What's the deal with BitCoin?

"Another currency, you say, why the heck would I want that?" It's a good question and one I asked myself recently when Bitcoin starting becoming a common


theme in a lot of the tech blogs I read. Before we start to talk about Bitcoin technically, it's better to clear out the philosophical reasoning behind it.
Uncontrolled inflation - Government needs more money? It prints more money, the money you have is worth less. That sucks.What's wrong with government backed currency (US Dollars, Euros, British Pounds, etc)?

• The costs of money - I have to pay a bank to hold my money, they use my money to give other people money which they get paid for as well. I don't want to carry around fat stacks of cash so I use a credit card to simplify transactions but now I have to pay the credit card companies money. Sounds like everyone gets a slice of my money!


• Control - If the government thinks I am doing something wrong, they have the ability to freeze all of my money. Where my money comes from and goes to is reported to them.

This is why we need a better currency and Bitcoin looks like the right solution. In my first post on Bitcoin, let's see if it's inflation-proof.

The dreaded SMART failed email

My NAS emailed me about a 3 weeks ago telling me that a drive had failed.

This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:

host name: shank-nas   
DNS domain: dhcp.theshanks.net   
NIS domain: (none) 

The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: 
Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], Self-Test Log error count increased 
from 0 to 1 For details see host's SYSLOG. You can also use 
the smartctl utility for further investigation. Another 
email message will be sent in 24 hours if the problem 
persists.

I ignored these messages for a while, after all, this drive had just been replaced. It was part of a 2-drive enclosure that I purchased from woot a few years ago. The enclosure starting stalling on data reads in November of 2012 and I sent it in for RMA repair. They send me a new unit with supposedly new drives. Less than 1 month later, this one starts failing. Go Hitachi.

Home NAS

I've officially exceeded 500 titles on my HTPC and recently had a scare in which one of the drives in the LVM array started exhibiting errors. I decided it was time to separate the disk from the front-end and put some redundancy in-place. I checked out some of the turn-key solutions like Synology and QNAP. It seemed steep to spend $650 for an enclosure with no drives so I set out to build my own.

Cutting Credits with EDL in XBMC

MythTV has been serving me wonderfully for years. It's an incredible system and is still my primary media solution to this day. Unfortunately, the tools provided for managing video metadata have fallen a little behind. I recently switch away from Boxee and gave XBMC a try. What a fantastic front end and the media management tools are perfect.

My wife and I watch Star Trek Voyager each night to fall asleep (I hear you snickering). A minor frustration is that I have to fast forward through the intro credits, and I also have to exit out at the end, select the next episode and then get through those intro credits in a few minutes. It's a really minor annoyance but one I am proud to say I have overcome with the build-in EDL (edit decision lists) that are supported by XBMC.

iStolen? iGotItBack: Tales of recovering a stolen iPhone

It was winding up to be a normal Friday evening when I received a call from my wife, someone at the school where she teaches had gotten into her purse, taken all of her cash and her iPhone 4. "What do I do?", she asked.

It's a really dangerous game, stealing an iPhone, it's even more dangerous when the owners husband is a geek and fancies himself a bit of a detective.

Dabbling in Android

My school district recently switched from Verizon to Sprint for service allowing me to select a new phone to replace my Verizon Blackberry 8830. In the interest of understanding the Android camp, I choose a Samsung Epic 4g (Galaxy S) running Andoid Froyo 2.2.1. Based on release dates this puts the generation on par with my iPhone 4. My goal is not to replace my iPhone 4 but to understand if it would be possible and what I would lose (or possibly gain) in a switch to Google's promising mobile OS. 

Importing Outlook 2011 to GMail or Google Apps

My company finally made the switch to Google Apps. I have been using Outlook for the last few years to access my email from a FirstClass server and upgraded to Outlook 2011 a few months ago. I love the Google Email interface so now it's time to ditch Outlook completely. Unfortunately there isn't a direct import utility from Outlook 2011 to GMail or Google Apps so I combined a few. Here's  how:

1. Download, install and run EagleFiler (Free 30-day trial/$40 to buy)


2. Close the how-to guide.


3. Create a new library in EagleFiler called Outlook Export (name doesn't matter)


4. In Outlook, select the emails you want to import (use ⌘-A) and then press F1 (Fn-F1 for most Mac keyboards)


5. Let EagleFiler do it's work. If you have Growl, you will see notifications as it processes the email into mbox format.


6. Repeat step 4 for all of the folders you want to import


7. Open Mac Mail and setup a dummy account if you don't already have one


8. In Mac Mail - select File - Import Mailboxes and select Files in mbox format and select Continue


9. Browse to the location that you created your EagleFiler Library (mine was in Documents:Outlook Export) and select the Outlook Export Folder and Choose


10. After a bit of Searching for data... you will receive an Import box allowing you to select the folders you want to import. Check the ones you want and click Continue


11. Google makes it easier to get from Mac Mail to GMail by using the Google Email Uploader Mac. Go get, install and run it.


12. Google Email Uploader Mac will detect the Mac Mail account automatically. Enter your credentials for GMail or Google Apps.


13. Make sure you have Apple Mail selected and clock Import

It took me about 3-hours to upload 9500 messages but it worked. Special thanks to C-Command software for making a great product. I wish there was a donate button on their site so I could shell a few bucks their way for making this possible.