Xmonad Fedora MacBook

    For years I have dual booted my Macbook with Fedora. Things have always almost worked, but never quite as smoothly as they do under OSX. Typically the problems are with the trackpad, wireless drivers and heat control — The fans on my MBP didn’t want to kick on at the ...

    read more
  • Reliable Wireless Temperatures

    Posted in Blog on Sat 01 June 2013
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Python MySQL SQLite DigiTemp 1-wire
    Freezer Temperatures

    The temperature sensors that I use to drive the freezer graph are in my garage, which doesn’t have an easy way to run wires to the server room. I have a WRT54GL running DD-WRT configured as a bridge to the rest of my network. The problem with this is ...

    read more
  • NASCAR Countdown for iPhone

    Posted in Software on Thu 16 February 2012
    by bcl
    - iPhone NASCAR

    The NASCAR Countdown app displays a countdown to the next NASCAR race, the name of the race and the television network carrying the race. On the flip side all of the races for the season are listed, and tapping on one of them will go to the nascar.com website ...

    read more
  • Moving a BackupPC Pool

    Posted in Blog on Thu 15 September 2011
    by Brian C. Lane
    - Linux BackupPC LVM

    I have been using BackupPC to automatically back up the systems on my LAN for years now. It started out with a 3x250GB RAID5 as the storage pool and when I ran out of space on that I added another disk to bring it up to about 700GB. BackupPC does ...

    read more
  • New MovieLandmarks Update

    Posted in Blog on Sat 02 July 2011
    by bcl
    - MovieLandmarks Python Javascript

    Movie Landmarks is back online. I think this is the 5th iteration of the project that I originally started back in 2006. It started out as a PHP app, morphed into a python wsgi application. It was always backed by a mysql db with lots of interactive features. For this ...

    read more
  • Local time for mutt email display

    Posted in Blog on Thu 30 June 2011
    by bcl
    - mutt Python Linux

    I use mutt as my email client. Something that has recently been bugging me is that when reading a message it displays the original Date: header with the sender's timezone. Since I work with people in several different zones I am constantly having to do timezone math when looking ...

    read more
  • Changes to the Webpage and Blog

    Posted in Blog on Sun 05 June 2011
    by bcl
    - Pelican ReST Webpages

    As you may have noticed my webpages have changed a bit today. After about 6 years I decided it was time to revamp things a bit. The old site was all written in plain html with an attempt at reference link usage. I decided to rewrite in Restructured Text using ...

    read more
  • AIS Parser SDK is now Free

    Posted in Blog on Mon 27 December 2010
    by bcl
    - AIS

    I have decided to discontinue sales of my AIS Parser SDK and have released the code under the BSD License on GitHub.

    read more
  • Nice %changelog entries

    Posted in Blog on Thu 02 December 2010
    by bcl
    - Fedora git

    When updating a rpm package it is nice to include a summary of the changes made since the last time. anaconda does this with a nifty script written by dcantrell called makebumpver which also enforces some RHEL rules and handles changing the version. I only needed the changelog part of ...

    read more
  • AIS feed is up again

    Posted in Blog on Sun 07 November 2010
    by bcl
    - AIS Fedora Linux

    A few weeks back my ancient Compaq laptop stopped booting (two LOUD beeps, no display, no drive noises). This system has been used in the garage to act as a serial to WiFi bridge for my AIS receiver, and to log temperatures for the garage and freezer temps you see ...

    read more
  • Using RAID to Escape Disaster

    Posted in Blog on Thu 04 November 2010
    by bcl
    - Fedora Linux RAID Backup

    Failed hard drives are inevitable. Especially when the drive in question was manufactured on November 27, 2001. You know the time has come to replace it when your log files start filling up with errors like this:

    Oct 28 03:53:05 cat kernel:         res 51/40:00:fc:33 ...
    read more
  • Fedora Pumpkin

    Posted in Blog on Sun 31 October 2010
    by bcl
    - Fedora Halloween Pumpkin

    I used the template from here. There is also a template for Shadowman here. Maybe I'll try that one next year.

    read more
  • Kindle on Linux using Wine

    Posted in Blog on Sat 18 September 2010
    by bcl
    - Books Fedora Linux Kindle

    I have a few books I've bought for reading using the Kindle app on my iPhone. I'd like to be able to read them on my Fedora Linux based MacBook as well, but Amazon hasn't released a version for Linux yet, which is ironic given that the ...

    read more
  • tidy_html plugin for rawdog

    Posted in Blog on Sun 29 August 2010
    by bcl
    - Python

    Requires python-tiny package on Fedora. Cleans up the HTML, preventing broken elements from spilling over into adjacent postings. Code was lifted from feedparser.py and dropped into a plugin for rawdog since I couldn't find an easy way to get mx.Tiny installed.

    # rawdog plugin to tidy up html ...
    read more
  • Sharing Music on the LAN

    Posted in Blog on Sun 15 August 2010
    by bcl
    - Linux Fedora

    No, not on the lam. On the LAN. I have a fairly large collection of music. Years ago I used iTunes to rip the CD's to AAC format. Recently I've been using Amazon.com for more of my downloads so I have converted the library to high quality ...

    read more
  • Home Media Server Updates

    Posted in Blog on Sat 17 April 2010
    by bcl
    - Python HMS Roku Linuxfest Northwest

    Tonight I finished adding delete handlers and a delete confirmation dialog to HMS. This is probably the state that the code will be in for my LFNW presentation next Saturday.

    read more
  • color output from git log -p on OSX

    Posted in Blog on Sat 17 April 2010
    by bcl
    - git OSX

    By default git on OSX wasn't colorizing its output. Two things needed to be setup - setting the color.ui to auto and setting the pager (less) to allow raw characters. Add this to ~/.gitconfig

    [color]
    ui = auto
    [core]
    pager = less -R
    

    Presto! Nice colorized output from git!

    read more
  • Fixed live.aisparser.com

    Posted in Blog on Mon 05 April 2010
    by bcl
    - AIS

    I wasn't escaping the ship name and destination before creating the XML so a & character would make the javascript choke. Fixed now, so you should be seeing ships update.

    read more
  • GUETech is back up

    Posted in Blog on Sat 03 April 2010
    by bcl
    - GUETech Interactive Fiction

    www.guetech.org was the first domain I ever registered. This was back when domains were free and you send in an email form with your request. I used it for a UUCP connected BBS (via Eskimo North for a short time from my apartment in the mid 90s. Since ...

    read more
  • Newseum Page Grabber Script

    Posted in Blog on Sun 07 February 2010
    by bcl
    - Python

    Newseum archives the front pages of of over 500 newspapers from all around the world. If you know the ID of the papers you want to see you can use this simple Python program to download the jpg of the papers' front page to your local system. Edit the CITIES ...

    read more
  • ALMS Countdown Approved in Record Time

    Posted in Blog on Tue 02 February 2010
    by bcl
    - ALMS iPhone NASCAR Racing

    Much to my surprise my 2 new iPhone apps were approved today. This must be a new record for the App Revew process -- according to the history the American Le Mans Series (ALMS) Countdown app started review at 11:26 AM and was approved at 15:08 (3h42m), the NASCAR ...

    read more
  • ALMS Countdown for iPhone

    Posted in Software on Tue 02 February 2010
    by bcl
    - ALMS iPhone

    The ALMS Countdown app displays a countdown to the next American Le Mans Series race, the name of the race and the television network carrying the race. On the flip side all of the races for the 2010 season are listed, and tapping on one of them will go to ...

    read more
  • Submitted NASCAR Countdown app to App Store

    Posted in Blog on Sun 31 January 2010
    by bcl
    - iPhone

    I have made an iPhone version of my NASCAR Countdown Widget and sumbitted it to the App Store. The NASCAR Countdown app displays a countdown to the next race, the name of the race and the television network carrying the race. On the flip side all of the races for ...

    read more
  • Hygrosens Python Library

    Posted in Software on Sun 31 January 2010
    by bcl
    - Hygrosens Python 1-wire

    Hygrosens manufactures a number of sensors for measuring temperature, humidity, light level, pressure. Their devices use a common serial data format for a wide variety of sensors, include 1-wire sensors from Dallas. This library reads the output from Hygrosens devices and passes it to a calling function as a hash ...

    read more
  • WZON T-Shirts

    Posted in Blog on Wed 27 January 2010
    by bcl
    - Stephen King Shirts WZON

    I'm not sure what made me think of these today, but I did a couple of Google searches to see if I could track down any more of these shirts. The only one I could find is the Creep shirt. There seems to be a lack of info on ...

    read more
  • NASCAR Countdown Widget Updated for 2010

    Posted in Blog on Tue 19 January 2010
    by bcl
    - OSX NASCAR

    I have just updated my NASCAR Dashboard Widget for the 2010 season. All race time and channels should now be current.

    read more
  • NASCAR Countdown Dashboard Widget

    Posted in Software on Tue 19 January 2010
    by bcl
    - OSX NASCAR Desktop Widget

    This is a simple countdown widget for the OSX Dashboard. It is a pure javascript implementation so it will also run inside a web browser as you can see above.

    This widget will display the time until the next NASCAR Broadcast, the countdown takes into account your local timezone.

    This ...

    read more
  • Simple SQL Schema Migration

    Posted in Blog on Sun 10 January 2010
    by bcl
    - Programming Python SQLite

    I'm working on an application to manage my streaming media for my Roku player using sqlite3 and Python for everything. One thing I've learned over the years is that your SQL schema always changes. Once your code is in production you always have something you need to change ...

    read more
  • Moved the blog home

    Posted in Blog on Sun 27 December 2009
    by bcl
    - wordpress

    I decided to move the blog from Wordpress hosting back to my own server. I want to be able to run my own Google Ads on the system and Wordpress doesn't allow that. I used the Export/Import feature of Wordpress 2.9 and found that it misses a ...

    read more
  • Streaming Local Video With Your Roku

    Posted in Blog on Sun 20 December 2009
    by bcl
    - Linux Python Roku Streaming Video

    Ever since I switched from Dish Network to a Roku player a few months ago I have had a couple of things I wanted my player to be able to do. The ability to categorize my Netflix queue is at the top of my list and it would be very ...

    read more
  • SharePics Accepted by Apple!

    Posted in Blog on Thu 17 December 2009
    by bcl
    - iPhone Objective C

    After many minutes of redesign the new look of SharePics was ready to go. I re-packaged the app, captured new screenshots, and re-submitted it to the AppStore. 9 days later I received an email notifying me that my app was now available for sale in the App Store!

    Thanks to ...

    read more
  • SharePics for iPhone

    Posted in Software on Sat 05 December 2009
    by bcl
    - iPhone

    SharePics is a simple application that uses Bluetooth to share pictures between two iPhone or iPod Touch (2nd gen) devices. You can also take pictures using the app and share them immediately. There is no need for a wireless access point or even a 3G connection. You can select your ...

    read more
  • SharePics Rejected by Apple!

    Posted in Blog on Thu 03 December 2009
    by bcl
    - iPhone Pictures

    So I got my first rejection from the App Store today. According to their email it was rejected because - we cannot post your application because it appears to include features that resemble Polariod photographs. Polaroid has previously objected to other applications that include features that resemble Polaroid photographs, and believes ...

    read more
  • Backups, Archives and Overheating Processors

    Posted in Blog on Tue 10 November 2009
    by bcl
    - Linux OS Backup

    A few (ahum) years ago I wrote an article for Linux Journal on building a RAID system. While that exact system no longer exists, I do still have a RAID5 setup that I use with BackupPC to backup all the systems on my LAN. As I wrote about in my ...

    read more
  • KVM on Fedora11

    Posted in Blog on Sat 07 November 2009
    by bcl
    - Linux Fedora KVM Virtualization

    I've been a VMWare Workstation user for years and have generally been pretty happy with it; but it is significantly slower than bare metal, especially when it comes to disk i/o. One of my responsibilities for work is creating and maintaining a custom Fedora distribution. This requires building ...

    read more
  • iPhone Tech Talk Seattle

    Posted in Blog on Mon 02 November 2009
    by bcl
    - iPhone Objective C

    Today is the Seattle iPhone developer talk event. I'm headed for the ferry in a few minutes and figured I would give the Wordpress iPhone app a try. I'll update this post as I have time today.

    Well, it was a long day! I used twitter a bit ...

    read more
  • LinuxFest Northwest 2008 Presentation

    Posted in Blog on Thu 01 May 2008
    by bcl
    - Linux Bellingham Linuxfest KPLUG TACLUG BLUG

    Replace Yourself With Python

    • ais_download.py - setup passwords for product download website
    • mail-grep.py - Use IMAP and python to grep mail for specific strings
    • mail_customers.py - Use smtplib and python to announce new releases to customers
    • release.txt - Template file used by mail_customers.py
    • ssh_thread.py - Threaded skeleton to run ...
    read more
  • System Health Monitoring Software

    Posted in Software on Sun 20 January 2008
    by bcl
    - Python

    System Health Monitor for Linux is a handy Python program that will setup your system to generate RRD Graphs of network interface traffic, system load, memory usage, disk space and inode usage and graphs of the ...

    read more
  • Safari Books Online Review

    Posted in Blog on Sun 01 January 2006
    by bcl
    - Safari Books Review

    http://www.safaribooksonline.com/

    Full disclosure: I was give a 60 day 10 slot bookshelf account on Safari Books for the purposes of reviewing it, with the understanding that I would receive a full year free when I posted a review to the KPLUG webpage. No other strings were attached ...

    read more
  • LinuxFest Northwest 2005 Presentation

    Posted in Blog on Sun 01 May 2005
    by bcl
    - Linux Linuxfest Bellingham KPLUG TACLUG BLUG

    MSP430 Programming with Linux

    This is a presentation that I gave at Linux Fest Northwest 2005. It covers PC Board layout in Linux and programming the TI MSP430 microprocessor.

    • Slide images are here
    • Magic Point source is here

    This presentation was also the basis for an article published in Linux ...

    read more
  • PICprg

    Posted in Software on Sun 13 February 2005
    by bcl
    - Linux PIC

    PICprg is programmer software for Microchip PIC programmers. It is designed to work with any of the PC parallel port types of programers for the PIC16C84 processors. It features a very flexible configuration menu where you can set the parallel port pin for each function, and test them. Setup is ...

    read more
  • PhotoAlbum

    Posted in Software on Sat 12 February 2005
    by bcl
    - Perl Photos

    PhotoAlbum is a Perl program that creates a nice web friendly photo album of your pictures. It creates top level index files and individual image pages with optional captions, image statistics and file names using plain html for easy uploading to any web host. Navigation buttons make moving between pictures ...

    read more
  • SN-15 PalmOS AR-15 Serial Number List

    Posted in Software on Sat 12 February 2005
    by bcl
    - PalmOS AR-15 Guns

    This is a simple PalmOS application that contains all of the information that I could find on the serial number ranges for various AR-15 manufacturers indicating whether or not the rifle is a 'pre-ban' rifle or not.

    Select the manufacturer from the popup menu and all of the information that ...

    read more
  • TrollBridge Network Authentication

    Posted in Software on Sat 12 February 2005
    by bcl
    - Network Captive Portal

    TrollBridge is a set of Python scripts and iptable configuration that allows you to capture unknown network clients and authenticate them before allowing them to access the network (local, internet, 802.11 WiFi, etc.). It is based on the firewall script from NoCatSplash, but is written in Python instead of ...

    read more
  • up2dateiso

    Posted in Software on Sat 12 February 2005
    by bcl
    - Fedora ISO Updates

    up2dateiso is a Python script that will create current CD .iso images for RedHat 9, Fedora Core 1 and CentOS 3.1 with the latest rpm updates available. It also includes a custom KPLUG splash screen identifying when it was last updated.

    This project attempts to update downloaded iso images ...

    read more
  • Snapple Real Facts

    Posted in Blog on Tue 15 July 2003
    by bcl
    - snapple

    UPDATE 07/15/2003: I've put the Snapple Real Fact Page back up, even though I am no longer running a wiki. I'll start adding to my drinking list as well.

    Where did the list of Snapple Real Facts go, you are asking? Well here's the answer ...

    read more
  • Linux Fest Northwest 2003

    Posted in Blog on Thu 01 May 2003
    by bcl
    - Linux Linuxfest Bellingham KPLUG TACLUG BLUG

    For me the day began with at 5am, scrambling to make sure I remembered to bring everything -- laptop, Zaurus, cat-5 cable, cellphone, digital camera, USB to serial adapter, camera cable for downloading pictures (I ought to be able to do that with the Zaurus, shouldn't I?), etc. I wasn ...

    read more
  • Olympic Arms Phoenix Rising Event

    Posted in Blog on Sat 16 September 2000
    by bcl
    - Olympic Arms AR-15 Guns Phoenix Rising

    UPDATE 11/17/2001 I'm a bit tardy in this update, the new Olympic Arms building is done and open for business. I haven't had the chance to make it down myself.

    I am lucky enough to live about an hour away from Olympic Arms in Olympia, Washington ...

    read more
  • Build an AR-15 Rifle

    Posted in Blog on Tue 01 February 2000
    by bcl
    - AR-15 Guns DIY

    Contents

    • Parts
    • Build
    • Problems
    • Range Report

    This HOWTO was written in 2000. Since then the prices on bare lowers has gone up a little and the 'assault weapons' ban has expired. I'd like to dedicate this page to the memory of my friend Mike Jackson who died in March ...

    read more
  • XfreeCD audio CD player

    Posted in Software on Wed 02 December 1998
    by bcl
    - X CD Player
    XfreeCD screenshot

    XfreeCD was one of my first Linux projects, it is a audio CD player application that takes its visual design from Nate Smith's freeCD. Development of XfreeCD stalled when I switched to using xmms to play all my music after ripping all of it it to ogg format using ...

    read more