*!&@

i had not even thought about  a new release i was so happy with my laptop running jaunty, so i was surprised when my little notification popped up saying upgrade to new version?

usually i would say no and plod along until i decided i need to upgrade because of lack of functionality in hardware or software version......but no this time i clicked yes .

when my laptop booted up  it was blue again arrrrgggghhhhh!!!! why oh why oh why would they revert to the boring blue crap after teh beutiful dark theme of jaunty.....well it got worse from there believe me .

i logged in and there was no toolbars or anything , so i alt+f2 open a terminal rename my .kde folder and reboot , still the same only this time no alt+f2.

so i decided to reinstall.
i set it up with encrypted home because i already had that
after i booted in to my shinny new install i looked to swap the location of my encrypted home to my old encrypted home only they changed the way they do it so i could not do that..... i actually prefer the way they do it .

after copying all my data and now i am settling in to it , what do i think?

well to be honest so far i think Karmic sucks, i give it ..it does seem faster and very stable so far , but the look of it is so ugly compared to jaunty , i know i can change all the themes etc..........one thing that just looks ugly and wiered is the network manager ....i got on well with that on jaunty it was easy and worked well and looked pretty. i read online t got a make over in karmic , well it has .....a fugly make over , now it doesn't look like the nice one in jaunty it looks like it shoudl be on gnome ..i think for Ubuntu its a make over but for pretty KDE its a fugly disaster......well maybe i can change it in themes etc?

anyway enough of my whining its stable and works ...i just made a lot of work for myself pressing that upgrade button.

its been a super busy couple of month's. i guess i have not been blogging much because i have been using facebook to share photos and things instead of the blog ....i know i know i said i would never use facebook , but it has just been easier but to be perfectly honest i dont like it too much i much prefer the blog .

so what have i been up to in my absence? well let me say ....lots!

i took possession of my new apartment in September , spent ages buying all the things you need , cutlery , pans, pots and things ...was crazy for a while . i spent a few days down there and finally got a painter to paint it after getting quotes by crazy people with astronomical prices i was finally recommended someone from a friend and he is painting it as we speak , set to be completed thursday. though the colour i chose was not really what i intended, i intended to have a soft off white colour , but was told that it goes darker when you put the paint on the wall so i aired for lighter and went for seapearl from benjamin moore .......it turned out to be very very white .......oh well not sure how it will look with the classic design of the apartment and the furniture that came with it ..... i guess white is neutral ...right?????

movie wise i have watched a few movies via on demand cable, i am loving hbo.
i watched a great movie at the weekend called surveilance . it is about a serial killer being tracke by the FBI , it is directed by the guy that did twin peaks ...it really is a good movie.

Also i finally gave in and watched the indiana jones and the crystal skull..... i hated all the other indiana jones movies but finally watched this and really liked it ...a very good entertaining movie.

outdoor news.
we went camping up at owl creek the weeekend of canadian thanks giving.
it was nice and sunny , wich at that time of year means very cold nights , and not being really geared up for it with only a +6c rated sleeping bag and the temp going down to -4c i did freeze my ass of . after the first night of freezing i wasnt sure i woudl stay the second night but the sun came out and we did some fishing it was nice, we made sure we had lots of wood for the campfire to stay warm that evening and it was fun .but in the nighti did freeze my ass of again and  woke up and decided to get up just before light and get the fire going to get some warmth and we also had to set off early so half asleep i wandered out of the tent and looked toward my friends tent and the river when i saw it right there on the bank of the river a furry hump sticking over the banking and with the only place to go was over my friends tent so i pulled out my knife and went to wards it to scare it away ,with each step my heart pounded more and more the adrenalin flowing ....... as i opened my mouth to shout i saw it was not the bear that i thought it was but a moss covered boulder that had been there all the time  and i had not noticed ......so funny ....at least i was warm then funny what poor light and your mind can play tricks .....i think maybe my fear of encounting a bear plays too .

ok well i think i have covered most things , i always remember things i should have mentioned later .

for now bye and i will try to write more often

it has been so hot this last week that the one air conditiong unit in the bedroom just could not keep up so i moved the other portable one in from the second bedroom and that made it a little better but with temp set to hit 36C, it was time to move on to the boat that is fully air conditioned and a little cooler down town.

this weekend has  been a hot one and kind of a busy one downtown, there was a critical mass cycle thing and the police games and also it was pride weekend.

critical mass , i didnt see it as i didnt really go out and look but i have heard about them a lot of cyclists blocking up the roads on the , dont get me started on cyclists , they are always bitching about car drivers not taking much notice of them but they do the exact same things to pedestrians , there is a sea wall that they hurtle around and when you cross there you nearly get hit by cyclists, they just dont care and take no notice of pedestrians and make no notice to give way to pedestrians.

the rest of the festivities i have basically ignored , i baked a cake for alans birthday a double custard cake and made some foaccia bread for snacks

this hot week i have also had chance to get soem new things for the jeep , a winch and some other things i wanted , also i manged to get a new rear bumper that has a fuel and water carried on it ....i guess i am gearing up for another adventure though i am not sure as to where jsut yet .

back home tomorrow as i think the weather has cooled down enough now .

i bet you are all wondering what i have been up to as i have not wrote anything for a while.?

no not really i hear you say! well you should at least act like you are interested becasue i am going to tell you anyway!

i played a little baseball last thursday, infact i did quite well i caught someone out and scored two runs on each f my two batting trys , but i did managed to have a fall and really hurt my ankle i eventually went to the hospital today some 4 days afterwards and they said it wasnt broken........... i hear you wonder what i was doing for four days....well let me tell you !

This weekend i decided to go ona bit of an off road trip up to a remote lake called fire lake and camp over night and come back sunday . so i only decided to do this on wednesday so there was a lot of getting ready.
so on saturday we set off , it took about 1.5 hrs to get to the start of the logging road ,we drove up the west side of harrison lake all the way up ...for much of the way the logging road was not too bad but up near the top of the lake there where some challenging bits wich didnt really phase the jeep too much , though i did manage to bust a tie rod on the jeep ( it think this was on its way out before as i ahd heard noises). when we got up to the remote part of the road , quite heavy going and at around 3500ft elevation we started to see black bears , just catching sight of the back of them as they hurried off the road in to the forrest but after seeing about 3 partial sightings and one sighting when we stopped and looked in the forrest we actually ended up following one as it ran up the road to get away..... they really can move very fast.

so after seeing all those bears i was totaly freaked out about sleeping in a tent ......having been so frightened of the thought of a bear encounter i had pepper spray and a survival knife strapped to my belt to protect me form bear attack ...a little over kill i know ....but you do have to remember i have never had any experiance with bears.

so after that we strarted a bit of a decent and the road was getting a bit better when we encountered two guy on motorbikes they had been to alaska and where on there way back home .....must have been an awesome trip ....but one of the guys had just had a fall and hurt his ankle ........we where loaded up to the max in the jeep but we had to help so we would take him to the logigng camp up the road ....... i coudl have road his bike there had my ankle had not been in the same state as his from my earlier baseball folly. so he had to leave his bike , ben held on to the back of the jeep and he got in and off we went to the logging camp and them to there nurse outpost.

after that little bit of excitement we went on to fire lake , it was totaly amazing drive lots of snow covered mountians and the promise of a trout dinner lol. anyways once we got to fire lake we woudl have to do a short hike to get to the lake , i just couldnt do that with my ankle the way it was , the 1ft deep wud would have surely killed me ...so we tried to contact the friends we had meeting us by plane to no avail( turns out they didnt come) we waited around a little and then decided to head over to glacier lake where the book showed there was a campsite right by the lake .

when we got to glacier lake there was some weird trailer/camper in the campign site , someone had set up this creepy camp there , it actually spoiled the feel of the place but it was still a totally beatifull and totally remote and when you ignore the trailer it was totally awesome . we had a good evening dinner there , ribs and veg and then a great breakfast .then set off home contiuning up the same road to pemberton and then back home down the sea to sky highway.

soo all in all we did 230k of pure offroad driving all in all i woudl say the trip was about 600+k , at the end of that week i ended up with a broken jeep and sore ankle but a great week.
i am working on editing together some videos and pics we took on the trip but until then here are a few pics.

it has been a while since i posted on here, mainly because i had a family visit , my brother and his wife visited from Australia . they had a good time here and was good to see them.

we went to victoria and drove through the rainforests and also went to grouse and the suspension bridge went on a boat ride up the indian arm and also out fishing on the west coast of the island.

since there return i went back out to the island by plane , did a little fishing and then came back home via ganges .....ganges i always thought was in india but it is a place on one of the gulf islands , a beautiful little town and the weather there was amazing ...very hot and just a great evening spent there . then back home.

back home i have been working on my website and trying to get some things together for my jeep so i can do the off road trips easily . i am hoping to explore some this year and hopefully get out and do more hikes... i have been a rather inactive on the hiking front for the past few years so i really should take it slowly and not do anything to insane for a while lol.

i went to buy a pritner/ scanner the other day from walmart...against my better judgement i bought a kodak one i got it home and what a POS i had tons of problems with software in my windows VM rember i run linux ......so it didnt work i took it back and picked up a hp ...got that home to find it had been previously sold it had already been asembled and had no pacaging in the box bits where broken on it and it even had a piece of card someone had tried to scanned in it and a paper jam lol , so i took that one back also and then went to future shop and got a hp wich i have to say works great on linux nativley so no need for the windows VM its a HP F4280 and works great on Kubutu though its a low end printer i just needed a printer for a project that needed 4x6 photos printed , my big epson doesnt go that small

i do have a couple of videos and some pictures to share of the past weeks activities, one with a bald eagle and one with some killer whales so check them out.

A few of you may have seen an earlier post that i accidentaly deleted so i will try to recreate it and also a little update of what been going on since.

i went to see the doves concert in vancouver , i expected them to be a little slow and mellow ...alright alright i thought it woudl be a boaring gig just  becuase there music is very mellow is all.
as it turns out they where really good , i really enjoyed myself even though it made me feel a little old becasue they didnt come on until about 10.30 and i was tired by then ...having been up since around 6am ...but i did really enjoy it and with my trusty cell phone i did take a few videos though they where not as good as the phonic videos mainly because i was right at the back upsairs so i could have a sit down when my old legs needed .

My jeep was broken after the previous trip , it hada very noisey gearbox ....now having never been in a jeep before this could be quite normal anyways it went back ......but since then i have decided to fix it and i am waiting on it ...so i will keep you posted on how that goes ......probably by going more 4x4ing .

i have been out on the boat this week doing a bit of fishing and well ...just camping, but i did manage to get a few photos......maybe i will share them with you .
we did stop in victoria for dinner at one of my fav places its only the keg but they do a mean fillet minion with blue cheese .........we took a nice bottle of italian wine with us there as they only serve shity austrlian wine but they would not cork it for us and told us it is illegal to do so ...hmmm i still think that stinks of a scam .

ok so thats all for now and probably for a while too , as my brother and his wife are coming to visit for 9 days so i should have some stories to post after then

Doves

Well what a crazy title , but it is a summary of what i have been up to since i last posted on here.

yesterday i went to see about getting a motor bike license here as my one is not honoured here.
i basically sat a knowledge test and they gave me a learners liscence .....minus some restrictions becasue i hold a full motorcycle liscence in another country so now i can ride any bike i like but just not at night , if thats the only restriction i am sure i could just live with that forever as i very rarely ever ride at night anyway..... i have to take a road test to get my full iscence but i cant do that until a month from now .....its a stipulation on the liscence.

Ground school was yesterday , it went ok we where learning about the parts of a plane and engines etc it was  alittle boaring but hey you have to do it.
Today was my second flying lesson as my last one was cancelled becasue of bad weather, i actually did the take off in this lesson , i was totally freaked out ......i didnt like it atall..... but the instructor didnt even notice i was freaking ...noone ever does lol i guess i am just to laid back ....any ways she asked if i didnt want to do the take off next time and i said of course i do ........ i need to get used to it right?

finally i got my jeep , i know i have been talkign about it for sometime now but i finaly got one ...it a nice blue color.
i had never driven one before so i was told that i woudl probably hate it but i actually love it ....its so primative and it feels just like driving a little tank......but it is also so manouverable.
i have decided to take it for a bit of a trip this weekend ....the weather is supposed to be good and i think i have found some ligth trails on the map that lead to a waterfall , so i am going to head up there and check it out ......dont worry i will be taking lots of pics on this excursion,

ok well this is just a brief update and i will write more after the trip.

oh and here are some pics of the jeep .....i decided to call it Harry .....there is logic to it, well my kindof logic.

i spent a few days down town this week as we had a game on Thursday evening and then one on Sunday afternoon , turned out that all though Thursday was a dry day the pitch was a little waterlogged form the few days of rain we had previously, so that game was canceled , however Sunday came around and weather was good but we managed to suffer our first defeat . the team we played where rumored to be the best in our division and we only lost by one run so i don't think we did too badly at all ......although i never like to loose .

apart form the ball games and a slight bit of plumbing Friday night were i helped a friend install a sink and faucet i did not really get up to much else really ...just enjoyed a weekend of downtown stuff and a small dinner party.

i have been reading some of my flying books as to get ready for my flying lesson tomorrrow , i am quite excited about it all.

here are a few photos i took with my cell , there was a great moon this weekend but i couldnt get a good pic of it with my cell i wish i had taken my big camera , i thought about it as i was leaving but then though i woudl not have chance to use it and i woudlnt really need it

Seems i have not wrote anything on here for over a month!
April has just been a crazy month , what with traveling home, starting flying lessons , starting to play softball so i will try to do a little update of the month and i always manage to miss things out .

i started my flying lessons today so that's first on my agenda to write about, i was supposed to do my first one about a week ago , but i ended up with a crazy bug and was not fit for anything for about 5 days , i am over that now so i got around to my first lesson , it was very good and a lot of fun , the banking scares me a little but i just need to get used to it ......i think.

Baseball,
as some of you know i have never played baseball in my life and joined a local softball league, i had been away for most of th epractices at the start of the season so my first practice was a friendly game with one of the other teams , it was so much fun and i think i did ok. we won at least then on the next practice before the first game of the season i strained my leg awwww so painful the muscle on the top of the thigh it was sooo sore ..... i am finaly back in action and free for the next game wich is tomorrow , the past 2 games i have missed we have won so we are undefeated ...hope i dont upset the chi :) .
i am really getting in to the baseball thing , i didnt think i would but thought i may watch one or two on tv so i thought the Brave being that they where the only one i had actualy been to see live and the only game i had seen , but all i found was the blue jays and they are really good and being in canada i guess i should follow them so i guess they have by default inherited me as a fan.

i have also been getting around to editing and printing out some of the pictures i have acumilated over the winter , some have come out really cool, we will see what ocmes of it all.

my imported things arrived too , all uneventful really apart from my computer rattling when i lifted it up , the stupid quick release hard disk holder had done just that and released so was banging around the case , lukily i t seem not to have damged anything , the PSU however didnt work i dont think it was a country change thing i just think it died in transit maybe didnt get enough food or water on the trip ...or maybe it was just that .

now i am sure i have probably missed out lots but i think i have typed enough for this post im sure your all over it
already!

ok so a wired title , i just wanted a title that lets you know what the post is about.

i decided i was going to make a homes security / surveillance system, of course i obviously wanted to do this with linux.
i did a little research and price comparisons , i found that there was linux software for this ...namely zoneminder. thats IPcams are still expensive and are a bit like webcams in the compatability with linux department .i settled on the airlink101 skyipcam500w.

500W
these are a relativly inexpensive ipcam they dont actually stream avi they stream mjpeg wich seems to be the rapid succesion of jpeg images , there are issues with this in zoneminder , especialy on this model.
zoneminder can however pick up the single jpeg from this cam.

Install
so i ordered all the things and they have nearly all arrived , 1 new cheap compaq box and 4x ip cams .
as i mentioned in an earlier post i had dumped vbox for vmware , so i setup zoneminder in vmware.
configured all the cams and placed them then set about connecting them to zoneminder vm.
This didnt quite go as planned the mjpeg didnt show in zoneminder , neither did the regular jpeg , this was a dissapointment for me , but i had noticed other input types on te zoneminder setup.

zoneminder can take a V4L2 device as input so i wondered if i could somehow show the ipcam as a local V4l2 device. hence 2 days of googling and finding out things .

The Hack
so far we know the mjpeg doesnt play well with linux , i cant stream it through any players and can only view it in a browser with the aid of java, however i can get a single jpeg from the camera .

i wrote a little python prog to get the images form the camera and display them in rapid succession to give the ilusion of a streamed video ......i did this very easily and it worked perfectly

so now i wanted to somehow output that feed to an avi on the fly and pass it to zone alarm ......this didnt really seem possible without saving the avi file and it becoming huge , as i wanted to jsut loop it and have no saved files this didnt seem like it would work.

so what i decided on was to try to loop the output as a V4l2 device

V4l2 loopback
i did some googling and found a loopback driver for V4l2 so i downloaded it to test it ,but didnt work on my ancient kernel its only for very new kernels , luckily the vm that zoneminder is on is built with jaunty  so it worked .
they sugest feeding the loopback with an application they also make so i downloaded that too after some messing around with it it seemed to work . i changed the script to jst dump the jpeg  to a file and set the loopback device to  collect the jpeg as input , the script continues runningchanging the input file .

now i think this should work , when i conenct a view to the device it does connect and get now errors from the viewer or the loop back devie or the feed application .....i just get no picture ......so i tried my regular laptop webcam (V4l2 compatable) and with the viewer here i just get the same ...... so i am thinking it is a vmware problem ...so i need some dedicated hardware to try it on , i do have the new machine i bought but ............i didnt get a vga cable for it ...ordered one but its taking ages to arrive :(

so i guess i just have to wait and see what happens with dedicated hardware , to test that .......i am thinking it should work ......unless i am over looking something like you cant change the file when the input has been set ?.......but if that was the case i think i woudl have goten errors by now  so we will see.

as for zoneminder that didnt pic up video from my webcam either ......i think zoneminder doesnt like the virtual enviroment too much either ........will have to try them both on dedicated hardware.

.
so i will keep you guys posted