Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with log

Interior Design FAIL

GuffProof — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:54:29 -0800

Can the interior walls of a log home be plastered smooth? Fairly simply? After a frustrating six month search for a country home in my semi-modest price range, I found a real possibility. The location is a dream, the price is great. Yes, it needs a lot of work, but having searched this long, I am realistic about the options available to me.

There's just one thing. It's a log home, something I had not even considered. I adore the country setting but when it comes to interior decorating, I am the farthest thing from "rustic".

The living room-- UGH.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43417725@N05/3999122328/

None of my furniture belongs in a room like this, nor do I want it to. The only way I could be happy with it would be to somehow cover over the interior loggage and make them look like "normal" walls.

So that's what I'm wondering... Can you just trowel on a good layer of plaster to fill in and smooth over the logs... or would it take a complete drywalling project... and what the heck would I do with the vaulted ceiling?

Voices of both experience and/or creative ideas are welcome!

For what it's worth, I'm a fairly handy person who could likely handle a plaster-and-paint job herself if given instructions to follow. Never attempted dry wall or the like, though, and would definitely leave something like that to a professional.

I've seen the place from the outside and peered through the windows. I'm touring the inside with the realtor on Monday.

Oh, and yup I know that if I don't really *like* log houses then it's sort of silly to consider buying a log house. I hear ya. But again, I've been searching for SIX MONTHS and if I have to be willing to compromise, that's what I'm going to do! Thanks, all!

(PS- sorry about the link, it wasn't showing up in Preview so I assumed I was doing something wrong and just skipped it.)

Help me Understand Boltzmann's entropy formula: S = k log W?

complience — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 06:54:49 -0800

Help me Understand Boltzmann's entropy formula: S = k log W? The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a concept that always holds me at bay. Sometimes I think I get it.. then realise I don't.

I'm reading Hans Christian Von Baeyers book "Warmth Disperses and Time Passes" Its a great book on the subject, but im struggling with how it trys to explain how Entropy is the logarithm of probability?

From page 106

Whenever you multiply two integers, the numbers of their respective digits add.

eg: 60 x 600 = 36,000

so two digits plus three digits equals five digits (the rule sometimes misses by one digit, as in 3x3 = 9, but that's a negligible error in view of the vastness of the number of molecules in a gas.)

So Boltzmann made the bold, inspired guess that entropy equals the number of digits of the corresponding probability

Can someone explain this in even more simple terms?

Main log files for linux & Mac OSX

tahirh — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:04:40 -0800

What are the main logs for understanding what the Unix (Linux and Mac OS X) systems are doing? Which log files are important for system administration?

Recommend a maillog analyzer

pwnguin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:21:02 -0800

Recommend me a good sendmail log analyzer. We had a recent event where one of two servers running sendmail stopped sending mail, and built up a 7000 message queue before we noticed / fixed it. It's fixed now, but we don't know why it failed, and this part of the system is important but clearly neglected.

Can anyone recommend a good tool similar to Google Analytics or apache log analyzers, but for sendmail?

Bonus question: How big should a mail queue be before nagios should throw a warning or error?

Log Browsing History

phrontist — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:32:00 -0800

How can I get Firefox (3.0.1) to log my browsing history to plain text files (preferably XML, but any that isn't essential)? At a minimum I'd like the URL, page title, and a timestamp for when I loaded the page. It would be nice to have how the page was accessed (via a link? direct entry?) and how long was spent on it.

Help me track gym visits and not lose $200

TravellingCari — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:03:33 -0800

Is there an online calendar (or Google calendar plug-in) that I can use to mark off progress against a goal? I've seen posts such as this one and while my goal is workout based, I don't need anything that complicated. I'm looking for a way to tick off a box indicating a gym visit so I can track it for insurance purposes (we get reimbursed $200 for 50 visits in 6 months, which I missed for the first six months because I didn't track them well).

I get the gym print out for official verification and have the option of gym staff signing when I visit, but the former didn't work for on-going tracking and the latter just never happened. Ideally the log would let me tick off a visit and give me a running tally of the number of visits completed.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas? I'm open to on-line calendars, plug-ins. I've found outlook calendar doesn't work well since I can't see visits at a glance to count them even. Failing any ideas, I suppose I could buy a wall-calendar and go ultra-low tech.

Thanks all

During reboots Win 2000 desktop box is not visible on network unless I log into it

flyby22 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:45:26 -0800

I have a few Windows 2000 desktop boxes on my home network. One of them has been having a problem for sometime where after it reboots, I need to log into the box for it to be visible on the network. Otherwise pings from other machines keep failing. I usually log in using the Administrator account. All of my windows boxes are pretty musch same config having ZoneAlarm firewall, AVG antivirus, spybot, spywareblaster. I am wondering how should I try to figure out where the problem is. I have seen netbt 4319 errors in event log, which is about being another machine on the network same name. BUt I have tried shutting down all machines except my XP laptop which does not have same name at all and the main network problem i described earlier still persists. Any pointers would be very appreciated.

Good iPhone workout log application?

jagalt — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:40:09 -0800

Good iPhone workout log application? I am trying to find an iPhone application that would let me keep track of my workouts, preferably as I am doing them, and there's just too many in the store to make sense of. I'd like to be able to:

- Create custom workouts (weightlifting and cardio)
- Keep track of my weight
- Sync and backup to my computer / online service

I am fine with purchasing an app, so it doesn't have to be one of the free ones. If anyone has had any personal experiences with any of the apps and can recommend anything, it would be much appreciated!

GPS track management

primer_dimer — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:25:48 -0800

looking for software/webapp for GPS track management So I'm getting started with GPS tracking, my aim being similar to this askme question - to record my own tracks as a kind of prosthesis for my appalling memory. I'm starting to think about the next step - actually extracting useful information from those records. As a hypothetical example, let's say I have recorded my position every 10 minutes for a year. Where is the software that will allow me to ask questions like:

- how many visits did I make to the supermarket
- how many hours a day did I spend at work, on average
- what was my average commute time (to the nearest 10 minutes, obviously)
- how many days in total did I spend in the Lake District, spread out over multiple trips

Now it seems to me that this shouldn't be too hard from a programming point of view. I should be able to click on a map and tell a piece of software that this location is "work", this is "home", etc.

And I should be able to say that a journey between "home" and "work" is a regular one and give it a name "commute". Or it should be possible to convert GPS co-ordinates to useful place names by extracting the data from a map - to work out which data points correspond to "Manchester", etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Google maps can do something like that.

So my question is; does such a program/webapp exist? It seems like this kind of data should be ideal for the a kind of stats-heavy app like Mint/Google Analytics etc. that could automatically generate interesting graphs - e.g. time spent in different cities, time spent on different journeys, etc. The closest thing I've found is sites like motionbased.com, that are geared towards running, cycling etc. Or is this problem computationally impossible for some reason I don't understand?

Dear Fashion Diary

mathlete — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:25:54 -0800

Is there a site out there that can help me keep track of what I wear? I'd like to look at my clothes-wearing habits, such as how often I wear something or when the last time I wore something was, and I thought there might be some software or a web site that could help with this out there already.

I haven't found anything remotely close to what I'm looking for with Google. I saw this previous question, but the discussion there is more about whether an outfit is good or bad; I'm looking for a different kind of analysis.

How do i use two instances of firefox at the same time?

freddymetz — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:58:51 -0800

How do i use two separate instances of firefox at the same time? The thing it, it has to be firefox (because of greasemonkey) so i cant use a different browser (or can i?) and i have to be able to log-in to the same website with two different accounts.
Any ideas?

How can I keep a comprehensive film log?

GrowBD — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:33:00 -0800

I want to start a log of films I see, to include director, lead actors, genre, date viewed, etc, and my own review of the flick. This is for my own use only. Can anyone offer a recommendation for software to use/how to set it up in something standard like Excel so that I can search on any category but still have somewhat extensive space for my eloquent prose? Might also extend its use to books and music. I'm a mac user. Thanks!

Suggestions for social exercise logs

sk381 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:29:32 -0800

Could someone recommend a social exercise log along the lines of We Endure but which allows one to track more general exercises (like weight training) along with activities like running and swimming. Thanks!

Help me not track my visitors

Rabulah — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:18:19 -0800

I'm looking for a website visitor tracking service that will allow me to not track users referred from certain domains. Or, one that will allow me to not show those users when I'm viewing the stats. At the moment, I have a free Statcounter account, with the detailed info from the past 500 visitors. Someone has posted my site to StumbleUpon, which is great, but I've had nearly 300 visitors from StumbleUpon so far today, which is eating up my log really quickly.

I really like being able to see where people are coming from, but with results like I'm getting at the moment, it's hard to see. Is there a service, like Statcounter, that will either allow me to not track users referred from a given website, or one that will allow me to filter a given website from showing up in the log when I view it?

I don't mind paying a small amount per month/year to get this functionality, but free is even better.

An educated egg-dicator (for computers)

Plug Dub In — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:01:05 -0800

Mac OS X: External drive is dying, many corrupt files randomly strewn about it. What Mac utility can copy all the non-corrupt files to a new disk and provide a list of the files it couldn't copy? Copying certain files gives an error -36. These files do not open in any application. Disk Utility says everything's just fine. It's lying. It's also unable to image the disk. DiskWarrior is no help either.

I'm imagining something that would crawl through the disk file by file, copying what it can and making a note of what it can't.

I've got a somewhat recent backup, so I'm not really freaking out, but I'd like to keep the most recent files possible. Thanks much, hive mind.

Much historical value to an old Guam WW2 Navy flight logbook?

Quarter Pincher — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:59:00 -0800

My grandfather recently showed us an old handwritten flight logbook from when he served in Guam in WW2 with the Navy. Would scanning this serve any interest to someone? Might it be considered classified info? It's a frailish, brown, pencil-written log books of flights, I presume in and out of Guam, in the WW2 time period. I thought scanning it might preserve the records made in it (no matter how scribbly).. is there someone who might benefit from its information?

Which is the safest keyboard logger?

inquisitive — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:55:48 -0800

Which is the safest keyboard logger to install that is known not to send the logs to a third-party? I need to install a keyboard logger on my machine for my own use. But I am worried that the keyboard logger may itself be a trojan that sends information to another computer over the net, which I dont want.

Which one do you recommend? Of course, it should have stealth settings.

I have tried a few, but the moment I run them, my own anti-virus program catches them and reports them as trojans. And I dont want to disable my anti virus .

What daily activities should I keep a log of?

ihope — Sun, 06 May 2007 23:13:52 -0800

Daily log: What daily activities should I keep a log of? I am starting to try to keep track of my daily activity in a text document. I also know of software to do this but are there any in particular that are good? So far I have the following:
Sleep
Food
Mood
Sexual activity
Hourly activity

Thinking of buying a Razor Phone

ok — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 05:19:42 -0800

How far back does the call log go on a Razor Phone? I need it to go back at least a month.

Online workout journals

scission — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:41:57 -0800

I want a quirky way to log my exercise progress. I like the concept of walking to Rivendell, but I'm not a big Lord of the Rings fan. I'm not looking for practical sites that give me statistics on my actual fitness, analyze my progress with respect to my diet, or anything useful like that: I want a fun front-end to supplement just writing down my numbers on a calendar or in a plain log. Does this exist?

Occam's Razor hypocritical? Discussion links request.

vanoakenfold — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:36:18 -0800

Deceptively unchatfilter =P I am looking for good discussions on Occam's Razor -- which I think is obscenely absurd. Looking for links to discussions, not necessarily petitioning comments (although welcome). Mostly I'm looking for links to discussions that have already taken place (as in, not currently taking place) or perhaps chat logs, or something of that nature -- discussing the validity of Occam's Razor. I've already seen the wiki.

I just think that trying to whittle down as few assumptions as possible when trying to find an answer, may in fact be the most absurdly irrational assumptions one could possibly make. It's like throwing out all possibilities that involve doing a lot of research (perhaps out of one's field) for the sake of not having to go look stuff up. Is it not largely a way to get out of doing a lot of work?

Extra points if the discussion became so confounded to be ended by Godwin's Law (but not necessary, I just like those) =D

Is there a log of activity on OS X?

chill — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 03:41:38 -0800

Mac OS X - is there some sort of log on an iBook's hard drive showing when the machine was booted up and shut down, over the previous few weeks? The reason I ask is that I'm in the middle of a weird Ebay tussle. I sold my old iBook on Ebay, it was in perfect working order. I then got an email from the purchaser saying that he was unable to boot it, and that it was a dodgy hard drive. I agreed to let him send it back to me and I'd fix it.
I eventually got the machine back, and it works perfectly. In fact, it has clearly been used.
I emailed back saying it works fine and pointed out that it has been used, so his assertion that it can't be booted was clearly wrong, and that if he Paypal'd me the postage, I would return it.
Anyway, he then said that it booted occasionally but was intermittent and that "he doesn't want his money back, he just wants a working machine."
Anyway, that's all a bit of weird background. I was wondering if there was anyway I could tell from the logs on the machine the usage over the last few weeks, so that I would be in a better position to go back to him and tell him to stop messing me about?

What Computer app uses this sound?

chrisamiller — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:53:24 -0800

I'm trying to identify the computer application that uses a specific sound clip as some sort of notification noise. The sound is from this Ren and Stimpy short (Log!!) and occurs at 37 seconds in, right after the announcer says "All kids love log!" I know I've heard that little 6-note jingle before and it's driving me crazy!

Log File Analysis on OS X?

mikel — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:04:11 -0800

What software do people currently recommend using to do web log analysis on OS X? I am hip to Google Analytics and am currently using it on a couple of sites, and it's great - but not for everything. I download my raw log files regularly and there are times when I like to be able to run very customized reports focusing on a particular file or directory or something very specific like that.

I have been using the OS X port of Analog with Analog Helper for years on and off, but I was wondering if there were another, better alternative out there that I haven't noticed yet. I would prefer something with nicer-looking output and that didn't eat up close to 100% of CPU while running.

Help me parse the logs, Jim!

dance — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:53:55 -0800

Hi, I'm hosted with TextDrive who don't provide stats or log analysis for their customers. I do have access to the raw Apache log files, though, and would dearly love to parse them and get some meaningful stats and hopefully graphical charts out of them, ala AWStats, Analog or Webalizer. I've tried installing AWStats onto the host but permissions problems are causing that to fail. Surely there must be a local solution? I have access to Mac and Windows boxes - can anyone talk me through parsing my logs locally? For extra bonus love - would anyone be prepared to produce a oneoff document from a couple of log files while this is being sorted out?