Today I started off on my own again. This time headed north to Kaikoura. The bus up to Kaikoura was smaller and only had a handful of people. This allowed the driver and I to take an excursion to Mt. Fyffe after dropping off the rest of the backpackers at the hostel. The driver and I summited Mt. Fyffe, hung around for a bit at the top, and then headed back down. The track is easily doable, but be sure to bring plenty of water. Bring some good hiking footwear because even during September part of the track is covered in snow.

The Summit looking towards another range

Summit marker with driver, Cam, getting into a snack

Some pictures of Mt. Fyffe from a distance

On the way back to the hostel, the driver and I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some sausage, bread, barbecue sauce, and beer. When we got back to the hostel, I cooked up some grub and eventually met up with an old friend I had traveled part of the North Island with, Mikey. Mikey had hired a minivan that had been converted to a camper from spaceships.

After getting some grub and killing a few beers we walked around Kaikoura scouting for night life. Kaikoura is pretty quiet at night but there are a few bars that can be found. There is a long walkway beside the beach that stretches the length of town. We walked almost the entire distance and then returned back into town and entered an Irish pub just as it was closing. Luckily, across the street was a bottle shop. I think we picked up some beer (I know I couldn’t decide if I wanted more or not) and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. We returned to the hostel and had a drinking session.

I don’t remember what we discussed or how it ended, but I felt alright in the morning. I do remember the hostel, The Lazy Shag Backpackers, had a nice fireplace in the kitchen/lounge area, a nice kitchen, and dorms with their own bathroom.

Tour progress so far:

View New Zealand 2009 in a larger map

After a big night out, we were slow to rise. Danny, Vincent, and I went out to have some lunch, but I can’t remember where we ate.

Cathedral Square from the side

Afterwards, we went to the park to throw the frisbee and rugby ball around. Eventually, we were joined by Mark, Lucy, and Jack and spent around 5 hours enjoying each others company. The weather was incredible. Families, older couples, young children, and everyone else were really enjoying the park.

We then headed back to base and got some Japanase food at an eatery that was right around the corner. I finished my meal and then I think I finished off Vincent’s. After dinner, we had a lengthy UNO tourney in the Base bar. The picture below accurately depicts a professional UNO environment.

We eventually grew tired of UNO and decided to go out. Not much was open, but we headed to Soul Square. This is an area full of bars and restaurants. The place was dead, but we found an Irish pub with live music and a crazy dancing girl accompanied by two crazy dancing guys. I was not feeling the bottle after the night before, but the rest of the crew downed a few before we left to get some McDonalds on our way home. I tackled the Mac Attack the day before. Today I set out to tackle the Hunger Buster.

Tomorrow, I would have to leave Mark, Vincent, Jack, and Lucy to head north to Kaikoura. After enjoying such great company through so many great days, I would be on my own again.

Sr. Project Analyst – Req # 583709

Responsibilities

In this position, you will be a member of Intel’s Corporate Platform Office supporting microprocessor and SoC design teams in Austin, Texas. Your responsibilities will include implementing and maintaining project management systems, metric development, and analysis in the areas of critical chain project management, resource optimization, productivity, technical indicators, and risk management.   You will work independently with first line through senior engineering managers to provide regular analysis and recommendations in all aspects of project management.

Qualifications

You should possess a Master’s degree in electrical engineering or computer science (with relevant technical knowledge) and >7 years of experience in project controls/project management, or equivalent experience.

- Proven leader within a highly matrixed organization

- Strong business partnership skills

- Exceptional team work

- Ability to influence and advise senior staff on program management topics

- Must be flexible and posses the ability to work successfully in a dynamic team environment

- Self-starter, able to achieve results with minimal supervision

- Excellent communication skills at both technical and business levels

- Prior engineering experience in a CPU or SoC design environment

- Strong PC and Unix skills

- Working knowledge of Excel*, pivot tables, formulas, and VBA* would be an added advantage

- Experience with theory of constraints methods and tools (CCPM* / ProChain*) would be an added advantage

- Some programming expertise in web-based systems, Perl, or SQL* would be an added advantage

Note: See bottom of post for some other streaming options!

There are a few options to do this(jtvlc, webcam studio), but the easiest is to use the built-in streaming application on the justin.tv website. The reason this doesn’t work out of the box is because of a bug in flash that results in flash not prompting for access to system devices on linux. To get around the bug you need to allow justin.tv to always be able to use flash to access your webcam. To do this visit the site below:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html

Now, scroll down until you find a url that looks like www-cdn.justin.tv. Highlight the link and then populate the “Always allow” bubble. It should look like the screenshot below when you are done. After you have done this you can visit the justin.tv site and stream using their webapp.

You can also stream to justin.tv using the instructions in the link below:

http://www.ws4gl.org/broadcasts/fme-broadcasts

In response to the link above, my justin.tv command eventually looked like this:

sudo ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 640×480 -r 15 -i /dev/video0 -f alsa -i pulse -ac 1 -ab 96kb -ar 22050 -r 15 -b 550kb -f flv “rtmp://live.justin.tv/app/live_12398123_asdf123″

I needed to share my wireless internet connection on my laptop to a few computers that did not have wireless network cards. This is how I solved the problem.

What you will need:

1. Computer with wireless internet connection running Squid on Ubuntu

2. A few ethernet cables

3. A switch

4. A computer to share the connection to

Instructions:

1. To begin make sure your squid proxy is up and running on the computer that has the wireless connection. To do this open a web browser configure your browser to use your squid proxy (located under network settings on most browsers). The host will be localhost and the default port is 3128. If you don’t have squid installed  use “sudo apt-get install squid” to install squid on Ubuntu. Below is a screenshot of what the settings will look like using Google Chrome as the web browser. Once you have configured your browser visit a webpage and make sure it is working by making sure webpages load correctly.

2. ow you need to configure your wired ethernet card on your machine. Only one setting needs to be modified. Go to network connections in Ubuntu by either right-clicking the network icon in the gnome panel and clicking Edit Connections or going to System->Preferences->Network Connections on the Ubuntu menu. Locate your wired NIC and click edit. Go to the IPv4 Settings tab and click the “Routes…” button in the bottom right corner of the box. On the next box that opens check the box that says “Use this connection only for resources on its network”. The reason we are checking this box is so that Ubuntu will know to use your wireless connection for the internet and not your wired/ethernet connection. Click OK. and Apply to have the new settings take effect. NOTE: If the connection is currently in use the settings might not take.  To fix this unplug your ethernet network card before making the changes.

3. Connect your wired/ethernet adapter to the switch.

4. Connect the computers you want to share your connection with to the switch.

5. To tell the computers without internet to use your computer with internet you need to set them up to use the squid proxy as their internet connection.

6. To do this Ubuntu go to System->Preferences->Network Proxy on the Ubuntu Menu.

7. Select Manual Proxy Configuration and fill in the IP address of the wired network adapter of the computer with the wireless internet connection. In this case the IP address is 192.168.0.100. Now you should be able to browse the internet on the computer you just connected to the switch!

Troubleshooting:

1. Make sure you can ping the computer hosting the internet connection.

2. Make sure you can access port 3128 on the computer hosting the internet connection. System->Administration->Network Tools->Port Scan

3. Make sure your squid configuration access list includes the IP’s of the computers you just connected. /etc/squid/squid.conf – Note: SQUID needs a restart for access list changes to take effect.

Possible access list configuration:

4. Make sure when you connected your wired network adapter to the switch your internet did not break. If this is the case you most likely have a problem with Step 2!

5. Feel free to post a question via a comment on this post or contact me in any of the various ways listed on the site.