System Swapping
Since I hit the road for my vacation on Friday, I realized that I'd better get the machine slated to replace my failing "do-all" server (SMTP/IMAP, DNS, web, source repository, etc) in place. I'd already loaded up Red Hat 9 on it, which left the job of upgrading a bunch of packages that I "care about", and getting the configurations and data migrated over from the old system. Took most of last night, but I think everything is basically up and running on the new system at this point; the big gotchas were PhpWiki (which is incredibly sensitive to PHP, bdb/gdbm, and glibc versions, for some odd reason; I really need to get that software replaced with something that sucks less) and just shuttling that godawful amount of data between the two machines (the old machine is being replaced because it dies under any significant amount of PCI workload, and transferring home directories, mailboxes, and web content from disk to network definitely qualifies).
The new machine, despite having a single processor (the old system was a dual-500MHz PIII HP Netserver, the new machine is a single-800MHz PIII system from Penguin Computing), feels MUCH snappier than the old. I'm guessing that the PCI issues I was having with the old machine were causing more problems than I knew about. I'm just glad I don't have to worry about the machine dying while I'm in Canada, unable to fix or reboot it; I've got a backup mail server, and I'll be increasing the queue retention time on it before the trip, but I'd rather not have to use it if I don't have to. ;-)
Packing
While I was yelling at my screen, Erica was busy packing up a lot of our stuff for the upcoming trip. I don't know what I'd do without her; if it had been me, I'd just grab every piece of clothing I own, mash it into a bag, and hit the road, forgetting a million things (little stuff, like toothpaste, or underwear). Tonight, we drop off 42 (our dog) with her parents, and try to get a good night's sleep before we hit the road tomorrow night.
Thanks to jdub putting it to use on 88mph, I've pulled this down and started looking it over. Nice idea (I'd never seen the original blosxom before either), I'm impressed with how they've essentially built a content management system, but kept it simple. I'm very seriously converting my personal website over to this, since I've been living in the land of Python quite a bit lately, and I'm just sick of dealing with PHP's quirks. It might also be just what the doctor ordered for Erica's wiki (which would allow me to finally get rid of PhpWiki); the wiki and moin contributed formatters would let her continue to use the syntax she's accustomed to, and there's a little CGI script for creating new entries (which could be modified to handle creating new categories as well). It's definitely on my list for when I get back to town.
Automotive
Did a quickie oil change before the trip; I was planning on doing it the same time I did the timing belt change, balance shaft elimination, and installation of the new bling-bling pulley set, but since that hasn't happened yet, and I'm overdue, I figured I'd better do it before I put 3000 miles on the car with a road trip. ;-) When I get back, hopefully I can schedule a weekend to do it; the weather just hasn't been agreeing the last few weeks.
Linux, Video, and Autocross
With the new camera in hand, Erica managed to capture a few videos of me driving at the last autocross event I attended, which gave me a quick glimpse at the state of video editing under Linux these days. My goal was to find a way to splice four videos together, and edit out a few frames; the source videos were from my camera, in MOV files. I'm a little disappointed with what I found; Kino appeared to do what I wanted, but it segfaults semi-randomly, and can't seem to actually load any video formats I throw at it; I managed to accomplish the first task (splice the four together) with a combination of mplayer and avimerge, but I still want to edit out some overlapping frames. A lot of this is probably due to my own lack of knowledge when it comes to video formats and standards, but I really thought a simple task like this would be easier. Suggestions on Linux software for doing this sort of thing (and introductory documents on the subject) are welcome. :-)