Has it been cancelled? Nobody told us.

I had to cancel plans for Penguicon due to a medical emergency. Jeff at registration has been great in getting my inquiries about a refund of my preregistration and other questions in front of the right people. The folks at the hotel, Westin, have been a different story, however. Unanswered phone calls and emails, then refusal to take the circumstances into consideration and treating us as human beings before saying "no refunds per policy, sorry about your luck." Guess I know a hotel I won't be staying at in the future, either. Complaint sent to the Penguicon hotel liason. Even if nothing can be done to bend policy, if Penguicon gets enough complaints about the hotel, maybe they'll move it elsewhere in the future. I would love it if the refusal to refund, full or partial or via offering a future stay, a single guest cost them all that future revenue. I don't hold high hopes, but one can dream, right?

Hilarious wrong number text exchange

From BoingBoing, An angry mom texts 35-year-old man instead of her daughter, hilarity and outrage ensures. Seriously. What are you still doing here? It's hilarious!

Penguicon 2017

It's been quite some years since I've attended, but the wife and I are headed to Penguicon 2017 in Michigan this weekend! The last time I attended, I also gave a talk on MythTV. Unfortunately, my current employer prohibits speaking engagements, free or paid, on topics within my field of employ, which happens to be IT, without prior approval. Not sure it's worth the effort to obtain approval to give a talk, so I'll be simply attending this time around. But, on a positive not, it'll be my wife's first actual Penguicon! She went with me last time, but did not actually attend and kept busy doing other things. This time out, she's an actual attendee as well. So excited to make it back, and for her to attend her first con!

The truth is out there!

The X-Files is coming back!

Fixed images?

The site from the old backups had all files in the root folder of the site, while the current iteration has everything except the index under "/blog/," which is what caused the images in all the old posts to be broken. I've just copied the folder in question to root and all is fine. I probably could have create a mod_rewrite rule to handle the location difference, but it's not really worth thinking about if there's such a simple solution ;)

Ghosts of Ohio

The Ghosts of Ohio posts were part of the backups I restored yesterday! I thought I was going to have to type them in here again. I'm so happy that they're there :) Images in the posts are broken, but I have them. I just have to restore them to the correct location to get them to display.

Old backups

So, I was playing around and discovered an old backup of the site. I restored it to my server, exported the posts, re-imported the posts, and... Holy crap! The site has some history to it again!

Fn Keys

I've owned a Lenovo notebook for awhile now, and have been using it for work since I got it, but one thing that's driven me nuts about it is the the Fn hotkeys are active by default, and you have to press Fn to use the actual function keys. This isn't so bad itself, but one of the keys is "Airplane mode," and I'm constantly bumping the thing and disconnecting from my WiFi while I'm working, which boots me off my VPN and I have to log back in every time. This usually happens when it's most inconvenient, so I finally got fed up with it and discovered a bios setting to disable hotkeys by default, so I have to hold Fn to activate them, and the function keys actually work as function keys. Yay! No more accidental airplane mode! :)

Soarer's Converter

Yesterday, I purchased an ATmega32U4 to build Soarer's converter for my IBM M Keyboard. I'll be mostly following this guide to do the conversion, as Soarer used a Teensy 2.0 in his original design, and this guide uses the same one I've ordered. I'm still debating on whether to do the conversion internally or externally. If I do it externally, I'll likely get a low-profile case that I can attach to the keyboard where the Num, Caps, and Scroll lock LEDs would normally be so that I can add those. I'll also likely either map some of the extra keys, or use optional external buttons, to quickly remap the keyboard for Linux, Windows, and Mac usage, and possibly emulator usage as well. I'd love to dye the keycaps black and paint the frame black as well, but I'm not sure how to re-do the lettering on the keys without them completely wearing out. Unicomp has some cool keycaps, but nothing in black and, sadly, it appears the largest set the sell is 104 keys, and there are no 122-key sets.

Yamaha Heritage Classic?

Some years ago, I owned what I thought was a 1982 Yamaha Heritage Classic, which had a 650cc engine and was an absolutely beautiful bike. It was really heavy for its size, and was the perfect height for my 5'6" frame. I got rid of it a LONG time ago, but recently started thinking about getting another motorcycle. When I Google "Yamaha Heritage Classic," I get results for "Yamaha Heritage Special" instead. I'm not sure if I'm mis-remembering the name of the motorcycle I owned, or if it's just a rare beast and my Google-fu simple isn't strong enough. The Heritage Special looks quite a bit like my old bike, but it's hard to say because the seat had been replaced on mine with something completely different from stock long before I owned it. I'll be keeping an eye out, for either. If any of my readers run across a reasonably priced one within a few hours driving distance of central Ohio, let me know...

IBM M Keyboard

A couple weeks ago, I managed to snag the holy grail of computer keyboards off of eBay, an IBM M keyboard, for a really good price. What I didn't realize is that there are so many different versions of it ;) The one I wound up with is the 122 key terminal keyboard with a 5 pin DIN connector. Except the DIN connector isn't the same as the PC/XT/AT connector. The pins are spaced further apart and have a different layout. The good news is the these keyboards have a header connector inside them for the cable, so it's easily replaced. The bad news is that when connected to a PC with a replacement cable (or adapter) they act as an 84 key keyboard, wasting all those extra keys. But there's an adapter that I can build to use it with USB, allowing me to map all those extra keys. I can build this adapter externally, or mount it inside the keyboard itself. Alternatively, I can build something similar using a Pi Zero, putting an entire PC inside the keyboard. I think I like the idea of the external adapter better, though, as is allows me to add Num, Caps, and Scroll Lock LEDs, which this version of the keyboard lacks, and also allows up to five external buttons as well.