Blogs

This is about my fifth re-read of The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. Man I love these books so much and I look forward to reading them along with the rest of the Discworld series over-and-over again. And I can’t wait to introduce them to my son. These two books combined are the story that introduces our feeble world to Discworld and the multitude of characters that it contains. Rincewind is the protagonist of these books, but Sir Pratchett does such an amazing job of giving the other characters a chance to stand out and be compelling in their own right, I absolutely love the tourist Twoflower and his luggage (especially the luggage!) ...

Dead Eye is the fourth Gray Man series of novels and is narrated by Jay Snider who nails his performance. Court Gentry is taking a break while recuperating from the happenings in Ballistic when a man approaches him who has same training as Court. I found a lot of this story to be obvious, there were very few surprises for me, but that may have been Mark Greaney’s intention when he wrote it. It may have been his intention to keep the story very straightforward with the action flowing along at a steady pace. ...

Ballistic is easily my favorite Gray Man novel. The flashback story about how he met Eddie and formed a deep friendship with him is amazing writing. The pictures Mark Greaney paints of the large gun fights in this story blow me away, I really felt like I was watching it all inside my head and could picture everything like I was watching it in a movie theater or in a really great video game. ...

This is the second book in Larry Correia and Mike Kupari’s “Dead Six” series and it packs all of the punch and kick as the first Dead Six book. Holy Cow! I am loving these books. Lorenzo and Valentine are such great characters and the team of Correia and Kupari keep adding more and more depth to them. I really love these characters. ...

I am a spy/thriller rampage! Dead Six is another excellent book from Larry Correia along with Mike Kupari. As with all Larry Correia stories the characters in this one are absolutely amazing. With two lead characters, Valentine and Lorenzo, the story bounces back and forth between the two with amazing timing leaving me on the edge of my seat time and time again. An amazing juggling act that could have easily fallen apart at any time but Larry and Mike keep all of the balls in the air throughout the entire story. Such great writing. ...

Boris, the BeagleBoard Logo MascotI initially bought an Edimax EW-7811Un Dongle for use with my BeagleBone Black (BBB), but after a lof of fiddling and frustration I gave up on it. Turns out that I may have been using the wrong setting in the interfaces file, but after some research I found many instances of people complaining about the Edimax dongles in general, so I started looking for solutions that others were having good luck with. ...

Larry Correia knocks it out of the park yet again with his tale of war in a fantasy setting full of technology mingled with magic. For the first time I really enjoyed a story full of steampunk motifs and hard sci-fi based war. It appears that this story is set in a WarMachine, WarHammer, Iron Kingdoms miniature gaming setting. Normally this would not work for me, I took a look at some of the WarHammer books awhile back and they are not the type of book I would read. But Larry Correia has brought this type of story to a new level. ...

Unable to Connect to BeagleBone Black via Ethernet Everything works fine when the BeagleBone Black is connected to a computer via USB but when connected to the network via Ethernet it does not work. I ran into this issue when I first started using my BeagleBone Black out-of-the-box and again when I updated the OS to Debian. Here is the solution: Connect the BBB to your computer via USB and give it time to boot In a web browser open the Cloud9 IDE by going to https://192.168.7.2:3000/. You may be prompted to choose some settings, I like the defaults. Create a new file, paste in the script below, and run it var fs = require("fs"); var destroyed_key_file = "/etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key"; fs.readFile(destroyed_key_file, function (err, data) { if (err) throw err; if( data===null || data.length===0 ) { console.log("we have a corrupted host key file... try do delete it"); fs.unlink(destroyed_key_file, function (err) { if (err) throw err; console.log("successfully deleted " + destroyed_key_file); console.log("you should now reboot your beaglebone."); console.log("the /etc/init.d/dropbear script will create a new rsa host key file for you."); console.log("after the reboot you should be able to login over ssh"); }); } else { console.log("it seems that you have another problem, sorry"); } }); Now shutdown, I like to sudo shutdown -hP now, the USR lights will all go out when it is shut down Now you can unplug the BBB from USB and plug in an Ethernet cable and power adapter. You should now be able to access the BBB from anywhere on your network using https://beaglebone.local or ssh beaglebone.log. Thanks to httpss://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/beagleboard/Ya2qE4repSY/u4lvOjF66JEJ

After updating the operating system to Debian and plugging in your BeagleBone Black via USB you may receive the error message: WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! This is normal as the RSA key has changed when you updated the OS. The easiest way to fix it is to run ssh-keygen -R then try connecting again. When connected via USB ssh-keygen -R 192.168.7.2 ssh [email protected] When connected via Ethernet ssh-keygen -R beaglebone.local ssh [email protected] ...

After reading the Gray Man series of books I still had a desire for more spy action. In one of the review of Dead Eye Vince Flynn was mentioned so I looked him up and found the Mitch Rapp series. The first book in the series is American Assassin so I picked it up from Audible and gave it a listen. American Assassin is the first novel in the Mitch Rapp series written by Vince Flynn. This is a traditional superagent spy novel with more action than intrigue. I think it would make for a fantastic movie, especially if shot like the spy action-thriller movies of the 70’s. Mitch Rapp is a likable character with flaws that make him human. ...