lifestyle of a dying network admin

F5 BIGIP LTM Reboot Script

2011-09-03T16:58:00.002+10:00

In an effort to ensure the best performance and stability of our two BIGIP LTM 6400 Load Balancers I have created a script to synchronise and reboot the units regularly.

This script runs a series of checks before rebooting the unit.

Check Active/Standby state based upon the output of bigpipe failover show
Check Peer status (up/down) - based upon the result of ping -c 1 -w 5 peer ('peer' is the hostname of the peer BIGIP)
Check the uptime to see when the last time the unit was started, if under a given period then don't reboot
Check configuration synchronisation status based upon the output of bigpipe config sync show

If the configuration is not in sync then it will attempt to synchronise the configuration using bigpipe config sync all and check the status of the synchronisation again. If the configuration is still not in synch it will exit and not reboot the unit.

Each check/task will output to STDOUT and syslog (facility: local0.notice tag: BIGIP-ADMIN-SCRIPT). Also a result file (/tmp/reboot-cron-job-result) that will be left in place until next run and will also be e-mailed to 'user@domain.tld' (change this to suit your environment).

The same reboot.sh script is used on each unit.

Still some tidying up to do - like using a lockfile and better error handling like using 'set -e' and 'set -u' and traps.

/home/admin/reboot.sh

I run this script using a cron job that occurs at the start of our weekly maintenance window. You can also use this script as a safe way to force a failover and reboot.

Motorcycle trip to Mt Tamborine

2011-08-30T16:17:00.000+10:00

Ended up going to North Tambourine as it was close enough to try out the bike yet far enough to still be interesting.

Left the Sunshine Coast about 3pm Friday arvo after about 30min packing the bike. At this point my thoughts about the soft rear spring were confirmed and had only a few inches of travel left before hitting the stops. The agreed solution is to install 'heffer springs'. The handling and steering weren't affected so we continued on.

First stop over was at Wildhorse Mtn to check the luggage and to scoff down a Beefy's pie in front of my celiac girlfriend Julie, she had a carrot or something I think :D. I rolled my pie induced rotund arse back onto the bike and we were on the road once more.

Next stop was at the Yatala pie shop. The temptation for a Pie shop crawl was tempting but I was already pushing it with the pillion... Luggage still attached to the back ([plug]thanks Andy for the quality straps and panniers[/plug]). Onwards up to the camp ground.

The twisty mountain road up to North Tamborine was... interesting. I have an aftermarket centre-stand on the KLR that sits fairly low so this made for quite a few sparks on the tight bends given all the weight - even at rather conservative speeds and with sufficient lean by us. Was still faster around them than the cars so all was well.

Made it with 30min to spare before it got too dark so we managed to pick a decent spot to set up camp and have a hot shower (hot showers are critical for motorcycling in the colder months I rkn, but I'm soft).

Woke up the next morning to splatters of water on my face. It was absolutely soaking outside and it had exceeded the cheap tent's wet weather rating of 1 drop per hour. This was when I discovered that when I had hopped off the bike to go for a walk about the camp to find a spot the day before I had left my winter gloves on the seat, but didn't put them back on when I moved the bike... found two soaked gloves laying on the ground and I think wearing those wet gloves was the worst part of the trip.

So back on the bike to go touring/walking around the local national parks all day. With the idea of dryness being a distant memory we managed to see most of the local parks and wildlife but the views were non-existant given the rain. However we did have a great breakfast and triple shot coffees at the 'Spice of Life Cafe and Deli' which was a nice, warm spot and I think we managed to dry our fingers which I promptly stuck back into the soaked gloves.

Eventually we made it back to camp and figured that we weren't going to last much longer in the wet so we made an excutive decision to move camp to the 'Rainbow Station'. This was a kind of campground childcare facility that looked like it hadn't been used since the early 80's given the decore and funishings. Also we were the only people there so we figured no one would be worried about us messing up the facilities with our wet clothes.

With our newly restored temperaments we had a go at using all of the hotwater by laying in the fetal position in the shower stalls for a few hours twitching in ecstacy every so often.

We then set out in the rain again to get mexican from "Sam's Chilli Den" which we had eyed off while visting the tourist info centre. After making ourselves fat on nachos and tortillas we went back to camp and slept as well as one can with a thin matress on cold concrete.

Next morning brought the best looking weather I've seen for quite a while. It was a fresh clear slightly cloudy day just right for going for an extended motorcycle tour of the area. After breakfast we went out to check out the 'Glow-worm cave' (rip off!) and the botanical gardens (very good, especially the Japanise garden). Then we had a German lunch at the Tatra Winery (nice view, food was basic and expensive - wished I checked the reviews but it was a random stop off, the place down the road a bit seemed a lot better) and then went off for a ride to Beechmont and back via Mt Nathan. Got RBT'd too and the usual story of "we've already scraped a motorcyclist off the road today" seems everytime I get tested a motorcyclist dies...

Monday we packed up and set home via the inland route via Beaudesert/Boonah and up past Wivenhoe/Somerset since it was a nice day for a ride and I wanted to avoid traffic. Making sparks and bottoming out every so often but still maintaining 110kph* with ease further maintaining my view that the KLR650 is still the ass (given that that the '08 series looks like a KLR250 bonked a ER-6f) of motorcycles given a few cheap mods.

All in all it was a good trip. Things I learnt:

Re-inforced my view that it's best to stick to camp cooking as it's cheap and you can't be disappointed
Weather doesn't matter - it just makes it something more to remember
Always have wet gear and dry gear, and keep the dry stuff dry!

2011-08-05T09:30:00.001+10:00

A little while ago I went for a burl with a friend from Victoria - here's the post and check out his blog about his trip around Oz:

http://stu-h.tumblr.com/post/7966743373/stopping-for-coffee-sunshine-coast-tour-with

F5 BIGIP LTM Maintenance Page Update for v10

2011-07-04T09:15:00.003+10:00

The folks at F5 devcentral have kindly provided a number of 'Maintenance Page' examples that allow you to host a page directly from the BIGIP LTM and display it automatically when all pool members go off-line. The example I used is http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/LTMMaintenancePage.html (login required, registration is free).

However there are a few changes required to get it working with the latest version of TMOS (v10).

Follow the instructions provided in the aforementioned link and change them as follows:

Create iRule Data Groups with the following information:

maint_index_html_class

General Properties
Name: maint_index_html_class
Partition: Common
Type: (External File)

Records
Path/Filename: /var/class/maint.index.html.class
File Contents: String
Key/Value Pair Selector: :=
Access Mode: Read/Write

The file will need to look like the following (add "index.html" := to the beginning of existing example):

main_index_logo_class

General Properties
Name: maint_index_logo_class
Partition: Common
Type: (External File)

Records
Path/Filename: /var/class/maint.logo.png.class
File Contents: String
Key/Value Pair Selector: :=
Access Mode: Read/Write

The file will need to look like the following (add "logo.png" := to the beginning of the existing example):

generic_irule_maintenance_page

Change [lindex $::maint_index_html_class 0] with [class element -value 0 maint_index_html_class]
Change [b64decode [lindex $::maint_logo_png_class 0]] with [b64decode [class element -value 0 maint_index_logo_png_class]]

F5 BIGIP and Blackboard Collaboration Server

2011-05-31T20:51:00.021+10:00

Blackboard Collaboration Server is a separate, optional, web server that provides virtual classroom and chat tools. As part of the university’s Blackboard application upgrade I have been asked to develop a way to add resilience to the collaboration server side of the application where possible.

The brief is to provide failover only. The reason for this is that the collaboration server is not “load balancing aware” in that it assumes that it will be hosted on a single host. To provide rudimentary fail-over capability I have set up a method that will switch all sessions to another host should the active host fail. However clients will stay on the new host until it fails and only then switch all sessions to the other. The key word here is ‘all’ because it’s important to keep all sessions on the same host.

From a users perspective; in the event of an active host outage they will lose connectivity but will be able to log back in straight away and continue until such a time the alternative host fails. This prevents them from being switched over only to be kicked again when the prior host has been restored and also ensures that ALL sessions are sent to a single host and not spread across multiple host, so everyone is in the same chatrooms.

My first idea was to adapt BIGIP’s Priority Group capability however this presented the same problem where I could not ‘stick’ the clients to a server. As soon as a same or higher priority server was restored the sessions would be sent to the new host effectively splitting the chat rooms. Also load balancing will take place on member servers of the same priority.

So I did a bit of digging around and discovered a method of using an iRule to provide me with the capability to ‘stick’ sessions based upon an arbitrary number in this case I used the TCP Port number.

The iRule is as follows:

CLIENT_ACCEPTED is an event that is triggered when a connection has been established between a client device and the BIGIP.

‘persist uie’ is where I am manipulating the connection persistence and in this case the Universal Inspection Engine. Here I am simply setting a integer, can be any number but I have chosen to use the connecting TCP port number ([TCP::local_port]). This fixes the session persistence to a single host, preventing load-balancing.

The following BIGIP configuration has been tested as working by business systems analyst using a combination of application logs, BIGIP statistics and packet captures. He confirmed what traffic was being sent on which ports - Port 8010 is used for the majority of user generated traffic that must be kept on a single host. Port 8443 is used to transport application specific information but does not carry anything that is user generated and therefore does not require persistence.

The aforementioned iRule is referenced by a ‘Universal Persistence’ profile as follows:

And then reference that Univeral Persistence profile from a Performace Layer 4 type Virtual Server like so::

Another Virtual Server is required for HTTPS traffic however this does not require any special configuration and is set up as a typical HTTP type Virtual Server e.g:

The above configuration refers to a six member/node pool. Each member runs both the general Blackboard application and the Collaboration Service. We have yet to load test the combination of the application and collaboration services and how they influence how the BIGIP balances the load across the members - considering using ‘Observed (node)’ as opposed to the current ‘Observed (member)’ method since the same nodes are used in multiple pools. Although at some stage I would like to look at uses Dynamic Ratio if it can play nicely with persistent connections.

References:
http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/CLIENT_ACCEPTED.html
http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/persist.html
http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/archived_products/big-ip/manuals/product/bigip4_5admin/BIGip_uie.html

Also take note of:
http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/4000/100/sol4166.html

Windows Wireless Clients and the X6148V-GE-TX Ethernet Switching Module

2011-05-28T23:06:00.036+10:00

Burnt hard by a bug that exists in a place that makes plenty of sense when you find it but not so much when you’re looking at the symptoms.

I was tasked with establishing an EduRoam presence at a University. Since there was already a suitable wireless infrastructure in place all I needed to do was build a FreeRADIUS server, hook it into the EduRoam federated RADIUS and point the two Cisco 4404 controllers dressed as a WiSM (Wireless Services Module) at it so they authenticate EduRoam clients. Easy!

Getting FreeRADIUS communicating nicely with EduRoam was made more difficult than it needed to be. The configuration information provided from EduRoam was sketchy and inaccurate. It wasn’t until I decided to chuck it out and build the FreeRADIUS configuration from scratch that it worked. EduRoam have some strange ideas on what should be sent on the outer TLS tunnel... it’s the inner tunnel that’s important, the other is just establishing an anonymous TLS connection to the local RADIUS server which will then pass the inner-tunnel to their home campus RADIUS.

Okay, that was a bit tedious however that should be the hard part over with. Authentication was working nicely with the local LDAP directory (Novell eDirectory) and with other federated entities, tested with accounts from James Cook University, AARNET and the Australian Catholic University. Just the simple task of setting up a WLAN on the WiSM and confirming that it works with EduRoam as I had been using my trusty Mikrotik RouterBoard RB433 for testing. Associate a laptop to the new wlan, go to open google and was presented with a rather slow web experience that would basically stall on the first image that tried to load. However pings were fine so end to end connectivity was all there.

Odd. Maybe I left something out/in or perhaps the RADIUS was setting some kind of QoS value on the controllers that I wasn’t aware of. Checked all that out, nope all good. Maybe it’s the laptop? Try a little netbook running Jolicloud - works fine. Okay, lets check with another laptop - win7 - fail! Macbook - works! A Windows wireless client + WiSM + EduRoam problem?? Hang on, lets try the Intranet, works! Lets try a proxy server, works! This is getting annoying, so it’s a Windows wireless client + WiSM + EduRoam + FWSM/NAT + Internet problem??

The next 8 months consisted of running every conceivable check on the data path between a Windows wireless client and the Internet. The Cisco TAC had crawled over the WiSM - all good, the FWSM, hmm old untrusted software, install another one! test again - all good, even the ASR - nope, all good.

So I figured that it must be something I’m just not doing right. I blew away my test environment which consisted of a C4402 wifi controller and C1131AG/C1142N LWAPs, and the second FWSM running the latest software and rebuilt it. However when I did this I had physically relocated all the kit (except FWSM of course) from the data centre to the foyer just outside. In doing this I had disconnected the C4402 from the C6513 and plugged it into a C3750 I had set up for the link between the APs and controller and the trunk back into the general network. This configuration worked!

The test environment at this stage

So what did introducing a C3750 or simply moving it elsewhere on the network do to fix the issue? This made me think there was something suss going on with the chassis and/or connecting switching modules.

By now the TAC had grown tired of my pokes and prods so I gave our Cisco account manager a nudge and the SR was escalated and an e-mail that was CC’d to ‘Cisco Australia’ popped into my inbox from the Cisco Switching team asking for a webex session so they could waterboard the 6513 chassis that housed the WiSM and FWSM.

The phone call started at 10am Monday morning and didn’t end until 3pm.

We worked through each stage of the data path again. Luckily they had the history of all the other tests I had done so I didn’t have to do many of the captures again. We narrowed down to the X6148V-GE-TX switching module. This was the one element that shared something in common with all the different combinations I had tried. The C4402 test controller was connected to it along with the link to the ASR/Internet. So I connected the C4402 to a port on the module (issue present, not working), ran a capture. Then moved the C4402 to a X6724-SFP module (no issue pressent, working) and ran another capture. Then the TAC guys ran a comparison between the two caps. It seems the X6148 was silently dropping packets, small ones, particularly ACKs from the client - egress to the ASR/Internet.

Gentlemen, we had hit Cisco bug CSCeb67650:

WS-X6548-GE-TX & WS-X6148-GE-TX may drop frames on egress

Packets destined out the WS-X6548-GE-TX or the WS-X6148-GE-TX that are less than 64 bytes will be dropped. This can occur when a device forwards a packet that is 60 bytes and the 4 byte dot1q tag is to added to create a valid 64 byte packet. When the tag is removed the packet is 60 bytes. If the destination is out a port on the WS-X6548-GE-TX or the WS-X6148-GE-TX it will be dropped by the linecard....

WLC drop TCP ack from wireless client to wired

Symptom: Wireless client has problem loading certain web pages. Conditions: client connected to wireless controller, and has problem loading web pages from certain web sites. Specifically has problem loading pictures. A wired packet capture shows the ack coming from the wireless client are been drop on the controller. Workaround: None

Since there was no workaround the only option was to shift the ASR/Internet link from the X6148 to a X6724. Fixed!

I plan to remove the X6148V-GE-TX from the chassis anyway along with a CSM. These are both ‘classic’ modules that don’t use “fabric switching” (2 x 20Gb dedicated) but instead use an older “bus” method (32Gb shared) thus causing the chassis as a whole to not run as well as it could. However if X61xx modules were all I had then I would be in a pickle.

Note:

Wondering why this only affected Windows clients? So am I.

ACKs aren't all the same 'size' given the comparisons between pcaps I've grabbed from public repos. However ACK frames during a HTTP transfer all seem to be 60bytes long no matter the OS.

I think it could be related to the differences between the Slow Start/Congestion Avoidance algorithms. The ACKs are probably being dropped no matter which OS is sending them, however some OSs might be better at recovering. Something to test. Although this problem shows indiscriminate dropping of 60byte frames so how can they recover??

I haven't been able to find a decent comparison between *nix/BSD/MacOS and Win* TCP stacks. It would be an interesting test to get a Linux box running the same algorithms as a Windows box. When I pull the X6148 out I'll toss it into the test 6509 and hang a test webserver off of it.

Zimbra Part II

2010-08-08T09:01:00.000+10:00

I mentioned a while ago that I will be rolling out a Zimbra mail server. It's been a hard slog but I think I've got it together enough to roll out into production.

I had some grief with bad sectors showing up on the system disk I used. They showed up in the swap partition. When bad sectors show up here applications that are using that virtual memory will show behaviour akin to faulty memory. This meant that when I was migrating e-mail from the old mail server to the Zimbra server it would cause Zimbra to use a bit of swap memory for various things and come across these bad sectors in turn causing it to crash.

Having pinpointed the fault to bad sectors (using dmesg to see the disk errors) I went about imaging from the old disk to a new one. The system disk isn't mirrored, Zimbra lives on a mirror but the system disk stands alone - you can call it a compromise of costs if you like. However the cheap onboard RAID controller is either set to all SATA ports as RAID or none. I have to set up single disk stripes in order to add a single disk. This means that I have to contend with the obscure device mapping between the BIOS, RAID BIOS and the linux device mapper. Juggling all these around I managed to get the new disk in and booting without failed mounts and what not.

I decided after all this to clear the user accounts and aliases and refresh them. The reasons for doing this is that I modified the zmprov script for converting the passwd file to a zmprov command list to include UID and GIDs plus the SambaID. I could have created another script that simply modified each user however I felt it better to run thought the process of clearing and restoring users again just to be sure.

I also updated Zimbra to the latest 6.0.7 release. I also tested the shared calendaring and resource scheduling a bit further to make sure it fits the requirements - all works quite well and I like the different permission levels for managing resources.

I think it would be possible to make a Zimbra appliance of sorts so I wouldn't mind having a go at scripting the installation and packaging it up into a small power efficient server that can be easily used by small businesses or as departmental mail servers. Could be something to add to my consulting work on the side along with cheap and efficient network consulting.

On That Of Training

2010-07-28T18:57:00.002+10:00

ICT (Information and Communications Technology) careers are dynamic and forever evolving so for someone to succeed in the ICT industry they will need to pursue further development. People who are not able to maintain and extend their knowledge may find themselves in a difficult situation later on when they wish to change jobs or advance in their existing one. Thus it is important that workers keep up to date with the industry and make or accept efforts to retrain and extend their knowledge so they can succeed.

An employer should consider a professional development plan for all employees - from induction to departing. It can be treated in the same way as superannuation in that it is something that will benefit the employee's future and provides incentive that can attract high quality/skilled people who acknowledge the value of continuous personal development. There is also a benefit for the employer in that the worker will be motivated, innovative/creative and satisfied - all this equals reduced staff turnover and increased productivity. Thus it is to the benefit of both parties that professional development continues.

The argument against providing training is that it may in fact increase turnover. Some examples are that an employee may take advantage of the training with the intention of moving on straight afterwards (the military actively encourages this for example) or if the training is not appropriate or lacking quality it may cause the employee moral to drop and cause them to look for work elsewhere. However it can come down to a matter of perspective - instead of looking at reducing turnover, look at how the training will improve service to the customer. Therefore if the training balance can be found then customer satisfaction will increase and turnover will decrease.

Many small to medium organisations do not have or promote training programs. They tend to either 'leech' from larger organisations workforces to complement their specialist skill requirements or prey upon graduates that are willing to accept reduced pay in exchange for experience. This can be catastrophic for the worker as they are buying into career stagnation if they do not under go self-study or training outside of the workplace. In some cases it can pay off for the employee, say in the case of a grassroots/niche organisation that is just starting off and becomes a successful enterprise. In such cases being on the original team can carry opportunities in management, investments and opportunities outside the organisation. Thus it is important for the worker to continuously monitor and compare their development with their peers and either raise concerns with the employer or take their training requirements into their own hands.

The kind of development provided should be applicable to the task at hand and continue to be useful throughout the employees career. The type of development can range from general wide ranging subjects to highly specialised areas. For example a business manager would appreciate training in general management practices whereas a Network Administrator may opt for training in a specific range of products such as Cisco Telephony equipment. Providing the wrong training can have a negative effect to the employee - if they do not feel the training is appropriate or lacking in quality then their motivation will plummet more so that if they received no training at all. Therefore it is important that the training is targeted to the needs of the employee and their tasks.

The reason for writing this little article, apart from the practice, is that I am coming up to a crossroads in my career. I have not received any training from my current employer and it has been three years. Now I am left with a decision to either restart my IT training myself by refreshing my CCNA(+wireless and voice) and renew my Diploma of IT (Networking) or do I start something entirely different as a matter of a career change?

If I had received further training from my employer over the last few years then I would not be making such a drastic decision as I would be content in my current role knowing that I had a good future. Currently my motivation is low and I find it difficult to overlook the unattractive aspects of my job. Should I leave for a more challenging job with better conditions and training options then the cost of replacing me will far outweigh the cost of three years of training. Take note that salary does not come into my decision. Thus I am the prime example of why it is important to maintain a training schedule.

Oh, help me improve my writing - I'm open to corrections.

One Of The Situations I Find Myself In

2010-07-26T11:36:00.006+10:00

The other day at work reception called and said that they had an Ian from Summerville High School on the phone wanting to know about what kind of software packages were in use by the Zoo. Straight away I had my doubts because we receive many calls from sales people wanting to get a foot in the door which is made easier by developing an understanding of our IT environment. Since it was still a doubt I decided to take the call.

Speaking to Ian on the phone he said that he would like to know more about the database systems in use by the Zoo. He said that he would be bringing in about 16 girls from Summerville High in Brisbane and part of their current education is about databases. It was strange because I would consider the zoo to be the last place to go on an excursion to learn about databases. Unless he had the foresight of knowing that we use databases to track our animals?

I compromised - I told him that he could call me and I would go out and talk about how the zoo uses various software packages with a database back-end.

The day came and I didn't receive a call at 9am when he said he would. I put it down to a failed sales guy and went on with my usual tasks. However at about midday I receive a call from him and it turned out that he was there but with only six girls. So I had to give an impromptu talk about database systems in the Zoo environment to six high school girls. It's not something I had expected to do while working as a IT guy in a zoo.

I think I taught them something. I haven't given a talk to a group about IT topics for sometime so I forgot to do things like gauge their existing knowledge or try to obtain more feedback from them in the form of questions and revisions. It did remind me how much I liked talking about the subject to others and I miss the training side of what I do.

It was but a small break from the mundane.

The Beginning Of Another Change

2010-07-26T10:07:00.007+10:00

My foray into living alone in a unit has not worked out. While there have been no negatives to speak of - it doesn't feel right. I'm finding that my mind wonders into one of those feedback loops. It is a bad habit of mine that can perpetuate if I can not find suitable distractions. Thus I feel it is time to set in motion the wheels of change once more.

I met someone who had recently made a huge change in her lifestyle for a number of reasons and it has been inspirational. She caused me to reconsider my present state and I discovered that I am not content. I want something different; I want to be able to chase my desires without being obligated or anchored to things like a mortgage and a job.

Maybe I should go back to share housing and perhaps investigate house sitting? This will let me save money and maybe I will meet interesting people as a result. It will also allow me to change the scenery more often and perhaps relocate to other parts of the country or even the world should the possibility arise.

Travelling is something I know I should do. I will renew my passport and set up the motorbike to allow me to ride around the country and eventually take it over seas when I'm satisfied that I can address any issues I may encounter.

I am investigating further education and working a second job. Such as freelance writing and specialist ICT consulting. I intend to do part time online courses not only to improve my skills but to give me career options.

I feel that I would be financially better off if I didn't have a mortgage and I can share the living expenses with others. I intend to sell/give away most of my things so I end up with just my clothes, car and motorbike and of course a laptop with a mobile Internet service.

I am operating on a six month time frame. This will give me time to finish fixing up the unit and to off load my non-essential assets. March next year marks one year of owning the unit so I would like to be able to sell it by then at the very latest.

Once I have sold the unit and removed all financial obligations I will be free to do as I wish. That's the current goal although I dislike the concept of having goals.

Also since I've taken a greater interest in writing - I should make it a habit to update this blog more often!

Zimbra, once more

2010-05-24T08:37:00.003+10:00

I remember playing around with the Zimbra Collaboration Suite when it first came into public existence sometime ago. I was working for a different company back then and was looking at it from an ISPs perspective, it was good but wasn't exactly there yet but development was well underway in that regard. I played around with it a bit and stuck it on the 'neat tech to check out later' pile.

Later on and a change of jobs I looked at it again, this time from a medium enterprise perspective. This time I was looking specifically at the per user licensing for use of the Outlook Connector. The costs were okay but the limited testing in our environment proved it to be a bit hit and miss, although I contribute a large portion of the blame towards the lack of any formal directory service or structure.

Now that I'm presented with a rapid upgrade requirement to save our e-mail services (due to shortsightedness of management) I'm having to jump straight into rolling out Zimbra with limited testing. So I blew away a idle Win2k3 SBS server and installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server and tossed on Zimbra 6.0.6.1. I did do some testing beforehand on a xen vm just to make sure it would install and operate okay before I wasted a good 2k3 install.

Currently I'm impressed with how far ZCS has come along. There's plenty of documentation available in the wiki and forums and the 'zmprov' provisioning utility is working wonders with shifting user accounts over from the Sendmail/Dovecot/PAM setup on the old mail server. I am using imapsync to copy the 143GB of email over thanks to the handy scripts provided by the ZCS community.

One thing I like in particular is the ability to dump the {crypt} passwords straight from the shadow file into Zimbra's LDAP - no need to have everyone change their passwords. Although it is recommended and I will get them to do so after I'm satisfied that Zimbra is working okay.

I will update this post with a run down on the scripts I used with any modifications I made.

Almost finished the first room

2010-03-28T20:02:00.004+10:00

While I haven't been making as much progress as I wanted too - I have almost finished a room. Here are the before and after pictures of the paint/light fittings:

I also bought curtains and all the bits to hang them. The old ones were horrid and the fittings were cheap and bent up. I'll update this post with better pictures later. Now the room is pleasant and nice to be in - after the carpet has been done I think it'll be drastic improvement.

Unit: Week One

2010-03-13T10:51:00.003+10:00

Life in a unit isn't too bad. I guess my fears of an evil Body Corporate and hostile neighbours living in each others pockets were exaggerated. A good number of people must live in units all over the world, many involuntarily, so the stories of horror and woe could be made with slight artistic license.

So far I've shifted in most of the furniture, just the bookshelves to go. Manufactured the flat packed lounge suite - 30min per bolt trying to line them up to their respective tappings which can only be located by feel. Done the 'new house' shop of buying duplicates of all the things you haven't unpacked yet but have forgotten about. Made the initial dump run to toss out the huge pile of cardboard packing that was looking like a ready made bonfire - cutting it into pieces small enough to fit in the back of the car was an interesting exercise in blade handling.

I got the trusty mythbox unpacked and set up. Set myself up with green tea and wheat biscuits to bathe myself in the glory of mind dulling television only to be greeted with a rather disheartening "No Signal". A blank look followed by a disgruntled "HMMMM" later I plucked the wall plate holding the antenna jack off the wall and discovered all the metal braid had corroded into an interesting dark green pile of dust. Some dingus ran unsheathed, unshielded coaxial cable through the concrete block wall. Called the Body Corporate and a antenna lad will be in on Monday sometime. At least I have a bunch of movies and music to tie me over until then.

I also got the phone line activated and working. Although apparently it takes two attempts to do so. On Sunday a contractor came out and said something about having to pull another line from the MDF (Main Distribution Frame, in this case a single 10 pair kron block in a metal box...) to the unit since he could not get a single through it. Off he went with promises of coming back tomorrow with the gear. I thought it a bit suss as he didn't appear to know what he was doing, I was about to test it myself when the contract handling call centre thingy called me and said that a new appointment for Thursday afternoon was made to come and install the line. Er okay whatever sure. Basically the first guy didn't exist and the new guy found a line at the exchange and connected it through to my humble dwelling (although he had to do this twice since the first line was a recently disconnected service and couldn't be released just yet). No new cables, dial tone and a phone number - YAY! Now my DSL router sits there flashing in desperation for DSL synchronisation, that will take another few days, if I'm lucky.

I sent of my updated contact details along with a application to keep a cat (Gary) to the Body Corporate. For the cat application I used some random example request from the net to write it - I guess it came across as rather legal sounding because they thought I was about to take them to court over it or something. $82 to have them ask all the owners straight away or wait until July for the next AGM - I opted to wait until July... Gary will have to extend his holiday and spend time at my brothers place, asbestos, rusty nails, the lot.

This weekend I'll try and get the rest of the stuff moved in and then try to start on the painting. I know it's silly to paint afterwards but meh. I live for working around things. I'll feel better about the place with a new colour I reckon.

Oh, and I need to re-wire or replace the hotwater system. The tiny 50ltr electric doesn't go well with off-peak tariff. Can't even get two 4 minute showers out of it. So its either an expensive to run 50ltr on permanent tariff or a cheaper to run new 250ltr. I'll have to sacrifice storage space to fit the larger system though - unless I get fancy and relocate it up towards to ceiling... hmm.

Smoke City

2010-02-20T10:05:00.004+10:00

What ever happened to Smoke City? I find myself listening them on repeat for days at a time and I still don't grow tired of the diverse sounds that in my opinion were beyond their time. Acid Jazz and Trip Hop make an awesome combination and I think I'll have another look around for other groups with a similar combination.

A bit of searching around finds that Nina Miranda more recent works fall under the group names of ZEEP and Shrift. (why must bands insist on using MySpace as their one and only online presence...).

Western Europe have it over the rest when it comes to Trip Hop I reckon.

waiting waiting waiting

2010-02-18T20:56:00.002+10:00

Still hanging with the folks while I wait for settlement day. While it has been okay and I'm normally pretty good with my parents I can see myself getting agitated over something or another - although I usually grin and bear such things to my own detriment. Just keep thinking of all the money saved.

I've been thinking about what I would like to do first to the new place. I'm thinking about throwing up a studwall to cover up some of the painted block wall to give the place a sleek modern retro look. I like retro but I don't like retro 'clutter'. So I'm going to paint the whole place China White and keep the earthy brick feature walls in place. I will use textured paint as a feature. Colours are provided by the feature brick, timber and accessories like cushions, lighting and other additions.

The one of the lessons I learnt from the last place was to keep to a basic theme. Nothing niche or special. Just a generic colour scheme that blends in with almost anything. You make a place unique using the day to day items you add, like your furniture, lighting, soft furnishings. If you feel like a change then you swap out the cushions on the lounge, no need to paint the walls again or lay a another tile floor.

Simultaneous TV Output

2010-01-22T10:12:00.002+10:00

Why can't current graphic adapters support simultaneous TV-Output these days? What changed for them to disable this feature which was common on older chipsets/cards?

Currently suffering from a problem where one of our Audio Visual PCs has died and required a new mainboard etc. Stick in a current PCI-E nVidia something a rather with it's TV out only to discover that it can not run both displays at once. We use the TV-Output to send video to a monitor which in turn feeds a visual mixing desk and outputs to the big screen in the Crocosium.

Now we're trying to track down a card that allows this which isn't as easy as we had hoped.

Moving House

2010-01-21T10:11:00.005+10:00

In recent times I have sold the house that I was sharing the purchase of with my brother. We sold it privately, only using a realestate agent to handle advertising and contacts. We listed it on November 19th (2009) and had it sold, for cash, on December 18th (2009). It was advertised for $395,000 and we sold for $385,000 which is basically what we wanted and considering there is no $7,000 - $10,000 commission we did very well.

Here are our costs for selling the house:

Agent Assist Fee: $495/3mths.
Conveyancing Cost: $660
Mortgage Closure: $200 (+$800 for early closure but that was waved)
Professional House Cleaning (inc carpets): $755
Removal Fees (Self moving): $40 fuel, $270.09 materials, $132/mth storage

Total: $2420.09 + $132/mth

Since then I have a contract on a 2 bedroom unit for $224,000 which was advertised for $229,000. $1000 deposit paid on acceptance. The costs for purchase are as follows:

Conveyancing Cost: $605 Solictor + $750 Searches + $2,240 Stamp Duty
Building Inspection: $240
Pest Inspection: $200
Bank Fees: $5,657.84
Removal Fees: $40 fuel

Total: $11962.84

Therefore my changing of properties has cost $14382.93. Mind you that parts of this amount of lumped onto the mortgage and other parts have been shared with my brother so the actual cash amount will be less.

Throwing these figures down has made me relise how much it actually costs for a change of scenery. During the change over you continue on paying this bill and that without looking at the whole picture - it's enlightening and somewhat scary when you do see the totals.

For the next month I will stay with my parents with the cat saving as much as I can while I'm free of a mortgage to pay for the inevitable maintenance fees. The rates and body corporate fees total $4,000pa so that's $80 a week plus bills of about $50 a week. Mortgage repayments will be something like $300 a week. Yet to do up a accurate budget because I'll need to see how much I consume first.

Netrider QLD - The Kilcoy Loop (November 29th 2009)

2009-12-01T21:47:00.008+10:00

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

I snapped awake at 5:30AM met with a peacing ray of sunlight slowly toasting my left eyelid and the cat practicing its latest interrogation techniques on my right eyelid. Summer is here. With summer comes longer days and with longer days there is promise of extreme heat followed swiftly by storms with more wind and hail than rain. It is the day of the November '09 Brisbane Netriders ride and what greater purpose for a ride than to show defiance of today's forecast? I stumbled around for the next half hour and suddenly found myself at the local BP service station topping up the tyres, already squinting against the light and sweating in full gear on the sun baked forecourt. I had to get moving quickly to maintain a reasonable level of sanity, whatever that may be for someone keen to be riding on such a day. Nothing can hold me back.

The roads had a scattering of vehicles drifting along aimlessly whose occupants seemed to care more about being inside an airconditioned bubble than heading towards a particular destination. They stared with confused expressions at me as I rode past plowing through the heat shimmer that was oozing from the bitumen beneath. I can only guess what they must be thinking although as much as my ego demanded I'm sure it had nothing to do with awe or respect. I tune them out of my mind and the cars become blobs of potential obstacles between myself and where I wanted to be. In what seems like 10 minutes I arrive at the BP The Gap one hour earlier than I had intended, smugly confirmed by my watch, it was only 7:30AM. I top up the tank, add a bottle of water to the purchase and smile at the attractive girl behind the counter who was probably wondering why this leather clad sweaty mess with helmet hair was doing out on a day like this. I meander about until I find a shady spot on some stairs and watch the cars and bikes come and go.

Just as 8:25AM ticks over a black Yamaha XT660X pulls in nearby followed shortly by a red Honda VTR250 and a silver Yamaha FJR1300. The rest of the group flood into the car park within the next half hour and nearly on 9AM we notice a familiar rider pull in and start to check his tyres. Scotts RR has come for a quick blat up the mountain and accidentally stumbled upon the group so his hour run turned into a day. Transalp Tony almost made another ride with us but sadly a tensioner bolt was missing from his Transalp's swingarm that made things a little uneasy as you can imagine. 17SJS is organised as the TEC and the usual speech is given by Muttly we start on our way up Mt Glorious. I, and I'm sure the members of the group who ran the last attempt, gave a thought to Curvy as we went through turn one with caution.

The ride up the mountain was at a good pace, enough to make me wonder if Muttly was a SBK rider in a past life as he flicks that large tourer through the bends like it was a bike quarter its the size, modestly suggesting that people can pass him if the goings slow. The scenic views of the valleys had shown that the haze caused by weeping gum trees had already started to build up. The morning sun allowed the trees to offer us a reasonable amount of shade without any nasty wet patches hiding in the turns. We arrived at the Tea House in good time and satisfied that our tyres were adequately warmed up for the downward stretch to Somerset Dam.

Scotts RR (Yamaha R6) and Liquid Force (Yamaha XT660X) take this opportunity to start off in front of the group to make the most of one of the better stretches of road. Muttly and I head off down leaving the group behind on the second bend. About two thirds down we discover a lone scooter that threatened to destroy our lines. However the scooter pulled over/lost control or simply got lost and we passed it quickly only to be greeted by more of the little monsters. We were lucky as one had broken down so they all gathered together like ants around one of their wounded allowing us to go around and continue unabated. We reached the first turn to find Scotts RR and Liquid Force almost having a nap beside the road for what must have been hours on their time. I corner marked and Muttly also waited for the main group to catch up before heading right towards Somerset. I waited there for a few minutes and found Callum (Hardhat, Kawasaki ZXR750) and Beatrice (Kawasaki Z750) but no 17SJS the TEC to be seen so I waited a little longer but took off when I saw an unknown group of bikes approaching.

The last time I did this section was last summer and nothing has changed. One day I would like to do it mid-spring just to make sure the grass does turn green at some stage and the air doesn't always scorch your throat. There is not much you can do at 100kph to cool down when the ambient air temperature is over 35°C apart from wishing bikes had A/C pipes that can plug into your helmet and jacket (patent pending). All I could do was hug the tank and get my head out of the wind. Half way along I discovered 17SJS in my mirrors which was a relief because I felt guilty for leaving them behind (Jared and Lesleigh, Suzuki GSXR750?). We blew through the small township/caravan park of Somerset Dam where I was incorrectly expecting the group to be parked however they were stopped at the boat launching point further on. Nice place and very popular, probably something to do with the heat as people were ignoring the high water contamination warning sign.

A short break here to cool off before setting off through the remainder of Somerset's twisties and onwards to the Kilcoy bakery. I don't mind this stretch as there are some nice twisties with 40-50kph hairpins that are banked nicely be it a bit corrugated and fast straights on rural roads the rest of the way. I caught up to Muttly again (sorry Mr Cruiser) and marked the corner again hoping that I got everyone since the TEC was assisting another rider back at the Dam. I continued on and found a fair few people taking advantage of the BP servo on the corner opposite the park so I waited there for a while wondering which bakery we were meant to stop at. Luckily when we started off again Muttly was waiting at the carpark entrance for the Kilcoy bakery just down the road. We stayed here for a while in the shade keeping our fluids up and cleaning our visors of dead bugs seeking salvation from the heat in our faces (thanks for the visor cleaner Hardhat!). 10 - 15 minutes later we're on the back way to Woodford.

This road was planned in the original ride to bypass roadworks that were occurring upon the Daguilar Highway between Kilcoy and Woodford. It takes us along Neurun Rd and past a correctional facility that looks ominously over us. It's a strange feeling doing an activity that many associate with utmost freedom past a facility which is built to do the exact opposite. I wonder if any of the occupants could see us happily zip past? A couple of single lane sections and a bridge with the occasional bend was all that we needed to negotiate, far more interesting than the highway anyway. We popped back out at Woodford where we stopped at the IGA and lurked in the shade again, I was readily offered $2 for water from Hardhat for which I'm greatly appreciative. It was taking us longer and longer to cool down as the day progressed so it wasn't until at least 20 minutes later that we pressed on to the Mt Mee lookout for the inevitable group photo.

I have been looking forward to the newly refurbished road up this side of Mt Mee and I wasn't disappointed. Good quality bitumen that was grippy and nice shoulders and the cambers were good. You can now maintain a good pace heading up without fear of loose rocks, potholes and gravel. There were a few cars to contend with and apparently a rather slow Honda Jazz too. The lookout was green as usual although the view was hazy and brown and not the vibrant green that I like to look at through the Autumn/Spring periods. The group photos where taken and the stop kept short so as to get the ride over with before any storms hit. I chose this point to head home back the way I came since this was the closest point on the ride.

From what I've heard a few riders got caught by hail and rain on the way home giving the ride the nickname 'The Heat and Hail Ride'. Hopefully it won't become routine. Many thanks to all those who attended and apologies if I didn't mention you in this write up - much gets glossed over with a larger group but you're all appreciated equally, just some more equally than others. I'm sad that TheBigD couldn't make it along and he was missed as our usual TEC, 17SJS did a excellent job of covering the TEC duties of this ride. A big thank you to Muttly for organising and leading. Look forward to riding with you guys next time.

Sooty

Razorback Road has been sealed!

2009-09-30T11:32:00.002+10:00

I mentioned sometime ago in my 'Sooty's Circuit' ride plan that if Razorback Rd was ever sealed then it would make one of the best circuits on the coast. Well, that time has come!

View Larger Map

Notes about MythTv and Nambour

2009-08-17T17:20:00.003+10:00

Just throwing this here so I remember in future.

The 'Sunshine Coast' channel list provided by shepherd causes me greif. I have a rather substantial antenna on my roof and the inclusion of ABC's Brisbane band causes myth to use the Brisbane ABC channels over the local ones. I get tuner lock, but in myth-frontend it shows no lock with 10% signal.

So I removed the 226.5MHz Transport and corrected the 767.5MHz transport to read the correct frequency of 767.625MHz (Bald Knob and Dulong towers). This fixes my ABC1/ABC HD/ABC3 channels. Probably don't need to correct the existing freq but meh.

Netrider QLD - The Gold Coast Hinterland (July 26th 2009)

2009-08-06T18:12:00.003+10:00

This is going to be a long ride. I had my doubts as to whether I had enough time in the day to get down there and back, and even if the little GPX250 would take it. All things considered there was nothing that was going to keep me from experiencing the popular Gold Coast hinterland on the bike with great friends.

A zombie that had a somewhat similar appearance to myself emerged from the den at 4AM. I fumbled around for an hour doing things like attaching the bike camera and packing a small bottle of oil just in case and then relising that I was still in my underwear as I was putting my helmet on. I got out on the road at 5AM and the visor instantly fogs up... So I cracked it open a notch every few kilometres until it got to the point where it simply condensated and I could see through the larger droplets. I'm new to this early morning riding thing and a breath deflector for the Shoei is on the short list.

It has been sometime since I had travelled along the Gateway Motorway and the new routes and roadworks were a surprise – scary too since I was the only person on the road and I was expecting to ride straight off the end of an unfinished suspended highway like something out of a Hollywood movie completing the worlds greatest creek jump into the Brisbane river. It wasn't until I had just popped over the Gateway bridge when I relised that I'm an hour early. Arriving at Springwood Maccas at 7AM for a 8:30AM ride start.

I got comfortable with a brekkie roll and coffee. While scoffing down the tasteless, yet filling, artificial produce I remembered that Maccas have free wifi – out comes the phone for checking the weather and the netriders ride thread preying that the ride wasn't cancelled due to the drizzle outside, it could have became a long way to get a plastic breakfast. During all this I counted 6 Police cars – seems that this Maccas is a favourite of the local constabulary. I did consider fashioning a rear fendor out of a brekkie roll wrapping and coffee cup.

About an hour later Benjamin78au arrives, followed by Geeth, ScottsRR and then TheBigD, Muttly and Tony. Ben and I went off to top up our tanks, getting slightly lost in the process. Once we were back we waited a little longer for any possible late comers and then we started along the Pacific Motorway southbound heading to Canungra.

This was mainly a 'transitional' route to get us onto the more interesting scenic roads. However I still found it interesting since its all new to me. The roads along this section were good and it appears that they have been upgraded to cope with the expanding housing estates that run along it. Not long before Brisbane joins the Gold Coast in the ever growing conurbation.

Arriving in Canungra we head a little futher into town and stop across from the DJ Smith Memorial Park just near the Outpost Cafe. Canungra is a nice town and it reminds me a lot of Kennilworth just with less cruisers. This is where I notice that the footage coming from my bike camera is all blurred and fogged up, must be due to the location of the camera or something. I gave it a clean and hoped that was all it needed.

Once we were rested and sorted we took off on the first leg of what can be summarised as 'awesomeness'. This was the worlds worth of twisties lined up ready to be cut into tidy lines with two wheels on a smooth surface like a kind of biker drug... (Edit: carried away with a metaphor...) It was an excellent time to practice hanging off as I was following ScottsRR and learning a lot – he was keeping good lines and was good to see where and when he setup and hung. We finished this stint at the Two Pines Cafe which was a slight change to the plan since the Valley View Cafe was closed (I think the sign said “Open Sundays, sometimes”). We looked for the rumoured Dinosaurs among the beautiful scenery and then searched for TheBigD's keys – which ended up being accidentally picked up by Tony as his Honda Transalp keys looked identical the TheBigD's VTRs, Givi topbox key and all, typical conformist Honda. We also chatted to a few other motorcyclist who were smoking next to the old fuel pump... We let them know we were from netriders and they said they'll check it out.

We had our pies and coffees and set off to Mudgeeraba along beautiful mountainous twisty roads that have it all, single lane valley roads and wooden bridges included. This is where I had a scary reminder of riding your own path and not fixating on the arse of the bike in front. I was just cruising behind the leader when all of a sudden on a closing radius corner I thought to myself – I'm not in my line, I'm in his! So I had to push hard to get the bike over but I touched the inside boot down which caused me to go wide. Should have had my toes on the pegs and kept to my own lines. I continued along with a sheepish grin knowing that the group behind were either laughing or hanging back a little further than usual.

There were some road works along the remainder of the section. Not usually an issue but I was behind a cage at this stage and ended up covered with road base mud. This stuff is like concrete and dried thickly on the front guards and then flaked off onto the bike and forks. This added to my existing paint chips and even got into my left hand fork dust seal and expanded to the point of cracking it! Ah well, new seals and fork oil for me; the mechanic and I are on a first name basis.

Arriving at the Caltex Service Station at Mudgeeraba I was of two minds of whether I should fill the bike up or not since I had approximately 150KM remaining. Of course I didn't! So I spent the remainder of the trip doing calculations of fuel efficiencies in my mind – next time I'll just fill up the damn thing. This was a short stop over and we were soon on our way to Mt Tamborine for a special lookout spot for a group photo.

Along this route we came across a 4WD that was pulled up on the side of the road. Nothing unusual here so half the group goes past then he just starts pulling out almost hitting the lad in front of me and causing me to brake rather heavily. He was oblivious to what he just did – the Victorian plates might explain it (hehehe).

We made it to Mt Tamborine all in one piece and took the group photo at the slight detour stop and then continued to the designated stop at a hang-glider launch park which was interesting for me because I've never seen one before. Nice area too, lots of trees. By this stage I could feel the fatigue really start to set in and my long distance riding skills put to the test. The longest I've ridden before was 500km and this was about that mark but still with a couple of hundred remining until home.

The final section took us down off the mountain and back down to Springwood where we started. I enjoyed Mt Tamborine and I look forward to doing it again sometime however I hope to stay in Brisbane the night beforehand so I can take it on while fresh. We all made it to Springwood without issue and a few left us mid-route to head home since they lived closer by and others stuck around to get something to eat before heading on home.

I had to leave after a small rest to beat the sun home but not before filling up at the Springwood BP and only managing to squeeze 10ltrs into the 18ltr tank, plenty left! I stopped off at Nudgee for a rest break and was about to head into the disabled persons toilet and I relised my mistake and turned to head for the correct toilet – however I failed to escape the attention of an elderly man behind me who said “not yet mate but soon” while pointing at my motorbike armour... touché. Made it home at 5:30PM, finishing a 650KM ride.

All in all it was a great introduction to the Southern Hinterlands for me and I look forward to doing it again – not too soon though. I believe everyone had a pretty good time as well and there'll be more group rides to follow.

Thanks to Muttly for organising and leading and to TheBigD for being the Tail End Charlie.

Us at the Hang Glider Launching Facility

Us at Mt Tamborine

Us at Canungra

Another on of us at Canungra

Climbing Mt Cooroora

2009-07-09T13:59:00.007+10:00

Last Sunday (5th July 2009) I climbed up Mt Cooroora (Pomona, QLD) with my future traveling buddies. The height above sea level is 412m and its a straight forward climb apart from some rock scrambling close to the top. Metal stairs have been added for the most difficult parts and a chain link guide is in place for most of the steeper sections.

We're using this mountain to guauge our fitness to climb Mt Kinabalu (4,101m) in Malaysia next year. I managed it okay but I would like to increase my fitness level still because 400m is a far cry from 4000m.

View from the top

View from the bottom

and so begins the training

2009-06-20T14:06:00.005+10:00

It's strange that a trip that is only a week long requires training and preparation 12 months before the event. Having said that we do intend on riding Tasmania and New Zealand not long after.

Shortly I will be scrambling up Pomona Mountain with a few experienced mountain climbers to learn the basics of survival on a cliff face. I'm pretty fit now but I feel that I've got a fair bit further to go if I want to do this trip comfortably. I may look at utilising a personal trainer for a bit just to see where I stand.

At the same time as going up and down mountains I'll be receiving professional off-road/adventure riding training. So soon I'll be better off-road than on! Once I get my unrestricted license I'll do further on-road training to make sure I'm good to go on a new bike should I get one.

Oh, Google Reader is awesome.

Helmet Camera

2009-06-10T09:07:00.006+10:00

I may have mentioned that I ordered a helmet camera from the UK. It's a 4Kam bullet camera that came along with a Goodmans GPDR1 (rebadged Mustek PVR-A1) portable multimedia device. I also got the optional litium-ion battery pack and splitter to power the camera and the recorder although the recorder has it's own lithium battery.

So far I've only just worked out how it all plugs together and did a quick record test to make sure it was all working. Now I'm charging the batteries since the battery pack requires a good 6 - 8hrs of charging.

If the weather is looking good for tomorrow (Isolated showers. Light winds and afternoon seabreezes) then I might give it a run. Although at this stage it will most likely be on Monday.

Here's a picture with a 20c coin for size comparison:

So far I'm very happy with the camera unit and its battery pack. The 520tvl resolution is fine for the PAL 4:3 ratio output (effective pixels: 752x582) apparently quite high for such cameras. It would be nice if it provided a wide aspect option like the V.I.O POV camera. It does get warm during use which makes me wonder how much power is being wasted - I think I read somewhere that it's difficult to make such things efficient. I'll have to reseach that further.

I have yet to test the longevity of the battery. Given the size and weight of the pack and the draw from the camera I should see at least 6hrs of use between charges. Its simple enough to use as it only has as single socket that is used for both charge and discharge. The power pack has a green light that shows when it is charging (drawing a current I guess).

I'm looking for a HD (720P or 1080i) recorder with some kind of solid state storage (SD, SSD) to go with the camera. I only got the recorder with the camera to test as it was cheap enough. The recorder provides quality that YouTube considers 'High Quality' when recoding with SP (Standard Play) however its limited by its 320x240 resolution. Mind you that such a low resolution means less storage required - 10MB a minute with SP and half that with LP. The specifications of the recorder stipulate a maximum of 512MB flash can be used but I'm testing with a 2GB SD card to see if its a false limitation.

The free microphone is fine if you plug it into a suitable pre-amplifier. The little inline thing with a 1.5v battery hardly boosts the signal. I guess its why they say its suitable for loud engine and wind noises. I have a suitable microphone coming my way so I'll test the sound further when it arrives. Otherwise you will need a microphone with inbuilt preamp or something that produces a line-level feed for the AV input to the recorder.

Today I got a Camelpak to carry the recorder/batteries and to tidy up the cable to the camera and eventually the microphone. Worked out neatly I reckon:

So I bit the bullet and bought a 'bum bag' or 'fanny pack' to stick all the batteries/cables/recorder into. The camelpak made it too difficult to quickly access the recorder and also made it hard to stick the camera on the helmet properly. I feel so wrong wearing it but then again I have a frickin camera stuck to my head...

Currently trying to queeze the most quality as possible from youtube. It's bad enough being limited to 320x240 and then having youtube distroy what is actually a pretty good quality image. I've been ending up with a colourful pus that youtube deems to be sufficient video quality. Now I'm exporting videos as High Quality FLV files at 427 x 320 output - lets hope youtube accepts these for what they are and not try to 'correct' them.

Update on the microphone. The one I had ordered from EyeSpyWorld never arrived and they're not responding to e-mails or phone calls. This is after three weeks so I've lodged a paypal dispute on the amount which is a ridiculous sum for what is basically $15.00 worth of components and even then that's probably over estimating. So I spent days hunting around for another microphone and finally found Jaycar Electronics CCTV Microphone. This is half the price of the other one and appears to have a higher gain too and looks better constructed. So I've ordered one and I hope Paypal favours me in the dispute against 'EyeSpyWorld'.

How I'm composing and editing my videos. I've used a few different editing tools such as Adobe Premiere, Kino, Open Movie Editor, Cinelerra, PiTiVi Video Editor and even Picasa 3. My favourite though is Avidemux. It's just plain simplistic in the way it handles videos and doesn't try to do anything for you such as converting the output to PAL resolution.

Steps I use for processing a video for youtube:

Convert the video from ASF to MPG using FFMPEG like so:

ffmpeg -sameq -r 25 -i IMAG001.ASF HelmetCam_date.mpg

Then I open the resultant MPEG file with avidemux add the selection start and end points and simply 'copy' both the video and audio to a another file. Then I open the other file and then apply any FX etc and then I render the file in Xvid/MP4 with 1000kbit/sec bitrate, +20% contrast and sharpened filters. I also tweak the audio to joint stereo since its only mono anyway. I never change the resolution from 320x240. This I find makes a reasonably quality youtube video. Make sure you check out the manual/wiki for avidemux for things like keyframes, indexing and other possible gotchyas when dealing with various video formats.

Update: I got my Jaycar microphone today. It's pretty damn sensitive so I wraped it with electrical tape and stuck a Tasmanian Devil finger puppet I happened to have (doesn't everyone have one?) on it.

Update: So the tassie devil didn't work as well as I had hoped. So now I've wraped it up with a chux cloth. The trick is that I want to maintain a reasonable sound range so I don't sound like I'm talking though a sock but I don't want to peg the microphone with background/wind noise. Ultimately a throat microphone or a preamp with adjustable gain is best but alas space and power is at a premium.

Nup, chux was just as bad. Seems I was right the first time with the electrical tape. Try that tomorrow.

Update: No luck with the microphone - just too sensitive. The actual cable was picking up wind vibrations So I'm going to relegate the bullet camera to bike mount only. I have just purchased a Sony DSC-T90 and modified the helmet to accommodate it. The benefits of this is that this camera while being very small it records 1280x720 movies at 30FPS, and its a CCD sensor with optical image stabiliser. Only problem is the touch screen but that's easy to deal with.

Things you see on the road

2009-06-05T09:07:00.009+10:00

I saw this on the way in to work this morning. Ouch.