Handy UNIX Commands – An Ongoing Collection

Mostly solaris, probably similar on other *nix sytems….

Disk Stats

$ iostat -xnct 5
tty         cpu
tin tout  us sy wt id
3   42  45  1  0 54
extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.4    3.8   11.6   23.5  0.0  0.0    2.1    1.1   0   0 c1d0
0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.0   0   0 c0t0d0
tty         cpu
tin tout  us sy wt id
187  180  54  4  0 43
extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.8    6.4    5.0   80.2  0.0  0.0    0.1    1.1   0   1 c1d0
0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.0   0   0 c0t0d0

tty         cpu
tin tout  us sy wt id
14  277  50  1  0 49
extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.0    1.4    0.0   12.8  0.0  0.0    0.1    0.3   0   0 c1d0
0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.0   0   0 c0t0d0

UPDATE – Tracking Bands on Gray Jays in Algonquin Park

A response from Mr. Dan Strickland

Read the first post here: http://realworldnumbers.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/tracking-bands-on-gray-jays-in-algonquin-park/

Hi Justin,

The jays Mr. Best photographed are members of the Arowhon family group who nest south of Arowhon Pines between the Arowhon road and Joe Lake (north of the old track). There may have been 5 birds in the group but his e-mail showed only three separate birds. ROSLPORR (Red Over Standard Left, Purple Over Red Right) was a nonbreeding extra attached to the breeding pair from fall 2008 up to the 2009 breeding season and is obviously still there. YOBLYOSR (3 photos of the same bird; Yellow over dark Blue Left, Yellow Over Standard Right) is the breeding male on the Arowhon territory and he is at least 13 years old. The third bird photographed is POSLTOTR (Purple Over Standard Left, lighT blue Over lighT blue Right) although I admit it looks very much like POSLWOWR (two white bands on the right leg instead of light blue). That bird was banded as a nestling in the 2009 Arowhon nest this past May 2nd.

Mr. Best says there were 5 birds and that he has other reference photos so I am asking him by copy of this e-mail to see if he can see any other colour band combinations and, if so, if he could forward the photos. I expect there should have been at least one other bird (the old or a replacement breeding female; last spring it was GOSLKOOR, namely dark Green Over Standard Left, pinK Over Orange Right). Also, if Mr. Best was not confused by the comings and goings of 4 birds, there should be yet another combination as well to make up his reported total of 5 different birds.

Thanks for sending this report and the photos to me and I look forward to any other information and photos Mr. Best may have.

Dan

Here’s the original gallery of crops… I need to make some more.  Some may not be so clear.

Tracking Bands on Gray Jays in Algonquin Park

We were enjoying the quiet of the lake when they descended on our campsite all-together.

The exact coordinates of our campsite were 45.589433N by 78.7138W on August 28, 2009 @ 13:28 EDT.

I wrote around and finally got ahold of Justin Peter with Algonquin park… he writes:

Thanks for your message, which was forwarded to me for reply. These jays are part of Dan Strickland’s 30+ year study of gray jays along the Highway 60 Corridor. We are always interested in their whereabouts and social organization. But I can’t tell you much about these specific birds without knowing the combination of coloured bands. Can you please send images (< 300 kB) of the bands? Were all 5 birds together or were they seen in different groups? It would help to have that information also. I’ll await information from you.

Can’t wait for the update!

Voyager: Un-frickin believable

24 hour round trip for messages to and from the Voyager space probes.  NASA is still communicating with them… here’s the latest update on June 26, 2009!

Command Transmission & Verification Operations

Voyager 1 command operations consisted of the uplink of a Command Loss Timer Reset on 06/24 [DOY 175/1650z].  The spacecraft received the command.

Voyager 2 command operations consisted of the uplink of seven bracketed Command Loss Timer Resets sent on five-minute centers using 1.0 Hz steps on 06/22 [DOY 173/1442z].  The spacecraft received two of the seven commands sent.

NASA is sending retard-ese for an instruction set, and the spacecraft are still lucid enough to know they just peed their pants!

There just ain’t much you can coax from  ”grandpa” when all you got is “your timing is screwed up, please reset”, and the response is something other than “OK” 5 times out of 7.

Something else cool I noticed, is that they send in 1.0Hz steps…. probably because of the distance and speed causes an ever increasing doppler effect resulting in a “pitch” that might be too high or too low for voyager to consider intelligent signalling from earth.  hmph.  cool.

Canadian Mortgage Rates – Various Banks – August 2009

3 years ago, I got around 5.13% for 5 years.  I guess I should have analysed the market a bit better at the time, but when buying something as big as a house, you tend to play the caution card.  I liked 5.13 because it felt stable and low enough to survive whatever kind of upswing may have been coming.

Canada Mortgage Rates – August 2009

Considering 5.13% of the first five years of a $300,000 over 25 year mortgage and 5% down (real mortgage amount for $285,000 ) , the amount of interest paid in the first 3 years would have been $42,533.  The amount of principal would have been $18,223. Ouch.

Still, nothing happening.

I hope my blog doesn’t just sit there.  Please, let me find inspiration!

Nothing is happening.

I feel lazy, and I don’t feel like updating my page for a bit.

Using AWK – print only phone numbers out of unstructured, unreliably columnised lines

Sorry about the g33ky post, but i was looking for an example of how to use awk for this circumstance.  There’s probably another text-manipulation cli app to do the job, but i just wanted to use awk for this one.

Note: Solaris awk is known to be buggy. us the xpg4 version on all solaris boxes, or the “match” function wont work.

1 line of data set example:

20081210 133924638-0500 mmsrb owmmsrelay 193 46 46 Info;MMSRelayTxnLog(220/101)193:46:lc=Op ct=owmmsrelay op=MMBox_view.REQ ms=4.63 uid=114944517818131292 size=0 SrvcID=MMS AppID=”Openwave MMS Relay” AppHost=10.33.233.131 AppPort=8088 MsgID=AElADNwAEADBAC4KIe6D OrigIF=WEB RcptIF=WEB OrigAddr=”+19046219845/TYPE=PLMN” RcptAddr=”+19056219845/TYPE=PLMN” NumRcpts=1 EvTime=20081210133924 EvStatus=Success Folder=INBOX TrackID=AElADNwAEADBAC4KIe6D PeerHost=10.33.238.131 PeerPort=55476

A Great Horsepower to Torque Conversion Chart

I was just working on a project tonight – and ran across this great chart.    It’s an old-fashioned draw-a-line 2D calculator.

So it’s possible to have 100HP at with 10000lbs of Foot-Pounds torque at 60 RPM.  Then you break your engine.  Enjoy!

Thanks to the electric toolbox http://www.elec-toolbox.com/ for the graphic.

Horsepower to Torque Conversion Chart

Careful. These Outlet Wiring Instructions are Wrong.

Today I went to the hardware store (LOWES) and bought a 10-pack of decorative electric outlets.  I picked the “Pass & Seymour” brand.  I pretty much know what I’m doing with electrical, but I always like to read instructions.  That’s when I got stymied.  I sat there for 10 minutes comprehending what it said.  I put down the tools and hit the net.  30 minutes later and I could only come to 1 conclusion – the instructions shipped with it were wrong!

Normally, I’d suspect bad instructions to be from China, but these electrical outlets are stamped “Made in U.S.A.”.  

Take a look … do you see anything wrong with the illustration?  

First off, you can see that the plug appears “upside down”.  Actually, this is normal – and it makes sense.  Sometimes a power cord has sufficient weight to “ply” it away from the wall socket, exposing a small portion of the prongs.  I suppose it’s better to have the ground exposed, than the two contact points that carry the electric current. 

The real culprit here is not the orientation of the outlet, but rather the positioning of the prongs in relation to the ground pin.  Normally, the larger Neutral slot should be on the lower right, and the smaller HOT slot should be on the lower left (in the upside-down mounting).

 

 

Now take a look at the actual outlets themselves, and you will see how it should be. 

Ordinarily, bad instructions results in having to take things apart.  In this case, it could result in a DIY’er burning down the house.  I think Pass & Seymour better consider a recall…