January 06, 2016 @ 23:23 EST

Goodbye, Nanoblogger.. Hello, Nikola!

After 11 years and 1,227 posts, I've finally migrated my site from the venerable nanoblogger over to the far more capable (and much, much faster) Nilola.

Nanoblogger did everything I needed, but it simply wasn't intended to scale anywhere near the size of my old site -- I believe I had the dubious disctinction of the largest nanoblogger instance, nearly ~8x the next-largest deployment. Posting a new photo would take upwards of ten minutes, and a full site rebuild would take multiple hours. Compre that to a full rebuild taking only a few minutes with Nikola. :)

The final step was to enable comments via hashover, though I have yet to migrate the old comments over to the new layout. comments over. I expect the general look and theme to change a bit, but it's basically functional!

The old site will stay up for the forseeable future but the base URL now permanently redirects here. Anyone following via RSS will need to point at the new site or category feeds.

Oh, In case there's anyone else interested, I wrote this script to migrate the nanoblogger posts over to nikola's format. This was made vastly easier by my switching to markdown formatting a few years ago.

I've had this on my to-do list for years now. Better late than never!


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments

January 01, 2016 @ 08:32 EST

Welcome 2016

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The morning looked promising, bot as the sky brightened, fog lifted off the fields and obscured pretty much everything. By the time the sun cleared the treeline, there wasn't much to see.

Welcome to 2016, folks!

(Taken at the Wallaby Ranch -- many more photos coming, once I have sufficient bandwidth...)


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 07, 2015 @ 23:15 EST

Serenity

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 07, 2015 @ 22:59 EST

On Top of Blood Mountain..

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...right next to Slaughter Mountain, overlooking Lake Trahlyta at the heart of Vogel State Park, Georgia.

Interestingly enough, neither mountains' name has anything to do with White Man, instead owing its name to a particularly heated disagreement between the Cherokee and the Creek.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 05, 2015 @ 23:22 EST

Still water, revisited

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Charles Springs, just off the Suwanee River.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

November 11, 2015 @ 22:29 EST

In Cambridge, Even the Parking Tickets are Classy

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

October 17, 2015 @ 20:15 EDT

Serenading the Sunset

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This moment was, in a word... perfect.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

September 27, 2015 @ 22:35 EDT

Peekaboo

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This was about 30 minutes into a total eclipse. It was fairly hazy, but at least it was visible!


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

September 22, 2015 @ 08:49 EDT

New Toy!

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I've always loved the Subaru Impreza WRX, a watered-down street-legal rally car. This bug-eyed 2002 example was everything I was looking for.

....And it's an absolute blast to drive.

(Sorry about the lousy picture, but I didn't want to play musical cars before I left for the office. More/better pics to follow when I get around to it..)


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Life and other BS

September 01, 2015 @ 17:40 EDT

Lifting the skirts of Kodak photo printers

You have to hand it to Kodak. They have been selling their workhorse 6850 dyesub photo printer for more than ten years, and are still actively supporting it with updated drivers and firmware. It's even outlasted one of its successors (the 605), which is no longer sold, yet is still actively supported.

One of those firmware updates led to a discovery that resulted in a flurry of hacking on the 6800/6850 and 605 backends, resulting in considerably improved reliability, robustness, and performance. As well as many bug fixes, both backends now support full job pipelining and vastly improved status and error handling.

So what had I learned? The Kodak 68x0 family are variations of the Shinko S1145 and the Kodak 605 is actually a Shinko S1545. Digging deeper into other Kodak models, I discovered that the 7000/7010/7015 are variations of the Shinko S1645, and that the 8810 is a Shinko S1845.

I'd done my earlier reverse-engineering work on these Kodak models before some kind folks at Shinko/Sinfonia sent me documentation on several of their printers -- So when I re-examined what I had previously figured out with the other docs as a reference, I discovered that from a protocol perspective the 68x0/S1145 models were 6" variations of the 8" S1245, the 605/S1545 and 70xx/S1645 models were very close to the S2145, and the 8810/1845 are apparently identical to the S6245.

This means that I should be able to support the 70xx and 8810 printers with only minor modifications to the existing backend code. Granted, until I can get my hands on any of these printers all of this is conjecture.

So, I'll re-iterate my call for testers for these printers:

  • Shinko CHC-S1245 (aka Sinfonia E1)
  • Shinko CHC-S6245 (aka Sinfonia CE1)
  • Kodak 8810
  • Kodak 7000/7010/7015
  • Kodak 605 (Need to ensure no regressions were introduced)

As my personal printing needs are very well met at this point and these are all fairly expensive models (especially the 8810 and 70xx series), I can't justify buying more printers just to try and make them work with Linux. Someone else is going to have to step up to help make this possible.

On that note, I should mention the S6145/CS2 (and the Ciaat Brava 21), where the situation is a bit more complex. The backend is already written and partially tested, but it currently relies on a proprietary library that is only available in binary form - and which I lack permission to redistribute.

I'm pursuing a multi-prong approach to rectify that situation. In order of desireability:

  • Obtain source code to the library
  • Obtain algorithmic documentation so I can independently re-implement the library
  • Obtain permissions to redistribute the (binary) library, and also get it compiled for a variety of ARM targets
  • Reverse-engineer the library so I can re-implement it

Let me just say that curiousity, in of itself, is poor motivation for enduring the the combination of tedium and frustration that comes from trying to reverse-engineer an opaque blob of x86 code.

Ugh. I need to get out more.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Free Software

July 25, 2015 @ 22:07 EDT

Swing your heart out

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

July 19, 2015 @ 19:11 EDT

It'll buff out

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Last week there was a bit of excitement just outside the office.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

July 03, 2015 @ 15:41 EDT

Shinko S1245 and S6245 (AKA Sinfonia E1 and CE1)

A few months ago I received a semi-official documentation dump from Sinfonia. Thanks to that information, Gutenprint now claims full support for both the S1245 and S6245. These models required new backends, and last night I committed the last of the necessary changes.
Both printers should now work -- in theory, anyway.

As I don't own or have access to either printer, this code has received no testing whatsoever, and as such might result in kittens swallowing the earth with impeccable wide-eyed cuteness as they mew and cry out for belly rubs. Oh, the humanity!

If there's someone out there who wouldn't mind donating a printer to the cause, or at least be willing to go a few rounds of testing, drop me a line.

Do it for Free Software. Do it for World Peace. Do it for Kittens.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Free Software

June 30, 2015 @ 22:27 EDT

Another Day in Paradise

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

June 29, 2015 @ 08:15 EDT

Ongoing Dyesub Photo Printer Developments

Gutenprint 5.2.11-pre1 was released this weekend. It contains the usual support for a pile of new printers, and improvements for many previously-supported models. I'll only speak about stuff I had a hand in:

First, the newly-supported models that are reported to be working quite well:

  • Canon SELPHY CP820 and CP910
  • Citizen CW-01 / Olmec OP900
  • DNP DS620/DS620A
  • Mitsubishi CP-3800DW

Next, new models that were added but have received no testing:

  • Sony UP-CR10L (aka DNP SL10)
  • Shinko S1245 [1]

Models that have much-improved support:

  • DNP DS40/DS80/RX1 [4]
  • Citizen CX/CX-W/CY [4]
  • Canon SELPHY CP900
  • Kodak 605, 6800, and 6850 [3]
  • Mitsubishi CP9550 family (including the CP9550DW-S!)
  • Sony UP-DR200

Finally, models that are improved or added, but will require muh more work before they are considerd useful:

  • Mitsubishi CP-D70/D707/K60/D80 [2]
  • Ciaat Brava 21 [2]
  • Kodak 305 [2]
  • Kodak 8810
  • Shinko S6145 [2]
  • Shinko S6245

Some notes:

[1] The Shinko S1245 is notable in that I've already completed a full-featured backend that just needs testing with a real printer.

[2] These models are all related, and use an unknown color scaling/dithering algorithm that must be reverse-engineered before the printers become usable.

[3] The Kodak 68x0 family in particular is consirerably more robust in the face of errors, media mismatches, and status reporting.

[4] The DNP/Citizen backend was greatly improved, and is far, far more robust than it used to be. Error detection and recovery, general buffer management, handling media/printjob mismatches, and even general status queries were all improved.


Oh, just to forestall the question, all printers with multicut modes (eg 2x6 strips) have full support, but will require a minor patch to be applied to Gutenprint before compiling.

I'll end this with my usual request for testers, especially ones with access to the Shinko S1245, Sony UP-CR10L, and DNP SL10 models since the work is already completed. As for what's next, the Shinko S6245 is the most promising candidate.

Thanks go out to everyone who has helped -- be it testing or providing USB dumps; sending over documentation (Yay, Shinko!), or actual printers (Yay, LiveLink!). There are others I would like to acknowledge but they have asked to remain anonymous. Thank you, all.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Free Software

June 12, 2015 @ 21:47 EDT

Mmmmmm, haute cuisine..

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Every time I'm in the midwest, I make sure I indulge myself properly.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

May 26, 2015 @ 02:38 EDT

Ornate Pavilion

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This pavilion was at the peak of a sprawling park in the heart of the Bundang-Gu area of Seoul.

It was a welcome place to rest my feet while listening to the wind through the forest.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

May 24, 2015 @ 14:09 EDT

Welcome to South Korea

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...please enjoy your stay.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

May 14, 2015 @ 15:32 EDT

Raquy Danziger

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The amazing Raquy Danziger in a performance at the Paralounge Drum Gathering.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

May 13, 2015 @ 20:53 EDT

You should see him *below* the belt..

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

May 12, 2015 @ 18:06 EDT

Backpacking with Phantom Limb

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This is just begging to be part of a caption contest. Suggestions?


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

May 01, 2015 @ 21:23 EDT

Witch's Mark

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Awesome show. More photos to follow.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

April 28, 2015 @ 20:33 EDT

Helm of Training

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

April 22, 2015 @ 02:00 EDT

Holy Exploding Battery, Batman!

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Lessons learned:

  • Battery acid doesn't smell particularly good
  • You can never have too much baking soda on hand
  • I got damn lucky that the only other damage was some paint

One bit of luck -- These batteries have two weeks left on their no-questions-asked 2-year full replacement warranty. With luck they'll replace them both.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Life and other BS

April 11, 2015 @ 14:11 EDT

Fascinatio

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos