Well, here it is folks, the moment you've all been waiting for ... I have a YouTube channel now, where I am posting some videos of my nerdier side (which I guess implies that I have a non-nerdy side as well?) for you to enjoy. Mostly laser stuff that I'm doing with Photondream, but you can also see some random electronics work and all my favorited pottery videos as well on Josh's YouTube Channel.

Wow, has it really been a year since I updated this site? Sorry internets! My 2011 new years resolution is (as usual) to be better about that. Well, for your web browsing pleasure, here is the Josh Jacobson official post of the year, aptly titled RFID Propeller Servo PEZ! It's so cool that it even got its own little mini-page and a link in the sidebar. More info and a video clip for you to enjoy after the jump.

So if you just downloaded the community edition of Cfengine 3 and got all gung-ho about integrating it into your environment like me, you probably downloaded the Concept Guide off of their web site, and went straight to the /etc/shadow example thinking "This is going to be pretty straightforward", which it was until I stopped being able to log into a VM I was testing this with. On the console (I left a session logged in just in case) when I ran `passwd` manually, I got a "Token manipulation" error. So I had to manually rebuild the entry, and that's when I realized that Cfengine was removing the last 3 colons out of the entry (i.e. the empty fields). Here is the option to add to your "body edit_field" definition (on page 15 of the guide):

allow_blank_fields => "true"

... And it works for me (on Red Hat 5.2)! Other than that Cfengine 3 has been working really well and the learning curve doesn't seem to be that steep. Good luck people.

OK folks, when you program a Flash site that has a big block of text that you stick into a scrolling text panel ... for crying out loud please please pretty please listen for mouse wheel events and make them work ... I've programmed this before, I know it's not that hard ... Flash is supposed to make browsing the web cooler, not invalidate a piece of hardware that I upgraded to on purpose.

So, long story but basically I keep switching around the computer I call my "main" computer, which has been my excuse for not installing a decent email client for the last 3 or 4 years. Now I have outlook express (still imho the best Japanese character support in a free email client), and now you have an explanation for why I'm responding to that email you sent me in 2005...

If you're tired of linux ssh command blocking on a host that's not up or not running ssh - add this to /etc/ssh/ssh_config (or use ConnectTimeout with the -o option)

Host *
ConnectTimeout 10

(or however long you want it to timeout for in seconds)

This is totally awesome... in summary:

Go to "about:config"
Filter for "browser.backspace_action"
Set its value to "0"

... and then firefox will let you use backspace as the "back" button again! Now all us fvwm2 users won't have to cuss and moan whenever we hit alt-left and the window manager captures the event without passing it to the browser. My life is so much better now...

Hi. Yeah, I'm still alive. What with the marriage, buying a car, moving, getting a new job and all, this last year has gone by pretty quick. Life is good and someday in the pretty near future (take that near with a grain of salt, the last time I said near I waited 3 years to update this site), I will be redoing this whole site almost from scratch. Expect a new and improved version of photojournal and a slightly more unified content management system. wahoo ... in the meantime, just keep doing whatever it is you've been doing for the last 3 years instead of looking at my homepage.

Minori and I got married today.