fak3r

Albert Camus on art and work

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:37:18 -0500

Albert Camus, a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist

Albert Camus’ novel “The Stranger” made me a fan of his writing a long time ago, and I’ve posted about a quote of his about privacy and solitude that I was quite drawn to, but today I came across some of this thoughts on art, and work in gerneral.

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

Simple, secure nginx configuration

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 07:45:12 -0500

The nginx webserver has been my favorite for many years

I’ve been working with the nginx webserver for over 20 years, this after years of running (what I considered bloated) Apache, and the slightly improved lighttpd. For me, nginx has always focused on being simple, secure, and fast. Over the years they’ve had plenty of improvements and I’ve always kept up learning/relearning how to setup sites as securely, and again, simply, as possible.

Best music of 2024

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 18:11:19 -0500

Here’s some of my favorite releases from 2024, remember, don’t look back. Dig in!

Acetone “I’ve Enjoyed As Much Of This As I Can Stand” - this live document of Acetone served as a fine topper to the amazing New West box set of their discography, as well as being great reminder to all their fans what made them so special. A special band
Bad Nerves “Still Nervous”
Better Lovers “Highly irresponsible” - maybe my favorite live set from the year, and I saw them twice, talked to Greg (singer) after a show and he is just a dynamo, from his pedigree to his showmanship - this is what hardcore/metalcore has been missing imo

Better Lovers at Delmar Hall

Caribou “Honey”
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds “Wild God” - going to see the master again in a few months, this is a great album
The Cure “Songs Of A Lost World” - no idea how he does it, this brings me back to Disintegration, which is a great thing
Floating Witch’s Head “Fuzzy Details” - brilliant openers for Built to Spill, with a Philip Glass movie (Koyaanisqatsi) projected behind them. A nod to the Velvets?
Four Tet “Three”
IDLES “TANGK” - maybe my other favorite live set of the year, they constantly bring it. H/T to English Teacher (see below) for a great opening set

IDLES at The Argon (Chicago)

Japandroids “Fate & Alcohol”
The Jesus and Mary Chain “Glasgow Eyes” - always wanted to see them, they did not disappoint, top 5 live set of the year

Jesus & Mary Chain at Stifel Theatre

Les Savy Fav “OUI,LSF”
The Messthetics “The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis” - featuring Joe and Brendan, better known as the rhythm section of Fugazi
Modern Life Is War “Tribulation Workshops” - it’s an EP but it’s what I listened to most this year. Fantastic record, and I just missed seeing them as they cancelled their show here. Next time

Sack put on such a great show at Sinkhole

Osees “SORCS 80” - back to their more garagy/punk sound, I approve
Personal Trainer “Still Willing” - from The Netherlands, I saw them in Copenhagen at a small Christiana concert venue, which I now love

Personal Trainer at Loppen (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet “The Way Out of Easy” - more great jazz, this time off the court
Shellac “To All Trains” RIP Steve Albini - they’ll never be anyone like him. What a huge impact he had on music that I love, from PJ to Weddos and beyond, not to mention Shellac, who I was lucky to see a few times.
The Smile “Wall of Eyes”
Soup Activists “Mummy What are Flowers For?” - a Saint Louis band that floored me when they opened for Sweeping Promises last year, then they actually recorded this in Kansas with Sweeping Promises. Sharp stuff this

Soup Activists (Saint Louis) at Gonerfest 21 (Memphis)

Superposition “II” - more awesome modern jazz from Finland, thanks We Jazz, hope to attend your fest soon!
Tycho “Infinite Health”
Tube Alloys “Evil Angels” - great rock and roll from LA

Tube Alloys at Gonerfest 21 (Memphis)

Touché Amoré “Spiral in a Straight Line” - well they didn’t stand on ceremony with this release, wow
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings “Woodland” - a great return to form from these legends of the (modern) genre

Honerable Mentions

Things I think are worth checking out, who knows, maybe they’ll catch fire later.

Run a Tor Relay in Docker

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 07:45:12 -0500

A generalized view of Tor networking

Summary

I used to run a Tor Relay from my personal servers, but it always took some time to setup/configure and maintain it. After watching a recent panel from The Tor Project, “Distribute(d) Trust – The key to global encryption access” I decided to spin one up again, but since today I use Docker for so many things, I looked for a way to utilize that. Well, they make it easy, so here’s how to run a Tor Relay in Docker.

Sync or backup files to Wasabi Cloud Storage

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 07:42:19 -0500

Sync or backup files to Wasabi

Summary

I use Wasabi for cloud storage, and this script I’ve developed makes it simple to keep my files synced with Wasabi’s Cloud Object Storage. I choose Wasabi because it is:

100% bit-compatible with Amazon S3 this means that it follows an accepted standard for cloud storage and interoperability, while allowing me to use existing S3 tools if I wanted to
Since it’s S3 compatible I don’t have to install some GUI tool or have some sort of extention to my file manager to be able to use the service. This is a big deal because I want to setup a sync process to run backups, schedule it and just let it run, all doable via code
It’s more affordable, partially because they don’t charge for egress (download tranfers) whereas most other cloud storage does
- Granted this is clearly their own marketing, in this example, “$599/mo with Wasabi and over $3,500/mo with AWS S3* (AWS is 7x more expensive!)”
- Personally I’m paying less than $15.00 USD per month to store almost 1.5 Terabyte (TB)
It supports Aegis Authenticator my preferred 2FA application

So basically it uses a well known standard instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, it doesn’t require any proprietary tools to function, it’s less expensive than other competing options, while being something I can easily script and throw in cron, actually systemd but we’ll cover that, to just set and forget.

Graphene OS

Wed, 22 May 2024 09:16:11 -0500

It's alive! Graphene OS build 2024051600 booting on the Pixel 8a

Summary

I’m running Graphene OS, the “private and secure mobile operating system with Android app compatibility. Developed as a non-profit open source project”, on my new Google Pixel 8a), and it’s going great. Not only does this address many long term concerns about online privacy and security, but it allows me full control over how exposed I am to online marketing, and more nefarious things. While I seemingly hemmed and hawed over moving to running Graphene OS as my main “daily driver”, it only took chatting with some users and developers on the project’s chat channels to tell me that there was nothing to fear. In fact, with their excellent documentation I found installation to be far eaiser than when I used to run custom Android ROMs in the past (LineageOS, Paranoid Android, crDroid, etc).

Fixing SSH issues in Windows

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 17:45:19 -0500

SSH and Windows, do we really have to? Well for work... yes. :sigh:

I’ve worked with OpenSSH and posted about my experiences with it for as long as I’ve been learning Linux, so easily 20+ years. It’s an amazingly powerful tool that I still use everyday on personal (all Linux and BSD hosts) and work (Windows laptops and workstations, and Linux hosts) systems. Now with everything that ubiquitous and powerful, there’s always more to learn…and sure okay, to break, which is a way I learn. Always has been, always will be.

Best music of 2023

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 19:04:12 -0500

The Exbats, Gonerfest 20 Memphis, TN - 09.29.2023

It’s another year where music led me to unexpected places. I enjoyed finding out about new bands/sounds via the internet, as always, but even more so in person, thanks to amazing music festivals like Gonerfest in Memphis, which I finally got to attend (just needed someone cool enough to see new bands with me!), and T1Fest in Chicago, and while I’ve been there seemingly 100s of times, it was my 2nd favorite city I visited this year. I need to add more thoughts and images to this post, but for now…

Benchmarking SSH ciphers for transfer speed

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 12:24:21 -0500

UPDATE thanks to a correction from LinkedIn user MR, I’ve updated the command to use user@remotehost instead of localhost

I transfer files via OpenSSH all the time using scp manually or in scripts to move files between systems or servers, and with files getting larger all the time, I’m always interested in making transfers faster. Since I’m on my home network (with remote nodes securely connected over a Tailscale network (watch for an upcoming post on that)), I’m happy to sacrifice a little security (encryption) to gain some speed, so I set out to benchmark SSH transfers to find the fastest cipher in terms of performance to use for SSH transfers. Years ago we’d default to blowfish or arcfour, but since those don’t offer much security, newer versions of OpenSSH don’t include those anymore. I’ve always enjoyed exploring the benefits of Security vs. Convenience, and this seems like a good one to do!

HOWTO use GitHub's token method

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 05:34:11 -0500

GitHub have turned off ssh authentication, here’s a new way to do it that is almost as easy

Best music of 2022

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 09:43:03 -0500

My favorite music from 2022

Ansible Speed Tweaks

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 08:34:11 -0500

Speed up your Ansible runs with this modified ansible.cfg

Screen Lock Block

Thu, 26 May 2022 06:21:12 -0500

Defeat the screen timeout but your IT team blocked you from changing

Local Privilege Escalation in polkits pkexec

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 06:21:12 -0500

The big news in Linux today is the Local Privilege Escalation in polkit’s pkexec (CVE-2021-4034), with Arstechnica leading with, “A bug lurking for 12 years gives attackers root on every major Linux distro - It’s likely only a matter of time before PwnKit is exploited in the wild” Needless to say, I immediately had to try it out on my own, so I got on one of my Debian GNU/Linux servers to test it. Spoiler: it worked, here’s how you can try it too.

Best Music of 2021

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 06:21:12 -0500

A rough list of songs I liked and listened to most in 2021.

Dry Cleaning “New Long Leg”
Tennis System “Autophobia”
Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds “Swing From The Sean DeLear”
Blankenberge “Everything”
Teenage Bottlerocket “Sick Sesh”
Amyl & The Sniffers “Comfort to Me”
Snail Mail “Valentine”
Julien Baker “Little Oblivions”
Valerie June “The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers”
The Mountain Goats “Dark In Here”
Lucy Dacus “Home Video”
Fuzz “Levitation Sessions (Live)”
CHVRCHES “Screen Violence”
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis “CARNAGE”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “L.W.”
Viagra Boys “Welfare Jazz”
Japanese Breakfast “Jubilee”
The Weather Station “Ignorance”
SAULT “Nine”
Low “HEY WHAT”
The War on Drugs “I Don’t Live Here Anymore”
Deafheaven “Infinite Granite”
Madlib “Sound Ancestors”

Recognizing and Exercising Your Basic Rights

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 06:21:12 -0500

During therapy I found this ‘Personal Bill of Rights’ and I’ve focused on it as I’ve gone through a lot of recent changes. This content is not mine, and is copied from The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne. It has, and is, helping me, I hope it’s useful for you too.

Albert Camus

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 06:21:12 -0500

“Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.” ― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951–1959

Obligitory music reference:

“I could listen to all my friends and go out again and pretend it’s enough or I could make a career of being blue I could dress in black and read Camus smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth like I was 17 that would be a scream but I don’t want to get over you.”

Run a hidden tor website

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 08:43:13 -0500

Today I’m going to walk you through setting up a simple Tor hidden service, in this case, a webserver. I’ve played with Tor for a long time, but mostly using it as a client, not hosting a site. I wanted a fak3r version on Tor, so here we are.

I won’t go into what Tor is, hit their About page for that, but the software allows ANY user, “…to experience real private browsing without tracking, surveillance, or censorship.” So think of the privacy missing on the ’normal’ internet, well Tor subverts that by basically building a different Internet for you to travel on. Yes it can improve your standing even if you’re hitting the ’normal’ internet, but also opens up the ability to browse to .onion URLs, aka hidden services on THE DARK WEB!

Na, don’t be afraid, it’s just gotten a bad rap, just think of it as an alternative internet which can be used and abused just like the ’normal’ one. To get started, download and install the Tor Browser Bundle, which is a customized Firefox browser with Tor integration built-in, so you can surf to your new site and travel to other .onion sites after we get ours built. Vámonos!

Secure Linux Servers by Default

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 10:44:18 -0600

I get beyond upset when I come across a Linux server running at a company that is either not configured securely, or so out of date that I have to lookup what year the kernel was from. In this environment where companies continuously get pop, leak data and get compromised, I have zero tolerance for either of these scenarios.

Of course anytime I come across this I start asking questions, I talk to other teams (since whoever I talk to always has to pass the buck to some other team), and then when I finally get an explanation it’s usually along the lines that their waiting for the vendor to update the image, that they’ll then upgrade to. Example, an Amazon Web Services AMI.. the base image they build is the one the team installs, and they don’t modify or update this image… ever. This is unacceptable, all of this security theater is leaving Linux servers vulnerable of too much passing the buck, or let’s be honest, people that are running the servers don’t really know how to run the servers. I’ve long projects like DevSec Hardening Framework, which I love because they address of slew of best practices pulled from all sorts of sources, and allow the automatic updating of these configurations via an automation tool like Ansible. From this I built a project that will automatically install Ansible, apply these best practices to the base Linux system, but also setting up a far more secure OpenSSH setup. My thought is this should be the first thing run against a new server, and then use that as the ‘base’ for all servers. I call this project ‘base-secure’ as a play on something we used to say back in in the online Quake II days, which was a throwback to an earlier game, assume DOOM.

Regardless, like everything it could be improved and changed, but for now, this works, and I'm happy to build on it and try to get others to use and promote the idea of running SECURE BY DEFAULT LINUX SERVERS!

Best Music of 2020

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 13:28:35 -0600

What can I say about this year? Fuck it for stopping my live concert attendance March 10, but look, bands still put out amazing music! Some with the pandemic as a driver, and others without. Regardless, I think this was an excellent year for music after I openly wondered if not having the live component would kill it (it did not).

Spotify playlist

The top 12

I dislike ranking my favorite music of they year since there are so many different aspects that appeal to me, it just doesn’t seem fair. Regardless I have to have a ’tops’ list, and here it is, listed alphabetically.

Randomize your Twitter avatar from the commandline

Sun, 23 Aug 2020 17:44:18 -0600

I’m pretty active on Twitter, and I wanted a way to change my Twitter avatar, to a randomly ‘glitched’ out version, on a set time (say hourly). I figured out a way to do this using Python, Twitter’s API, and some random glitch services online. This method requires that you manually glitch the images you want, drop them in a directory, create a new Twitter App to get permissions to change your avatar, then install and use Tweepy to do the heavy lifting, all called by cron. I called the project randota = randomize twitter avatar = randomize your Twitter avatar from the commandline.

Follow the steps to do this for your own Twitter avatar.

Find Raspberry Pi On Your Network

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 18:21:13 -0600

Anytime I’m trying out a new Raspberry Pi project, I need to find its IP once it’s up on the network so I can access it. There are plenty of interesting ways to do this, but I always go with this simple way using nmap and awk. As always adjust as needed, for example if 192.168.1.0 isn’t your local subnet.

sudo nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24 | awk '/^Nmap/{ip=$NF}/B8:27:EB/{print ip}'

Best Music of 2019

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 13:28:35 -0600

Black Belt Eagle Scout, Foam, St. Louis, MO (2019)

UPDATE songs from this post are now a Spotify playlist, listen while you read!

Another year almost in the books, and music continues to be a huge part of my psyche. This year I hit more concerts than I had since I moved from Austin, so that was a significant factor in getting through the year. In fact, I saw a total of 15 of the bands that you see listed on this page, which is not bad for an old guy! Again, when I’m hanging with kids that are about my kid’s ages at shows I like to pretend I’m some cool record label exec who likes to tip more than the average bear, and is just there to make sure everyone is enjoying the band. As always besides discovering and listening to music, I love sharing, and talking about what I like with others, which just fuels more discovery and passion. This yearly list is another signpost in that journey. Also, I made a decent attempt to link to most of the music I picked, so follow the links you’re interested and let me know what you like. Special mentions to Spotify and Bandcamp that not only helped me discover and share new music, but allowed me to connect more directly to bands and buy things directly from them! Bandcamp is just incredible for this, it’s like buying their music at a show, but even better since you can ‘pay what you want’ and let them know how important their music is to you.

Small victories

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 08:48:13 -0600

While it’s a small victory, I’m happy that Facebook is still trying to guess what city I’m from. Thanks to some great friends that live all over, it’s fun to see what it’s grasping for!

Howto Linux hot corner screen lock

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 10:12:50 -0500

One thing I’ve gotten used to is using ‘hot corners’ to invoke actions in the Linux desktop, in the latest version of Elementary OS I had to find the command to manually do this, but now I have it working. Test this in a terminal and validate that it works for you:

xset dpms force off

Note: that you’ll need to have the screen lock activate as part of the power options (System Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Locking)

Music - Concerts

Sun, 07 Jul 2019 18:39:12 -0500

2023

Radkey, w/Bruiser Queen, Bad Investments, New Car Scent - Rose Music Hall - Sat, Jan 14 (COLUMBIA)
Radkey w/The Many Colored Death, Bruiser Queen, The Haddonfields - Red Flag - Fri, Feb 3
Flatfoot 56 w/The Rumjacks, The Drowns, Criminal Kids - Reggie’s - Sat, Mar 11 (CHICAGO)
Quasi w/Bat Fangs - Off Broadway - Fri, Mar 24
Magnetic Fields w/Lomelda - City Winery - Mon, Mar 27
An Evening with The English Beat - Delmar Hall - Wed, Apr 12
Bass Drum of Death w/Dead Tooth - Off Broadway - Thu, Apr 13
OFF! w/Upchuck - Off Broadway - Tue, May 9
The Bouncing Souls w/Samiam, Swingin’ Utter$, PET NEEDS - Delmar Hall - Fri, May 12
Wednesday w/Cryogeyser - Off Broadway - Thu, May 18
The Interrupters & Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls w/Bedouin Soundclash, Radkey - Pageant - Sat, May 20
Valerie June - City Winery - Wed, May 31
Bad Cop / Bad Cop w/The Last Gang, Jon Snodgrass - Off Broadway - Thu, Jun 1
Flaming Lips playing Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots - St Louis Music Park - Wed, Jun 14
Supersuckers w/The Delta Bombers, The Franklin County Trucking Company - Tue, Jun 27
Off With Their Heads w/Single Mothers, Pleasure Center, STILL - Red Flag - Thu, Jun 29
The Hold Steady w/The Mountain Goats, Dillinger Four - The Salt Shed - Sat, Jul 1 (CHICAGO)
The Smile w/Robert Stillman - The Factory - Thu, Jul 20
Julia Jacklin w/Macie Stewart - Off Broadway - Thu, Jul 27
Sweeping Promises w/The Soup Anarchists - Off Broadway - Tue, Aug 1
Explosions In The Sky w/FISTER - Pageant - Thu, Sep 21
Gonerfest 20 - OSEES, The Kids, The Exbats, Jack Of Heart, Alien NoseJob, CIVIC, Sweeping Promises, C.O.F.F.I.N., Skull Practitioners, Tee Vee Repairmann, Ibex Clone, 1-800-Mikey, The Mummies, The Marked Men, The Courettes, Poison Ruïn, Bill Orcutt/Chris Corsano, King Louie Memorial Family Band, Lewsberg, Cool Jerks, Dippers - Railgarten - Thu, Sep 28 - Sun, Oct 1 (MEMPHIS)
Bad Religion w/The Dwarfs - The Factory - Sat, Oct 14
Nick Cave (solo) - Ryman Audiorium - Tue, Oct 17 (NASHVILLE)
Amyl And The Sniffers w/Die Spitz - Pageant - Wed, Oct 25
Dwarves w/Direct Hit!, Ultraman - Red Flag - Sat, Nov 11

2022

Ryan Hurd w/Morgan Wade - Delmar Hall - Sun, Jan 23rd
Parquet Courts w/Mdou Moctar - The Pageant - Sat, Mar 5
Ty Segall Solo Tour w/Charles Moothart - Off Broadway - Sun, Mar 6
Hiss Golden Messenger - Off Broadway - Tue, Mar 8
Radkey w/Fight Back Mountain, Monocles - Red Flag - Fri, Mar 11
The Dollyrots w/The Haddonfields - Old Rock House - Mar 16
The Dangerous Summer w/Dialogue, Uncanny Valley - Off Broadway - Thu, Apr 7
The English Beat w/Murder City Players - Delmar Hall - Fri, Apr 8
Bad Cop/Bad Cop w/Drakulas, FEA - Off Broadway - Mon, Apr 11
Screaming Females w/GHÖSH - Off Broadway - Tue, Apr 26
Mudhoney w/Bassamp and Dano - Off Broadway - Thu, May 5
Kevin Devine w/Kississippi, Kayleigh Goldsworthy - Off Broadway - Tue, May 17
Valerie June w/Rachel Maxann - Delmar Hall - Sun, May 22
Destroy Boys w/Scowl - Off Broadway - Sat, May 28
Sigur Rós - The Riverside Theater - Wed, Jun 1 (MILWAUKEE)
Jeff Rosenstock w/Catebite - Duck Room - Sun, Jun 19
Flatfoot 56 w/Capgun Heros - Duck Room - Sat, Jul 9
The Black Keys w/Band of Horses - Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre - Fri, Jul 15
Raging Nathans w/The Slow Death, The Haddonfields & Breakmouth Annie - Thu, Sep 1
IDLES w/Injury Reserve - The Truman - Fri, Sep 2 (KANSAS CITY)
Interpol w/Spoon - Stifel Theatre - Fri, Sep 9
Built To Spill w/The French Tips - Red Flag - Mon, Sep 19
Electric Six w/Superuckers, Killing Fever - Red Flag - Sun, Oct 2
The Black Angels w/The Vacant Lots - Delmar Hall - Mon, Oct 3
Kevin Morby w/Cassandra Jenkins - Off Broadway - Tue, Oct 11
Matt Talbott (from Hum) - house show St Louis - Wed, Oct 12
They Might Be Giants (Flood 30) - Pageant - Sun, Oct 16
Lucero w/L.A. Edwards - Old Rock House - Oct 29
The Queers w/Teenage Bottlerock - Off Broadway - Sun, Oct 30
Smoking Popes w/Off with Their Heads, Limbeck, The Color Fred - Off Broadway - Thu, Nov 10
Guster w/Ratboys - Pageant - Tue, Nov 15
Black Lips w/Bloodshot Bill, Country Westerns - Duck Room - Sun, Nov 20
American Aquarium w/David Ramirez - Blue Note (COLUMBIA) - Wed, Nov 30
Foals w/Inner Wave, Glove - Pageant - Mon, Dec 4

2021

American Aquarium w/Morgan Wade - Delmar Hall - Web, Jul 14
Phoebe Bridgers w/Bartees Strange - Chesterfield Amphitheater - Fri, Sep 3
Senses Fail w/Hawthorne Heights, The Bombpops - Pop’s Concert Venue - Sun, Sep 12
The Get Up Kids w/The Casket Lottery - Red Flag - Sat, Sep 25
Drive-By Truckers w/Buffalo Nichols - The Pageant - Sat, Oct 2
Deep Sea Diver - Angard Arts Hotel - Sun, Oct 03
IDLES w/Gustaf - The Riviera Theatre - Fri, Oct 8 (CHICAGO)
Teenage Bottlerockets w/The Haddonfields - Off Broadway - Sat, Oct 16
Frank Turner w/Nathan Gray - Delmar Hall - Sun, Oct 17
Josh Rouse (solo) - Off Broadway - Thu, Oct 21
Planet Booty - Red Flag - Tue, Nov 2
Lucero w/Morgan Wade - Old Rock House - Thu, Nov 4
The Lemonheads w/Heyrocco, The Haddonfields - Red Flag - Fri, Nov 12
Lilly Hiatt w/Lydia Loveless - Off Broadway - Sat, Nov 13
Teenage Bottlerocket w/The Last Gang (US), Tightwire - recordBar - Tue, Nov 16 (KANSAS CITY)
Alkaline Trio w/War On Women - The Pageant - Wed, Nov 17
Silversun Pickups w/Zella Day - Pageant - Thu, Nov 18
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit w/Strand of Oaks - Stifel Theatre - Tue, Nov 30
CHVRCHES w/Donna Missai - The Pageant - Mon, Dec 6
Katie Pruitt w/Tre Burt - Duck Room - Sat, Dec 11
Pokey LaFarge (solo) - Off Broadway - Thur, Dec 30

2020

Joseph w/Deep Sea Diver - Delmar Hall - Wed, Feb 12
Bruiser Queen w/Steve Ewing - Schlafly Bottleworks - Fri, Feb 14
Sloan - Duck Room - Sat, Feb 15
Justin Townes Earle (solo) w/John Henry - Off Broadway - Fri, Feb 28
Fitz and the Tantrums w/Twin XL - Pageant - Tue, Mar 3
Black Lips w/Poppy Jean Crawford - Duck Room - Tue, Mar 10

Thanks to Covid-19 for ending that year early.

Music - Concerts (upcoming)

Sun, 07 Jul 2019 18:39:12 -0500

2024

Potential

T1 Fest - Thu, Oct 10 / Fri, Oct 11 / Sat Oct 12 - Reggies (Chicago) Tickets Sludgeworth Guttermouth Diesel Boy The Jasons The Bollweevils Go Betty Go Kepi Ghoulie Fully Electric The Regananomics Take The Reins Parasites Whatever… Geoff Palmer The Eradicator Violets Space Age Zeros Sex Dream Nifty Skullet The DUI’s
MJ Lenderman & The Wind w/Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - Tue, Oct 8 2024 - Off Broadway Tickets
Tokyo Police Club w/Born Ruffians - Tues, Nov 05 - The Pageant Tickets
Valerie June - Sun, Nov 10 - Duck Room Tickets
Franz Ferdinand - Wed, Dec 11 - Pageant Tickets
Out of the Blue Festival - Jan 4-7 - (Cancun, MX) Tickets

Upcoming

Gonerfest 21 - Railgarten - Thu, Sep 26-29 (Memphis) The Rip Offs (SF, CA) Derv Gordon & So What (UK / US) Jon Spencer (NYC, NY) Gee Tee (Sydney, Australia) Etran dr L’Air (Agadez, Niger) Angel Face (Tokyo, Japan) Split System (Sydney, Australia) Cheater Slicks (Columbus, Ohio) Schizophonics (San Diego, CA) Bailter Space (Christchurch, New Zealand) Michael Beach (Melbourne, Australia) Pull Chains (Greg C & Gentleman Jesse) (Memphis / Atlanta) Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band (Louisville, KY) Tube Alloys (Los Angeles, CA) Sleeveens (Nashville, TN) Th’ Losin Streaks (Sacramento, CA) Sex Mex (San Antonio, TX) R.F.M.C. (Sydney, Australia) Feeling Figures (Montreal, Canada)
Rise Against - Pageant - Wed, Oct 16
The Psychedelic Furs & The Jesus and Mary Chain w/Frankie Rose - Stifel Theatre - Sun, Oct 29
Craig Finn (solo) - Off Broadway - Mon, Nov 18
The Highly Irresponsible Tour: Better Lovers w/Gouge Away , SPY , CLOAKROOM - Sat, Dec 7 - Delmar Hall
- No, do not protect my ticket purchase. I understand this decision may put my $69.70 spent on Better Lovers tickets at risk.

2025

REFUSED w/Quicksand - Tue, Mar 25 - The Salt Shed Indoors (Chicago)
Mogwai - Fri, Apr 18, 2025 - Varsity Theater (Minneapolis)
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Mon, May 05, 2025 - Music Hall (Kansas City)

Past

Dropkick Murphys - w/Pennywise, The Scratch - The Factory - Mon, Feb 26
Flatfoot 56 w/Tsunami Bomb, Dylan Walshe, Something To Do, Loss Leader - Reggie’s - Sat, Mar 9 - (Chicago)
Alkaline Trio w/Drug Church - Pageant - Sun, Mar 17
Less Than Jake w/Strung Out, Raging Nathans - Mar 27 (Bloomington, IL)
Jeff Rosenstock w/Sidney Gish, Gladie - Delmar Hall - Sun, Apr 7
Better Lovers w/SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Foreign Hands, Greyhaven - Off Broadway - Fri Apr 19
Modern Life Is War w/The Gorge, Blight Future - Off Broadway - Sat, Apr 20 [CANCELLED]
Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol w/Stay Sane, Kilverez - Sinkhole - Fri, May 3
Slowdive w/Drab Majesty - Pageant - Sat, May 4
The Alarm w/Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel , Belouis Some - Delmar Hall - Mon, May 6 [POSTPONED, get well Mike!]
Swans w/Kristof Hahn (Swans) - Delmar Hall - Fri, May 10 [MISSED, out of town for Willie!]
Willie Nelson & Family w/Robert Earl Keen - Whitewater Amphitheater - Sat, May 11 (New Braunfels, TX)
Flatfoot 56 w/The Uppers - Off Broadway - Sat, Jun 1
Bad Copy/Bad Cop - Off Broadway - Sun, Jun 2
The Chats w/Dirty Fences, Paint Fumes - Off Broadway - Fri, May 17
Cosmic Psychos w/Nine Pound Hammer - Duck Room - Fri, Jun 14
Whores. w/Venus Twins, Iron Linings - Red Flag - Mon, Jun 17
Guided by Voices w/Wishy - HI-FI Annex - Fri, Jul 19 (Indianapolis)
Built to Spill - w/Flaming Witches Head - Red Flag - Sat, Aug 24
IDLES - Aragon Ballroom - Wed, Sep 18 (Chicago)

Concerts - Previous

The 3 Best Australian Punk Albums

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 19:20:20 -0500

For as long as I can remember I’ve been infatuated with Australia, and one thing I’ve always admired about the country is its unique sense of place; things from Australia are born of the land down under. Growing up in the 70s I was a big AC/DC fan, having all of their cassettes, even some imports (TNT), along with a few records of the later, post-Bon Scott era. Of course as I grew up and got into better music, I started hearing Aussie bands and always loved their sound. Bands like INXS, Hoodoo Gurus, Models, The Church, got airplay on MTV and became favorites, later Midnight Oil, Hunters & Collectors, and the Go Betweens showed even more variety. Meanwhile I was always interested in the differences, bands from AU were certainly influenced by what was happening in other countries, but they were still a product of their surroundings. While punk sounded different if you were in the UK (Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks), the US-east (Ramones, Talking Heads, Bad Brains), or the US-west (X, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendancies), once you started looking at the AU punk bands; they really sounded different.

Automate Ansible Tower cli

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 20:48:13 -0600

I’ve used Ansible for years, but only started using their web-front end, Tower more recently. (Note, the upstream code was open-sourced last year, and it’s worth checking out, they call it AWX) So while I’m never a big fan of UI tools, Tower has proven quite helpful in allowing other teams access to deploying to their own dev servers from my Ansible code. There also have a cli tool to control Tower called (suprise) tower-cli that allows you to interact with Tower’s API. While it’s helpful, it’s lacking a few features, so I worked up a wrapper script to handle my workflow. Here’s the gist, with docs on how to install tower-cli, and run the tool. Give me some feedback if you have questions, of find it helpful.

Best music of 2018

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 10:14:58 -0500

Here it is. It's the end of 2018, and it's time for another in the series of my obligatory year-end music reviews. The following is an alphabetical list of albums that caught, and kept, my attention this year.

The list

At The Gates “To Drink From The Night Itself”
Beach House “7”
John Coltrane “Both Directions At Once”

Quickly Setup a Decent Vimrc

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 18:22:58 -0500

I’m on new servers pretty often, and usually their vim configuration is quite lacking, I mean, come on /etc/skel can only get you so far these days.. While I have my .vimrc out there, copying it down fails because I don’t have the right version of vim installed, plus I’m missing plugins and other goofy stuff I call out that should be in my $HOME/.vim directory. So, here’s a start to get me rolling on a new server with a decent, basic vimrc setup so I can get to work. I’ll update this as I go, and once I have it ready I’ll redo my deploy scripts to run Ansible to properly “get the game started” (Slackware reference for my old timers out there!). Until then, this will do:

Check a webserver's cipher suites

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 15:31:19 -0500

Today we wrote a simple shell script to query an SSL enabled webserver. Pretty fun to have in the aresenal, it looks like this:

Let’s run it against our site and see what we get:

$ ./ssl_cipher_test.sh fak3r.com
tls1_2: ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA
tls1_2: AES256-SHA
tls1_2: ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
tls1_2: ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA
tls1_2: AES128-GCM-SHA256
tls1_2: AES128-SHA

So what do you think?

Build a Headless Spotify Connect Server

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 17:26:38 -0500

Overview

I’ve run various projects on Raspberry Pi computers since they came out, but the one I’ve used the most has been the one I bought an external DAC (digital audio converter) for, and hooked it up to a stereo so I could remotely stream music. Technically you could use a Y-cord (3.5mm Mini to RCA Stereo) plugged into the headphone out of the Pi, and have it connect via RCA to your stereo, but then you’re using the on board audio, which is far inferior to a dedicated DAC. While I liked frontends like Pi Musicbox, Rune Audio, and the polished looking Volumio, they did far more than I needed, and over time I’d have random issues that would take me longer to fix than I’d like, so I decided to rebuild my setup from scratch, and just make it a Spotify Connect server. This means that the system can be a ‘source’ for any Spotify client to stream audio to, cutting out the need for a web-based front end like the other projects.

Proxy Nexus-IQ via NGINX with SSL

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 14:45:15 -0600

Today, working on a client project, I was strugglying to get their Apache configuration working with virutal hosts, fuctioning as a reverse proxy to a Nexus IQ server while providing SSL. Between different virtual hosts pointing to differnt port, while rewriting parts of it, I wouldn’t get it to do everything I needed. After a few hours I took a different tact and figured it out quickly in NGINX. I’ve only used NGINX for personal projects (and most work projects) for the past 6 years or so… it’s better, faster, more flexible, easier to config, more reliable… forget about it, for my money it is tremendous.

Privacy Policy

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 15:07:00 -0600

What you should know when visiting my site, fak3r.com; pay attention, this stuff is important!

Does fak3r.com use cookies?

NO, I do not use cookies.

Does fak3r.com track users in any way?

NO, I do not track users in any way, and in fact I've even gone to the trouble of disabling some javascript that get web fonts which can also track you! I *highly* recommend you run the Privacy Badger plugin in your browser so you can verify my claims yourself, and defend yourself against other tracking agents online. It's an educational process I wish everyone would go through to better understand the "free" internet, and how they're paying with their private data.

Terms and Conditions

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 15:07:00 -0600

1. Terms

By accessing this web site, you are agreeing to be bound by these web site Terms and Conditions of Use, all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. If you do not agree with any of these terms, you are prohibited from using or accessing this site. The materials contained in this web site are protected by applicable copyright and trade mark law.

Best Music of 2017

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 21:05:58 -0600

The shows

Kevin Morby at Off Broadway, Wednesday, September 13, 2017 (photo by me)

I still love seeing live music more than anything, and it’s always such a kick to see my favorite bands, as well as seeing bands I’ve never heard of, usually opening the show, becoming a new favorite. There were some great shows this year, and I ate them up - honestly I didn’t misss much that I wanted to see. Here are the bands I saw in 2017 (25 shows, ~36 bands):

Upgrading GitLab from 6x to 10x

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 19:14:56 -0600

Recently at my day job, the client tasked me with bringing their development stack up to date. The (fun) difficultly here was that these servers were about 4 years out of date and included Jenkins, Sonar, GitLab), and Nexus. Jenkins was the jumbled mess you'd expect with unsupported plugins, new configurations breaking builds, and more fun, Sonar was so out of date I started from scratch after dropping the old databse, but GitLab was the one I was looking forward to, and while it was enlightening, it wasn't much fun! First I'll say that I'm a big fan of GitLab, it's the only thing I'd want to use internally at a company, and the community edition has a ton of great features. The main issue with my setup was that it was so out of date and required us to step up one major verision at a time; so 6.x up to 7.x, 7.x up to 8.x, 8.x up to 9.x, and finally, 9.x up to 10.2.x.

The Power Trio Behind Superflex

Sun, 05 Nov 2017 16:31:04 -0600

This documentary about Superflex, a Danish art collective responsible for the current main hall exhibition at Tate Modern in London, is remarkable. Artists Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, are Superflex, who are, “…famous for getting audiences involved in artworks, which playfully challenge conventions.” Some of the conceptual ideas that their work has pushed are really eye opening, and it follows my long held belief; if you have to ask, “But is it art?”, then I think the answer is always “Yes”. If something forces you to look at something you thought you knew differently, it has done its job, and it is certainly art.

Checking and fixing broken RPM packages

Mon, 23 Oct 2017 14:44:11 -0600

Sometimes you’ll run something in the commandline, only to realise you weren’t in the directory you thought you were in. Most of the time this is fine, you get an error and move on. But wait, what if you think you’re moving backups to another directory and you just use a * to catch them all because you’re not paying attention… oh, and it ends up you were in / at the time. That’s not good, you’ve just destroyed a working system since this is outside of a normal mistake. But after the shock I started poking around online to see if I could fix it - and if you can’t tell from this post, I did fix it! First of all I carefully moved /bin, /boot and even /dev back in place - but to do that I had to find mv, which you’ll recall, I moved (by accident!) So I pathed to the new directory where mv was living, used that to move things back in place, so then I had most of my commands back, not bad. Later, finding strange issues I couldn’t figure out, I thought I’d reinstall the installed packages, but which ones were broken? This was Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), not my first choice, but what the client I’m working for is using, so we’re dealing with RPM packages. I found the command to give me a list of broeken packages, so I ran that:

HOWTO Automate the Lynis auditing tool

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 17:18:31 -0600

Often when working with a client I’ll have recommendations on server settings and configurations, but sometimes things are not obvious, and I want another set of eyes to audit security settings. External scanners are fine but are mostly relegated to be run by the security teams, so using an open source auditing tool can help with security auditing, hardening, and compliance while helping to determine if you have things configured and setup optimally. Enter Lynis, “an open source security auditing tool Linux, macOS, and Unix systems. Used by system administrators, security professionals, and auditors, to evaluate the security defenses of their Linux and UNIX-based systems. It runs on the host itself, so it performs more extensive security scans than vulnerability scanners.” Sounds good, to make this easier to run I’ve written a simple script to pull the latest version of the scanner, unpack it and run it with the general settings. It’s helpful, give it a try and see what it sees on your system.

Use Systemd to Control VPN Connections

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 14:24:42 -0600

Today I had a case where a coworker wanted a Linux server to connect to a particular VPN, and we didn’t want to make it use some hacky way like putting a script in /etc/rc.local for it to run on boot. By using systemd we learned how to use it to control connecting to the VPNs, using the OpenVPN client.

Steps

Install the OpenVPN client

Verify the `openvpn` client is installed

Debian/Ubuntu

apt-get install openvpn

RHEL/CentOS

yum install openvpn

Get VPN keys, certifiates and configs

From your remote host, get the files or zip file that includes your VPN keys, certificates and configs
Place the files (unzipping any archives) into /etc/openvpn on your client

Configure OpenVPN session

In the directory /etc/openvpn copy the .opvn file to .conf (renaming .conf with the host or filename of the .opvn file - openvpn is looking for any .conf file in this directory)

cd /etc/openvpn
cp file.opvn file.conf

The new file.conf will be identical to file.opvn, and will include all connection steps. It will look somemthing like this (yours will be different, but should have similar steps):

Best music of 2016

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 19:45:32 -0600

Cheap Girls (photo courtesy of Cheap Girls)

The year

It’s been a great year (musically), and I’ve kept my head above water by going out to see some great shows. Highlights include; Basia Bulat, Jason Isbell, Shovels & Rope, Neon Indian, Guided by Voices, The Thermals, Summer Canibals, Screaming Females, Aye Nako, The Waco Brothers, Cheap Girls, Bob Mould Band, Lydia Loveless, Will Courtney & the Wild Bunch, Built To Spill, The Posies, Shellac, Shannon Wright, Amanda Shires, Colter Wall, and Sloan. Looking for trends I can say there were more new bands that I saw versus known bands, so I’m still finding new stuff which is all part of the fun.

HOWTO setup a very secure webserver

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 19:19:21 -0600

When getting started with Linux and open source software, running websites was one of the first things I learned how to do. Of course with the way software evolves, I’m still learning new ways to better secure, encrypt and protect web assests. Recently I wanted to build a new project and decided I wanted to use OpenBSD, arguably the most secure operating system out of the box. While years ago I switched to FreeBSD for web and mailserver handling, OpenBSD is just more stringent about how it presents things. There’s more to learn, sure, but that’s all part of the fun. Now, if you look around at normal VPS options like DigitalOcean and Linode won’t allow you to run OpenBSD, but with Vultr (affilate link) you can use any ISO you can point to. They have a $5/month option, but they give you 768M RAM versus the 512M that you get from most other VPS providers for that price. With that decided I ran through the install using their console and was up and running in no time. Now for the fun part, let’s ssh to the server and setup a very setup a secure webserver!

HOWTO Bias ASL Tube Amps

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 11:24:07 -0500

I’ve wanted to get into tube audio amplifiers for my stereo systems for a long time, so years ago I bought my first ones, a pair of Antique Sound Lab AV-25 monoblocks. One thing that was a bit tricky was to bias the amps, and the units didn’t come with directions, so I eventually got info directly from the company, but could’t find it anywhere online. I’m transcribing them here for my reference and for others, in case they have the same, or similar, amps from Antique Sound Labs.

What About Them?

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 14:44:44 -0500

This is a previously unpublished sketch written on 2007-04-18 of two people talking about the constant state of fear in a nation controlled by the media. Strangely it’s still relevant today.

[…]
“But what about them; what’s the difference?"
“What?"
“With their outlook on things, everything is just so negative, have we evolved that way?"
“You’re telling me you mean we became more negative as a species over 50 years? I doubt that’s an answer."
“No, I agree with you, but why are we that way? Is it just our country and the constant terror alerts? Is the media magnifying every little event? Do they have that much control over us?"
“Could be, check the Virginia Tech thing - yeah it’s awful and we need to remember it and learn what happened, but it’s all they’re talking about, like replaying that second plane hitting the tower; do we need to be re-reminded of this constantly? It’s only going to continue the feelings of hopelessness."
“That probably has a good deal to it, the media does have a huge reach, and power to get its message out."

Best music of 2015

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:38:22 -0600

Metz (photo from radio1190 )

Another year, another batch of new toons to love. As always, discovering new music never gets old, the endless digging for new sounds continues to be one of my favorite things. Let’s rock!

Courtney Barnett “Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit”
Built To Spill “Untethered Moon”
Deerhunter “Fading Frontier”
Hop Along “Painted Shut”
Jason Isbell “Something More Than Free”
Jamie xx “In Colour”
Metz “II”
Refused “Freedom”
Sleater-Kinney “No Cities To Love”
Supersuckers “Holding the bag”
Waxahatchee “Ivy Tripp”

HOWTO build nginx with HTTP 2 support

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 22:27:42 -0600

UPDATE 02-29-2016 a reader had issues getting this working, and after reproducing his issue I found that the ssl_cipers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5; no longer works. Apparently sometime after I wrote this, the HTTP/2 specs were updated, and browsers followed suit. This blog post tells us, “According to the HTTP/2 specification, over TLS 1.2 HTTP/2 SHOULD NOT use any of the cipher suites that are listed in the cipher suite black list, found here” So now, we have to call out another cipher before the blacklisted ones ssl_ciphers AESGCM:HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5 Thanks for the note Elias!

Last week nginx relased mainline version 1.9.5 which features experimental HTTP/2 module. According to the Internet Engineering Task Force “HTTP/2 enables a more efficient use of network resources and a reduced perception of latency by introducing header field compression and allowing multiple concurrent exchanges on the same connection. It also introduces unsolicited push of representations from servers to clients. This specification is an alternative to, but does not obsolete, the HTTP/1.1 message syntax. HTTP’s existing semantics remain unchanged.” You can get an idea of how HTTP/2 is better and faster on this demo page which shows the multiple connections making a significant difference.

TL;DR it’s faster, backwards compatible and the new hotness (obviously).

Bruce on privacy

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 20:13:18 -0600

I’ve written about Bruce Schnier many times before, but this recent comment perfectly captures why we all need to be concerned about our only privacy

Best Songwriters Morrissey and Marr

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:43:29 -0600

In a recent article, the magazine Rolling Stone tries to list the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, and while any list that a audacious will have it’s detractors (and there is much to criticize in this one), it’s refreshing to see the songwriting tandem of Morrissey and Marr getting the props they deserve. Breaking in at #67, the post features some very nice quotes from Marr about Morrissey, and a photo of the pair of key Smiths that I’ve never seen before. Here are both, for review.

They're made out of meat

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 06:18:49 -0600

I’m a big fan of science fiction writing, and with humor it’s even better! Here’s a great one I found online, first a note from the author Terry Bisson, “I’m honored that this often shows up on the internet. Here’s the correct version, as published in Omni, 1990. Thanks for your interest in my work. If you enjoyed this little piece, please give a dollar to a homeless person.”

HOWTO use npm behind a corporate proxy

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 07:22:18 -0600

Overview

Working at $big_company is not without its challenges, but the least of which should be network access, right? No, of course not. Installed “security appliances” (see the SSL MiTM post for more on that) on the network always limit access from within the corporate firewall out to the __I__ernet at large to protect from security vulurables. This is all great and fine, but that kind of protection always errs on blocking, so working with open source projects that are easy to install and run out in the real world become a nightmare when you’re inside the coporate firewall.

Your employer runs SSL MiTM attacks on you

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 18:23:29 -0600

TL;DR companies are buying appliances that run SSL MiTM (Man in The Middle) attacks against their users, decrypting sessions on the fly without the user’s knowledge. You should find out if this is happening to you.

As a self described privacy advocate, I consider myself pretty cognizant of when I might be under some sort of network surveillance; I know what to look for, and enjoy understanding ways to avoid it (often by not visiting certain sites from certain networks), but one day I hit something that surprised me. It was enough to make me take notes so that others could see if they were under a similar setup. One day, while working for $company, after a scheduled ’network upgrade’ I was unable to interact with github.com, a site that I had been using daily up to that point. The error I’d get was…

HOWTO Turn On Firefox Tracking Protection

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 23:43:49 -0600

Years ago there was a lot of excitment about Do Not Track (DNT) as a way to enhance online privacy for users by allowing them to ‘opt-out’ of tracking by websites and advertisers. The idea as defined on Wikipedia:

The Do Not Track header is the proposed HTTP header field DNT that requests that a web application disable either its tracking or cross-site user tracking of an individual user. The Do Not Track header was originally proposed in 2009 by researchers Christopher Soghoian, Sid Stamm, and Dan Kaminsky. Efforts to standardize Do Not Track by the W3C have so far been unsuccessful.

HOWTO Get a New CoreOS AMI ID

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 21:12:06 -0600

I’ve used CoreOS a good deal for the last few months, automating it on Amazon Web Services to run Docker instances like a boss, but when a new version comes out, figuring out the new AMI ID to target is cumbersome. What happens is that a new CoreOS version will be built with AWS, resulting in a new AMI ID, but going to the CoreOS cloud provider’s page to manually grok the ID is no fun. I knew there had to be a automated way to do this, but earlier attempts failed. That changed today as I got a clue from the #coreos channel on [irc.freenode.net] (h/t guys!). Here’s the gist:

Mogwai, Helicon 1

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 19:19:22 -0600

One of my all time favorite bands Mogwai (still #2 on my last.fm listen list) is releasing a career spanning 3 CD / 6 LP set called Belters Box. For the occasion they’ve released a new video, for an old song, Helicon 1. Directory Graig Murray has this to say about it, “The film you see is made from 100% 35mm stills which I shot off the screen: I used about 100+ rolls which were all individually scanned. All effects you see in the film are physical workings of the negatives (scanner compositing, scratching, liquids etc). Given the logistics of shooting everything discreetly and also in the sea, the original footage was all shot on an iphone and a go-pro, with some addition animation using 35mm.”

Snowden on privacy

Sat, 30 May 2015 10:14:33 -0600

While Edward Snowden may be hiding in Russia, he understands and thinks about the freedoms American’s take for granted everyday. In a recent Reddit AMA he succinctly described why he is such a firm believer in privacy, giving his argument against the often heard, “I don’t care if they violate my privacy; I’ve got nothing to hide”.

Build microservices infra with Mantl

Wed, 27 May 2015 18:41:06 -0600

Overview

I’ve been watching ciscocloud/microservices-infrastructure for awhile, an ambitious project designed to get a microservices infrastructure setup with a reasonable set of defaults. Now they seem to be getting more serious about the project and have renamed it mantl, which they define as, “A container orchestrator, docker, a network stack, something to pool your logs, something to monitor health, a sprinkle of service discovery and some automation”. This sounds amazing, and certainly similar to something I did/try to do with my stax project… but just like with stax, there’s lots to do up front. Let’s give it a go. Will run it on AWS, but note that it can also be run on Vagrant, Openstack, Google Compute Engine, as well as bare metal, via Terraform. As usual I’m working from Debian, so if you’re in something else, or OSX, your initial setup will vary.

HOWTO build tiny docker images

Wed, 27 May 2015 09:53:12 -0600

Overview

For the past year it seems, everyone is trying Docker, running processes in containers to make environments more predictable and reproducable. However old habits die hard, and once again I see installations that are far larger with wasted resources at best, and insecure, unused services running at worst. Most people running Docker are using huge images with needless applications installed and taking up space for their containers. Meanwhile, if you search in the Docker Registry for ‘debian minimal’ you’ll come across some images that are over 260 MB! Whenever I build a new server I install Debian/GNU Linux doing a Network install from a minimal CD which only includes the minimal base OS. My goal is to recreate this for Docker, starting with a base Debian install, and then removing things in that minimal install that are not needed by Docker, while leaving the basic *nix utilities in place. After this I use docker-squash tool to free a few more bits in the container before committing and checking in the image here.

HOWTO get started with lxc and lxd

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 19:13:29 -0600

Today Ubuntu released 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) which is a huge release for the lastest cloud and server options. Updated OpenStack, Juju, libvirt, qemu, Open vSwitch, Ceph, cloud-init, docker, corosync, haproxy, pacemaker - and the stars of the show, Ubuntu’s take on the container world, lxc, lxd and Ubuntu Core, aka Snappy. With all of that fun stuff I didn’t waste any time, I grabbed the server ISO of 15.04 and slapped it on a server. I got started with lxc and lxd to check them out, and while there’s plenty more to do and learn, here’s how to get started with them.

Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas

Sat, 21 Mar 2015 21:16:29 -0500

And now for something completely different, it’s a followup to my only other cooking post, Migas. Keeping it in the Mexican/Tex-mex realm, today we’re going to make some green chile chicken enchiladas!

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 09:18:49 -0600

From an article about the court case against weev (yes he’s a creep, but he still has rights) is an apt, consise definition of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and how it’s being used/abused today.

“… the CFAA, a law passed 30 years ago before every home — indeed, every person’s pocket or purse — held a computer. The CFAA is an anti-hacking statute that makes it a crime to obtain information from a computer “without authorization.” Since lawmakers never spelled out exactly what they meant by that, prosecutors have, over the years, stretched the law to encompass all sorts of harmless activities. Violate a website’s terms of service by lying about your identity, for example, and you could be charged under the Act. Same goes for misusing your employer’s computer at work.”

Best Music of 2014

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 10:32:46 -0600

This is the 2014 update to my ‘best music of’ list that I do every Decemeber after another year of new sounds. This year was highlighted with seeing more live shows than years past, a trend I will continue as we move into 2015. See you at the show, I’ll be in the middle of the floor about 1/3 back, and ya, I’m ready for another - I’ll get the next one, thanks.

Match dark Yosemite Googledrive icons

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 12:15:09 -0600

I’ve been using Apple OS X Yosemite since the first beta, and I’ve been very impressed with its stability, and slight UI updates. Once it went official, I immediately tried out the ‘dark’ theme (System Preferences > General, then check: Use dark menu bar and Dock) which gives you just that, a dark menubar (black actually) with white icons and writing. The cool thing is that in the past this is one thing you could never (officially) change in OS X, so now that they’ve given it a proper integration and UI testing, it looks nice and feels new. Since the dark theme in Yosemite is so new not all apps support it, so they might have an icon that doesn’t stand out as well now that the background isn’t light. This is certainly the case with Google Drive, which I’ve been trying out as a way to consolidate documents and files that don’t need to be private. The screenshot tells the tale of the icon, and it isn’t pretty:

HOWTO serve Gandi SSL certs in nginx

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 13:37:00 -0600

I’m a big fan of Gandi for domain hosting since they are very transparent about their operation, support the efforts of EFF and last but not least, are based in Paris. So today I transfered fak3r.com over to Gandi, and earned a free SSL cert for a year for doing so! Cool, since my old StartSSL cert expired, I needed to replace it, so this was nice timing. Now while Gandi’s documentation is very good, and I’ve done plenty of SSL setup before, I still hit a snag that I’ve hit before, so this time I wanted to record it so I wouldn’t have to look it up again next time. The issue comes about because nginx doesn’t have a declaration for an intermediate, or chained cert file. So while Apache has the SSLCertificateChainFile directive, in nginx we have to concatenate it with the certificate file to have nginx recognize it. Here’s how you do it.

More tech pros earning six figures than ever

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:37:00 -0600

A new report from Dice.com, “…suggests that more tech people are earning six figures a year than ever. Some 32 percent of full-time tech pros took home more than $100,000 in 2013, according to the findings, up from 30 percent in 2012 and 26 percent in 2011. For contractors, the data is even better: In 2013, a staggering 54 percent of them earned more than $100,000 a year, up from 51 percent the previous year and 50 percent in 2011. How far that money goes depends on where you live, of course, but it does seem like a growing number of the world’s tech workers are earning a significant amount of cash.”

Office Space script

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 13:37:00 -0600

While looking for quotes from the movie Office Space, I came across the script on IMSDb, and liked it so much I reposted it here (you know, for great justice). This movie is universal, everywhere I’ve worked people call out quotes from it, and it’s like, ya, they get it too. Recommend.

Install Adobe opensource terminal fonts

Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:47:00 -0600

In September 2012, Adobe released its second open source (under the Open Font License 1.1) typeface family, Source Code Pro. This is a monospaced version of the first one, Source Sans Pro, and that’s significant because I’m always looking for a good, monospaced font I can use in my terminals. This one looked like a great option to try out, so I downloaded it and gave it a run. Below are the steps to manually install it via the command-line, and while this is in Ubuntu, Debian and other Linuxes should work the same way, but as always YMMV. So let’s get started.

Through a PRISM, Darkly - EFF at 30c3

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 14:34:00 -0600

Here's a great talk from the Chaos Computer Club's current event, 30c3 happening now in Munich. Here Kurt from EFF gives a great overview of what we know the goverment is doing, and ways to fight against mass surveillance. "From Stellar Wind to PRISM, Boundless Informant to EvilOlive, the NSA spying programs are shrouded in secrecy and rubber-stamped by secret opinions from a court that meets in a faraday cage. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Kurt Opsahl explains the known facts about how the programs operate and the laws and regulations the U.S. government asserts allows the NSA to spy on you."

Best music of 2013

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 11:10:00 -0600

Here is my annual post of the best music released in the year of 2013. I'm looking forward to seeing Arcade Fire, and later Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in the Summer or 2014. I have some links so you can hear some of the music that got me through this year. Give those a listen, then buy music and finally, go out and see bands play live!

Photo from http://nickcavefixes.wordpress.com

Arcade Fire "Reflektor"
Boards of Canada "Tomorrow's Harvest"
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds "Push The Sky Away"
Deafheaven "Sunbather"
Deerhunter "Monomania"
The Flaming Lips "The Terror"
Future of the Left "How to Stop Your Brian in an Accident"
Heathers "Teenage Clothes" b/w "I Don't Wanna Be Adored"
Swearin' "Surfing Strange"
The National "Trouble Will Find Me"
Okkervil River "The Silver Gymnasium"
The Thermals "Desperate Ground"

Retron5 delayed again

Fri, 13 Dec 2013 13:11:00 -0600

So while it's not a secret, no one I talk to ever knows what the Hyperkin Retron 5 is, or why its release has been so anticipated by old school gamers like me. Basically, Hyperkin has released other "Retron" models that play the old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Super Nintendo Entertainment system, with varying degrees of success, but with their latest release, Retron 5, they promise compatibility with *ten* classic gaming system cartridges: NES, Famicom, Super NES and Famicom, Sega Master System, Genesis and Mega Drive, and Game Boy original, Color and Advance. The rumored price is $99 USD, but even if it is twice that it will be a steal, since I've toyed with the idea of buying an old NES and SNES before. I read that the system may be running Android, but what I do know is that you can use all of the original controllers, which is a huge plus, and can do things like save the games.

Remembering Otis Redding

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 11:11:00 -0600

Today a random tweet directed me to this post, Otis Redding’s Tragic Plane Crash in Wisconsin, reminding me that Otis Redding died on this day in 1967 at the age of 26. His songs and songwriting are some of the best I’ve ever heard. We’re big fans of his music at home and also have some video performance of his from the DVD Otis Redding: Remembering Otis. Here’s the video on Youtube.

HOWTO mine Bitcoin in Linux

Sun, 08 Dec 2013 18:10:00 -0600

I started mining Bitcoin back in August, and have had modest success (more in a later post), but when I was getting started I couldn’t find a good/current HOWTO; this post aimes to fix that. As usual these directions are for Debian GNU Linux, but should work identically in Ubuntu, and in other Linuxes with the correct names for the needed packages. So, with that out of the way, let’s get started!

First we need to install a few things, most you may already have these if you’ve compiled stuff before

Why care about the N.S.A.?

Wed, 04 Dec 2013 09:11:00 -0600

A short film from the New York Times that explores whether ordinary Americans should be concerned about online surveillance.

This is an important video that I want everyone to watch and think about the implications of these issues. One of the commentators is Kurt Opsahl, the first EFF attorney I talked to at DEF CON many years ago, whose insight led me on the path I’ve been on for years. You should be following him, @kurtopsahl, on Twitter.

HOWTO install chef and vagrant on 10-9

Mon, 28 Oct 2013 14:21:00 -0600

O'hai! I did a clean install of Apple's OS X 10.9, Mavericks, so I had to reinstall Ruby, rubygems, chef, virtualbox and vagrant. Since this has been somewhat of a black art before, I wanted to document how it works; now. This is a quick and dirty reference, no explanations, but the results should get you up and running quickly.

Install

rbenv

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"
brew install rbenv
if which rbenv > /dev/null; then eval "$(rbenv init -)"; fi

To make your shell use the rbenv set ruby each time, add the following to your `~/.profile`

RIP Lou Reed

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 15:10:00 -0600

It would be hard for me to overemphasize Lou Reed's impact on music history. Rolling Stone has a good overview of his life and all that he accomplished, and while he wrote so many great songs Sweet Jane will stand as one of the greatest rock and roll songs ever written. For now Rolling Stone ranked it #335 on their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. When I saw him play in 1996 he opened with that and then played a perfect set. RIP Lou, thanks for the music.

On learning

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 14:10:00 -0600

Sometimes you find something that speaks to you, makes a point that you’ve tried to make, but it does it so much better. This is one of those quotes, it encapsulates everything I’ve ever thought about technology and learning.

You will be newbie forever. Get good at the beginner mode, learning new programs, asking dumb questions, making stupid mistakes, soliciting help, and helping others with what you learn (the best way to learn yourself).

Source: The Technium

HOWTO properly paste code into vi/vim

Wed, 04 Sep 2013 12:35:00 -0600

I’m sure you’ve done this before, you copy a big block of text or code and paste it into vi/vim (from now on referred to simply as vi). Instead of looking like you want it to, it takes every tab and just autoindents like crazy giving you a mess to clean up. So, for example, you copy the following

current_dir = File.dirname(__FILE__)
user = ENV['OPSCODE_USER'] || ENV['USER']
node_name                user
client_key               "#{ENV['HOME']}/.chef/#{user}.pem"
validation_client_name   "#{ENV['ORGNAME']}-validator"
validation_key           "#{ENV['HOME']}/.chef/#{ENV['ORGNAME']}-validator.pem"
chef_server_url          "https://api.opscode.com/organizations/#{ENV['ORGNAME']}"
syntax_check_cache_path  "#{ENV['HOME']}/.chef/syntax_check_cache"
cookbook_path            ["#{current_dir}/../cookbooks"]
cookbook_copyright "Your Company, Inc."
cookbook_license "apachev2"
cookbook_email "cookbooks@yourcompany.com"

and paste it into vi, and it ends up looking like…

Setup chef and librarian in vagrant

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 14:51:00 -0600

I’ve used Chef to automate environments before, and the more I work at different, large clients, the more I see the need to use it, or puppet, for controlling/managing servers. Now, I don’t want to start a flamewar here, but what’s the deal with… no, just kidding, I technically have tshirts from both Chef and Puppet, so I’m as impartial as you can get! Since a new gig I have starting up soon promises to make me into the top chef in the office, I thought it was time to dust off my skills with a new HOWTO to get Chef installed, using Vagrant, started and configured. Bonus, I found that it’s actually easier than it used to be to get up to snuff, now it can be condensed into a few steps.

Install needed software
Configure Vagrant with a base box definition
Configure Chef by adding cookbook with Librarian-chef
Tell Vagrant about the new cookbook
Build a vagrant instance, then have Chef-solo install a webserver on it

Simple huh? So let's get started.

Build a log server with Splunk-like features

Thu, 22 Aug 2013 13:03:00 -0600

Logging is something that continues to become more and more important, and it used to take great pains to have a centralized log server that everyone could use. Yep, I used Splunk early on, when they had a good open source option, but now their ‘freemium’ only offering leaves a gap. So let’s create one using open source software and get some of the Splunk-like features by building a basic log server. Now some will say, you should do it this way, you should scale it this way, etc, but my goal here is to have something that works, something admins can use, and then once they ‘get it’, they can expand it, update it as they need. So for this we’ll be using Logstash as the log parser, which will recieve and send the logs to Elasticsearch, which is the backend that stores the logs while allowing searching against them, which will be viewed by Kibana, a web/front end. Let’s see how simply we can do this.

HOWTO connect to SSH via SSL with sslh

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 09:38:00 -0600

Since I’m in the commandline fulltime, SSH is an indispensable tool for ‘getting things done’ - heck, I even run it on my Android phone now so I can poke around there (haven’t broken anything… yet), so when I’m traveling or at a client’s site that doesn’t allow outgoing ssh (port :22) we have a problem. In the past I’ve always mapped SSH to some port other than :22 to prevent drive-by brute forcing login attempts, so I’ve put it on :443 (which is rarely blocked for outgoing is connections), but now that I’m running this site with SSL, that is no longer an option. Yes, we could try out :8080 (Tomcat’s port), :8443 (Tomcat’s SSL port) or :8181 (Debian’s old Tomcat port), but we’ll always have a better chance to get out over :443. While I’ve read how this might be possible using the great HAProxy, that always seemed like overkill and begged for a simplier solution. Apparently there already was one, I had just never heard of it; sslh is an applicative protocol multiplexer, that forward ports initially sent to :443 on to other needed ports. Their description on what it can do:

Probes for HTTP, SSL, SSH, OpenVPN, tinc, XMPP are implemented, and any other protocol that can be tested using a regular expression, can be recognised. A typical use case is to allow serving several services on port 443 (e.g. to connect to ssh from inside a corporate firewall, which almost never block port 443) while still serving HTTPS on that port.

Sounds perfect, so I went to install and configure it, and it was easier than I expected so let’s get started - first of all I found a schmatic that illustrates what’s happening [source]

Vote for your top 10 albums of 1986

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 13:53:00 -0600

Alright, this is just a fun post, try to pick your top 10 albums from 1986. This was very difficult for me as it was an amazing year for music as well as a pivotal time in my life (I was 17). I remember buying the They Might Be Giants debut on vinyl (still have it) after seeing their videos on 120 Minutes (which started in 1986 and was an amazing resource for new music back then). After picking it up a Vintage Vinyl, I immediately took it to a friend’s house to have it recorded to cassette. I’d put The Smiths ‘Queen is Dead’ up there as the best (of the year, of all of their releases and of all time) and while I understand limiting compilations, no ‘Standing on a Beach’? I have probably listened to that album more than any on this list! So go and take the poll yourself here. My list goes like this:

Obama's Promise To Protect Whistleblowers

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 07:43:00 -0600

With all that’s gone on with Snoden, it’s dissappointing to find that the Sunlight Foundation has reported that Obama’s promise To ‘Protect Whistleblowers’ has disappeared From Change.gov. While this turn of events isn’t surprising now, does anyone remember back when Obama was promising greater government transparency and support for whistleblowers? Of course nothing is ever really deleted from the internet, so I found it here at Archive.org. The full text is (was):

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

Earth, Jupiter, and Venus seen from Mars

Sun, 28 Jul 2013 04:57:00 -0600

Earth, Jupiter, and Venus seen from Mars [source]

Bruce Schneier Talks at Google

Sat, 27 Jul 2013 22:12:00 -0600

Great talk by Bruce Scheier a month ago at Google. Highly recommended. “Human society runs on trust. We all trust millions of people, organizations, and systems every day – and we do it so easily that we barely notice. But in any system of trust, there is an alternative, parasitic, strategy that involves abusing that trust. Making sure those defectors don’t destroy the cooperative systems they’re abusing is an age-old problem, one that we’ve solved through morals and ethics, laws, and all sort of security technologies. Understanding how these all work – and fail – is essential to understanding the problems we face in today’s increasingly technological and interconnected world.”

“Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and author. Described by The Economist as a ““security guru,”” he is best known as a refreshingly candid and lucid security critic and commentator. When people want to know how security really works, they turn to Schneier.”

Scalia’s dissent in Maryland v King

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 23:41:00 -0600

Last month the Supreme Court made their decision on Maryland v. King. It gave the nod to the collection of DNA from suspects (not convicted criminals) of major crimes, and went against things like unreasonable searches and seizures (4th Ammendment). I meant to comment on it at the time, but it got lost in the shuffle. Luckily I came across Parker Higgins’ site, after finding him from other EFF staffers. I’m with him, as I don’t expect to agree with Justice Scalia very often, I found this dissent to be spot on.

Take back the 4th on the 4th

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 15:11:00 -0600

OWASP top 10 web application risks for 2013

Sat, 22 Jun 2013 10:48:00 -0600

OWASP is, “The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501(c)(3) worldwide not-for-profit charitable organization focused on improving the security of software. Our mission is to make software security visible, so that individuals and organizations worldwide can make informed decisions about true software security risks.” They’ve released their 2013 top 10 list of risks associated with the use of web applications in an enterprise:

Injection
Broken Authentication and Session Management
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Insecure Direct Object References
Security Misconfiguration
Sensitive Data Exposure
Missing Function Level Access Control
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Using Known Vulnerable Components
Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards

Deerhunter plays Monomania on Fallon

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:17:08 -0600

I’ve followed Deerhunter for a few years, catching them two years ago at Loufest, but I’m really jazzed for their new release, Monomania, which hits May 7th, after their performance last week. On Tuesday they were the musical guest on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon where they played the title track, and just tore things up. A lot of response I’ve read online has questioned, or poked fun at, Bradford Cox’s outfit and his walking off set near the end of the song, but who cares, it’s rock and roll, it’s great. As for the song, it far outdoes any thoughts I had of their future material, this is something else:

HOWTO fix a Nintendo 3DS with broken wifi

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 22:40:38 -0600

![Nintendo 3DS](https://fak3r.com/2013/1248580_flame_red_n3ds_final-300x256.jpg)

So my son's [Nintendo 3DS](https://www.nintendo.com/3ds) wi-fi stopped working a few weeks ago, and I finally had time to take a look at it to see if there was anything that could be done. The situation was that it would work fine playing games or doing anything not needing wi-fi access, but as soon as you'd turn on the wi-fi switch, after about 10 seconds, the screen would go black and display the message:

Error Message: Error Has Occurred. Hold down the POWER Button to turn the power off. Following the directions and restarting changed nothing, after 10 seconds or so with wi-fi enabled, blamo, black screen of death! Nintendo's troubleshooting guide led me to [the exact issue](https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/3ds/en_na/ts_system.jsp), but the recommended course of action was only

"Hold down the POWER button to power off the system, Continue to use the system to see if the error reoccurs, General system stability can be improved by applying the System Update that was made available on March 24th, 2011. Try applying this System Update and see if the issue improves." The first two recommendations of course did nothing, and the last one was impossible since you need wi-fi to update the firmware! I followed their links to look into repair, but since the unit is out of warranty it would cost $85.00 (not including tax and shipping) for them to fix it. Hmm... seeing that these go for ~170$ brand new, that seemed pretty excessive, so I dove into a [Google search](https://encrypted.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=An+Error+Has+Occurred.+Hold+Down+the+POWER+Button) to see what I could find. Forum after forum I found that while this is a pretty common problem, no one seemed to have any idea how to fix it. Finally on ifixit.com I found [a promising answer](http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/75518/How+do+I+fix+my+3DS+Error+Problem#answer118768), and it turned out to work perfectly, thanks [Alejandro](http://www.ifixit.com/User/583708/Alejandro).

TL;DR the wi-fi card works itself loose and only needs to be reseated for it to work again. Knowing this, I got down to business and started ripping this sucker apart.

To get started you’ll need a Philip #00 screwdriver, which is the same size you need if you want to rip your Macbook Pro apart (look for a future post on that). Now, flip the 3DS upside down and remove the 4 silver screws across the top and take off the back cover. Now you’ll find 8 black, recessed screws you’ll need to take out, lastly take out the (really) small screw at the lip of the cartridge slot. Next carefully pry the bottom of the case off of the board, but be careful, once you have it open you’ll see the (really) thin ribbons that connect the board to the left and right shoulder buttons, you don’t want to break those. Finally locate the wi-fi card, which will look something like this:

About

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:54:12 -0500

Me

I am a hacker, open source technologist at-large, sometimes writer and speaker. I’ve been honored to speak at infosec conferences like DEF CON, DerbyCon, BsidesLV, SecureWorld and SEMAFOR (ISACA Warsaw Chapter). I am an active member of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), I lead and moderate discussions about electronic rights and civil liberties while educating users how their data is used by companies without their knowledge; things that are ‘free’ online, actually aren’t free. In fact, most of my research over the past few years has focused more on companies weaknesses in protecting customer’s data, and their failures in keeping that data private. Speaking engagements on earlier work dealth with system architecture in the global biodiversity realm, and slides of those are available on my Slideshare account.

Music

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:54:12 -0500

Lists

Music Stores - I’ve shopped at lots of music stores over the years, and it’s always been one of my favorite things to do. Here’s a list of my favorite shops.
Best Ever - I’ve kept lists of my favorite music seemingly forever, here I break it out by listing all of my favorites.
Best By year - Same as above, but my yearly lists.
Ticketstubs Years ago I made an effort to scan all of the ticketstubs I’ve had from concerts, going back to the 80s. While these are not in gallery form right now, I wanted them to be out there, so for now they’re linked to in github.

Music - Best by year

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:54:12 -0500

I’ve published my best of lists for years, here linked to the specific post for each year.

Music - Best Ever

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:54:12 -0500

The following are what I believe to be the greatest recorded works ever created. Feel free to disagree and/or complain, but I hope you discover some new favorites.

pre 1969

The Beatles "Rubber Soul"
The Beatles "White Album"
James Brown "Live at the Apollo (1963)"
Ornette Coleman "The Shape of Jazz to Come"
John Coltrane "Giant Steps"
Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"
MC5 "Kick Out the Jams"
Charles Mingus "Mingus ah uhm"
Sonny Rollins "Plus 4"
Sonny Rollins "Way Out West"
Thelonious Monk "Monk's Music"
Velvet Underground "The Velvet Underground & Nico"

1970s

Buzzcocks "Another Music In A Different Kitchen"
The Clash "London Calling"
Devo "Freedom of Choice"
The Grateful Dead "American Beauty"
Iggy & The Stooges "Raw Power"
Joy Division "Unknown Pleasures"
Led Zeppelin "II"
Van Morrison "Moondance"
Willie Nelson "Red Headed Stranger"
Pink Floyd "Dark Side Of The Moon"
Ramones "Ramones"
Sam and Dave "The Best of Sam and Dave"
Van Halen "Van Halen"
Velvet Underground "Loaded"
Townes Van Zandt "The Late Great Townes Van Zandt"
The Who "Live at Leeds"
The Who "Who's Next?"

1980s

Due to a Twitter #7albums80s poll conducted by @RichardS7370, I took a hard look and expanded my best of 80s list.

Music Stores

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:54:12 -0500

I’ve been visiting, and buying music at record shops since the late 1970s, in fact, I still have some records my Pops bought me back when we’d go to Streetside Records (RIP), at 742 N Ballas Road, Saint Louis, MO 63141, but then I spent some time at the Columbia, MO outlet when I went to school down there. Factiod: that’s where I bought all the original cds from The Smiths.

Search

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:54:12 -0500

Search functionality provided by DuckDuckGo <3

Contact

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 21:54:12 -0500

Follow me, or get in touch

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  bitcoin 1AubVQPJ41SFThtKMHV7p7rYYRqGFQGPAu
  pgp public key fingerprint 04A1 69CC A79F 7188

Import my public key manually

curl -sf https://fak3r.com/.well-known/pgpkey.txt | gpg --import

Me, in real life

My enhanced gitrc file

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:05:47 -0600

At my last gig I got a crash course in using git fulltime, and I really enjoyed getting used to it, and leaving things like subversion and CVS behind forever. And yes, while I’m sure I gave Ant a few gray hairs on the way, we eventually got there together. He gave me a customized .gitrc to use, which I’ve modified a bit, and now have shared as a gist. This .gitrc tells you the branch you’re on, with color handling of the bash prompt according to the branch/status of the current git repo. For example, the prompt would look like this: ~/foo $ with master colored RED, until you’ve added a file to the repo, but not committed it, when it will turn YELLOW. Once pushed it will turn back to RED to tell you things are in sync. As a bonus, after every command this will set the color of dollar prompt based on return value of previous command. If it’s 0 it will be white to indicate success, if it’s !0 it will be red, indicating an error.

Best music of 2012

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 18:39:35 -0600

Another year of fun discovering new toons, what’s not to like? This year took on a more guitar friendly indie sound than past years, a trend I fully support. While there are some comebacks there are more than a few new entries, which again, is that discovery that keeps me going. If I had to pick one disk that I listened to most it’d probably be Swearin’, the fine outfit from Brooklyn that I got to see open for the Japandroids this year; what a fun, unexpected bunch of songs. Meanwhile Tame Impala came back with a monster of a sophomore release, proving Innerspeaker was no fluke. Special notice to Future Of The Left, with a record that makes me think back to early Brainiac, which is always a good thing. With that, here are my picks for the best music of 2012.

Banksy on advertising

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:55:28 -0600

This excerpt of Banksy’s thoughts on advertising is making the rounds, and it’s spot on. With companies tricking consumers into revealing more of themselves becoming the norm, this kind of blowback needs to happen. Somebody get this guy a drink, he’s making more sense than anyone else these days; he’s a smart chap.

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

Online privacy in the year of the dragon

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:22:26 -0600

I was honored to be asked to speak at yesterday’s SecureWorld St. Louis, my talk was titled_ Online Privacy in the Year of the Dragon_. My short abstract; “Businesses change online privacy policies to make user’s data, and their interaction with websites, more profitable for the website’s owners. Users need to understand what privacy is being lost, how their data is being used and how they can improve their online privacy with knowledge and open source software.” See the slides below, and follow the link at the bottom to download as a PDF if you’d like. Thanks.

Playboy Interview: Richard Dawkins

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:18:26 -0600

[]

Today I read the recent interview with Richard Dawkins, the English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and the worlds best known atheist, on Playboy.com, and as always found his candor enjoyable and refreshing. While I’m all for anyone going anywhere they want while online, I’d rather not post a link to said site, so I’m reproducing the interview here, with (afaik) proper attribution for the original work; I did not write this, and I don’t want to profit from it. Additionally I included a link to the post in the article, with the proper NSFW tag so you know what you’re getting yourself into. If my due diligence isn’t enough and the copyright authors wish to have this removed, please contact me, and I’ll remove it. Now, regardless of your religious opinion, I think it’s good to hear what others have to say, and if you have any curiosity about life, the universe, or teapots in space, you should take the time to hear Richard Dawkins out.

Refused (Still) The Shape of Punk to Come

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:10:23 -0600

Here’s my all time favorite Swedish hardcore band, Refused, doing “The Shape of Punk to Come” their release of the same name during a set on Jimmy Fallon, July 18th of this year. This is why I want to see them on this reunion tour they’re doing, they are just so freaking intense.

Bonus, here they are doing their, for better or worse, most popular song, “New Noise”.

HOWTO update OpenELEC on Raspberry Pi

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 16:45:00 -0600

OpenELEC (Embedded Linux Entertainment Center)

One of my goals after getting my Raspberry Pi was to use it as an XBMC server. XBMC is an open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. It runs on Linux, OSX, and Windows, and works great as a set top media center, ala something like Apple TV. Meanwhile another effort called OpenELEC is like a live build of XBMC that you can install on embedded hardware that has been built from scratch specifically to act as a media center, stripped down to the very most basic essentials for a light installation with a quick boot time. Even better, they have builds that are specifically tailored to the very-specific hardware like Ion, Fusion, Intel, and… wait for it… beta versions for Raspberry Pi! So my mind was made up, getting OpenELEC up and running on the Pi was a simple affair with their excellent docs on their wiki. This worked as advertised and things were good. Of course, since this is an early development version, there are lots of changes and improvements as time goes by, and updating is necessary. While you can go through the entire install again, it’s not necessary, and some quick poking around on their forums turned up a simple update script that I downloaded to the Pi and ran, and it worked - it updated to the latest build of OpenELEC and rebooted to install it. This is where things went south, black screen city! Luckily the OS was running so I could still SSH in and poke around, sure enough, everything looked fine, no errors, etc, but it just wasn’t working. My solution was to downgrade to an older version (that was still months newer than the original install I was using), but how could I automate it? I did it by modifying the update script to get a list of available builds and prompt you to choose what build to install. I ran this, rolled back to an earlier build, and boom, everything worked again! I have the script on Github as a gist, embedded here for conivence. As always feedback is welcome.

HOWTO run a Tor node in the cloud for free

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 09:20:16 -0600

Tor (The Onion Router) is a network of virtual tunnels that improve privacy and security online

**UPDATE 2 **a friend has posted an awesome overview of Tips to running tor bridges on the Torproject.org site. Plenty of details so you really know what you’re getting into, bandwidth and cost-wise when running your own Tor bridge. Great stuff!

**UPDATE **after running Tor on Amazon EC2 I have not been charged anything additional. Their ‘free tier’ seems to be just that, free. Nice.

HOWTO fix no route to host in OpenBSD

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 18:13:19 -0600

[![OpenBSD](http://fak3r.com/openbsd_96x96.png)](http://fak3r.com/?attachment_id=3900)

I installed OpenBSD 5.1 recently on my new box that’s running Proxmox 2.1. I want OpenBSD to run pf to provide a firewall to protect all the other virtualized hosts on the box. I don’t remember what I put for my default route during the install, and that came back to bite me as I couldn’t get outside of my network. Issuing a ping would resolve a hostname (I run a local DNS server) but then it didn’t have a route to the resolved IP, so it would fail with the error ping: sendto: No route to host

Enable auto security updates in Debian

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:50:24 -0600

In installs of the latest Ubuntu Linux you’ve given the option at the end to turn on automatic updates for security updates, which a great option for a server. I’ve always been a big purveyor of autonomous computing, after all, they know how to do their job, so give them enough rope to hang^K^K^K do it themselves. The old way of running cron-apt followed by apt-get upgrade is a big hammer for a small job and will break services, it’s a guarantee. So I knew there had to be a better way, and I’m sure Ubuntu had already formalized it, so it wasn’t that hard to figure out. It starts with the install of a package named unattended-upgrades. Ok, so this was likely available for some time, well as they say, it’s new to me!

If you're depressed, please get help

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 23:36:36 -0600

I’ve started to write this post many times over the years, but sadly something has happened so close to me, that I know it’s time to get it out and share more than I usually do here. First off, let me say, if you have depression, anxiety, or are suicidal, please get help. While mood swings and other feelings can come and go, don’t mess around if you even think you are depressed, talk about it with your doctor or anyone; get help.

HOWTO create a normal MySQL user

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:04:23 -0600

I found this online, and it’s a perfect example of a bad habit I’ve been trying to clean up for some time. When I’m trying out software that needs a MySQL database, I’m used to create database foo; but not creating a specific user for that database. Sure, if it’s in the install steps it’s easy to cut and paste, but otherwise root ends up accessing everything, and just like using root in Linux, that’s not a good idea, security wise. So that’s it, I won’t be lazy with this anymore, for reference here’s how to do it, just replace DB name, username and password and you’re all set.

Beastie Boys: The Grand Royal Mixtape

Thu, 17 May 2012 08:50:08 -0600

While I’ve been remiss in mentioning the death of the Beastie Boy’s Adam Yauch (MCA), it’s only because there is so much I want to say to cover what that band has meant to me for over half of my life. Meanwhile a DJ’s mix of some of their rare mixes, bsides and live tracks has hit the sharing networks, apparently it was created for the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of fame entry, but has become an unofficial memorial (download links below!). On his site, Mick Boogies says

'HOWTO create a Linux LiveCD '

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:38:46 -0600

I’m working on a project that calls for a Linux LiveCD, so it can be booted off of a CD-ROM or USB drive, and not require any sort of permanent install to run. You’ve probably seen this in things like Ubuntu’s LiveCD where you can try the latest version without having to install it, or you can even install it from within the Live environment, but I’m not trying to do that. I just want a Linux environment running and providing DHCP and other network services for the network it finds itself on. While I found some great HOWTOs online, most were outdated, or just didn’t do all that I wanted, so it was time for a new one. Now, since this is going to target a server role I’m going to be kicking it with Debian, and they have a set of tools called Live Tools to assist in the building of a Debian LiveCD. This method requires working from an existing Debian instance, so get there, and then update your /etc/apt/sources.listto include the Live Tools

HOWTO use ionice to control long running jobs

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:21:17 -0600

If you have a long running process (rsync, cp, find updatedb, etc) that causes a high load on your Linux system, it’s likely going to cause a problem (and unneeded Nagios alerts!) when it’s run via cron. This was happening on a server of mine that backed up the Apache Solr indexes every night, so after searching around I found a utility to handle this situation, ionice. This works much like the venerable nice command, but focuses on I/O priority instead of processor priority. Of course since I wasn’t going to be around to turn this on I needed a way for it to work in a script, and it ended up being pretty simple. In the head of your BASH script, turn it on a set it for -p$$ which is the working shell, so it will be in effect for anything within that script. Here’s a simple example, again, just turn it on before any long running commands, or anything that you want to turn down the I/O priority for

ApacheSolr replication with multi-core indexes

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 22:13:08 -0600

[

After having an Apache Solr search server running across multicores (that’s multiple “search” cores, it has nothing to do with multicore processors) we need to expand it by using replication for backups, as well as eventual load balancing for performance reasons. The 8 cores’ indexes are currently about 18Gig, so it’s no small undertaking to backup and move these suckers around, so we’re using KVM vitual machines as new slave nodes. I setup these up on a stock Debian Squeeze (6.0) install and read up on how to make a master/slave Solr replication work. Since version 1.4 Solr boasts built in replication, so any external rsync enabled scripts are no longer needed. For this you’ll need at least two Solr servers running, though my directions are in Debian, they’ll be indentical if you’re running Ubuntu, and the same, after the Tomcat home directory, on other Linux distros.

DEF CON 20 CFP

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:08:07 -0600

UPDATE: since yesterday was May 28th, I submitted this proposal late last night, along with another one covering a new project I’m toying with called blackGATE, more on that in a bit. Below you’ll see the extended outline that roughly sketches out what I’ll be covering in the talk.

The DEF CON© CFP (Call for Papers) is open now until May 28, 2012, so this year instead of writing up my CFP proposal on a wiki like I did last year, I’m just going to do it here and update it as I go until I submit it. This idea was presented to me by @thepres98, who I enjoy reading, but as you can see he is a bit further along than me and already has his talk, Flex Your Rights: The Constitution & Political Activism in the Hacker Community, up and ready for review. Last year I was honored to speak at DC19, my talk Taking your ball and going home was well recieved and an amazing experience for me. After attending DEF CON for 5 years, this was only my 2nd proposal I submitted for a talk, and it was approved. After using Dropbox for a time and learning about their privacy issues, I started doing more research on the topic and started up Lipsync as an open source alternative. After encouragement on Twitter from @videoman to just ‘have fun with it’, I wrote up an extended outline and submitted it. It’s with this idea that I move forward with my propsal for this year, so I dreamt up a title page and got cracking; the working title is 0nline Privacy In The Year of The Dragon.

Thought for the day

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 22:06:18 -0600

Yet another work issue that I should have replied to with the terse, but accurate, “These are not the droids you’re looking for”

— aka ★ Phil (@fak3r) March 21, 2012

Migas

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:58:53 -0600

I’ve always loved Mexican food, but it wasn’t until I lived in Austin, Texas that I came to really appreciate it. When I worked at Hoover’s as a technician, the receptionist would announce when the taco truck pulled up so we could queue up and get breakfast tacos with egg, potato, cheese and salsa. After finding my taste for migas, I realized that I could eat them for every meal, they’re that freaking good. I played around making my own for my family for a time, but I finally got serious and started playing with some known recipes. I quickly settled on Rachael Ray’s Mighty Migas recipe, but based mine on the version she has in her book (which is vegetarian) and then over time I’ve made my own deviations. So, since I’ve been successful with them, and since I’ve never posted about cooking, here’s my interpretation of how to create migas; pretty much one of my, and my families’, favorite meals now. So put on some Willie Nelson, Junior Brown or Don Wasler, and try it out! Give your thoughts and comments below if you have any suggestions, I’m always looking to improve my cooking (I’ve got a long way to go!)

Run secure, caching DNS server in chroot

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:50:17 -0600

I want to run my own DNS server, while I've done this before it was always a one off that I never spent much time researching or implementing it as well, and securely, as I wanted. When I tried out [DNSCrypt](http://www.opendns.com/technology/dnscrypt/) from the [OpenDNS](http://www.opendns.com/) folks, I emailed them and asked if it was available to run on a server, and sure enough, they have it in their [Github repo](https://github.com/opendns/dnscrypt-proxy), ready to compile in Linux. So I knew it was time to take things more seriously so I could properly run DNSCrypt as part of my DNS stack. So, first up, before getting DNSCrypt (and later [DNSSEC](http://www.dnssec.net/)) I need to have a good install of a local DNS server to handle things, and I've setted on using [Unbound](http://unbound.net/). Unbound [bills itself](http://unbound.net/) as "_...a validating, recursive, and caching DNS resolver. [...] Unbound is designed as a set of modular components, so that also DNSSEC (secure DNS) validation and stub-resolvers (that do not run as a server, but are linked into an application) are easily possible. The source code is under a BSD License._" Besides that the project has ties to some OpenBSD people, which bodes well for its security focus, and even has an option to chroot the install in the configuration file. In this article I'll share how I've setup Unbound running as a local, caching, recurisve DNS server in chroot. The next article in this series will deal with implementing DNSCrypt, and later DNSSEC.

My install is going to be in Debian 6.0 (Squeeze), but it should be identical for Ubuntu Linux users, and for any other Linux users, after the Unbound is installed. So first we’ll install Unbound, it’s as easy as…

HOWTO install Samba on Solaris

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:35:26 -0600

[

At work we’ve had an old(ish) Sun Fire X4500 (aka Thumper), that has been under utilized. With 48 harddisks, it has about 40 Terrabytes of storage, not too shabby for a 4 rack unit box. Of course digging in and actually doing stuff in Solaris is not as much fun as Linux, but we needed to get Samba running on this montster to give us some breathing room for our storage. From running Sun years ago I remember pkg-get, so I gave that a go, but by default, at least on this box, pkg-get used Blastwave, which seems to has gone away, so I spec’d pkg-get manually and told it to use Sunfreeware instead. That got the game going, but it was a long road to (evenutal) success. But hey, long road, this is why I do what I do, let’s get it started!

The Filter Bubble

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:23:51 -0600

[

This TED Talk from Eli Pariser covers his concept of The Filter Bubble, and is a must watch for anyone concerned about internet privacy and what’s being done with personal data we’re freely exposing to companies. “Every year, thousands of entrepreneurs, change-makers, innovators and scientists gather in Long Beach, California for TED, the world’s leading thought conference. In 2011, the audience included executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and many other Silicon Valley startups. So when Eli Pariser explained the filter bubble concept and then called on them from the main stage to change how they do business, it wasn’t at all clear how they’d react.”

This site is in violation of HR3261

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:47:06 -0600

“Congress is about to pass internet censorship, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill - PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House - to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity. Click here to learn more.”

American Censorship Day organized by:

EFF, FSF, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Fight For the Future, Participatory Politics Foundation, Creative Commons, Mozilla Project, Wikimedia Foundation, Free Press, Move On, Don’t Censor The Net

Lessons from the dying

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:18:30 -0600

It’s time to turn the page on another year, so I think it’s a good time to reflect, and understand what’s really important in our lives. So much is made of things that can be bought, with not enough focus on what we have, and what’s most important to us. I found this post of regrets a nurse compiled from patients before they died, I think it provides the most honest perspective that it forces you to think about what’s important to you, and what you want to accomplish in your life. I also thought it was a perfect end to the year.

Best music of 2011

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:04:25 -0600

This best of list has taken time to compile, all year I guess, and some of fallen off as the year has moved on, as it should be. ~~I still need to put up slicks to look at and sample tracks to listen to, but I haven’t had the time or motivation, so until then~~ Now that I’ve gotten the slicks and sample tracks all lined up, here are the ones that I think are the best from 2011. (and congrats to PJ on winning the Mercury prize…again)

Run DD-WRT on Netgear WNDR3700

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:03:03 -0600

At home I’ve had my trusty Linksys WRT54GL, the Linux based router that ran the Tomato firmware so well, for years; it’s an awesome router and the only time it went down was when I was upgrading it. The only reason to look for a new one is that the wifi is G speed, and the network is only 10/100. Eventually newer, sleeker, and far faster routers, tempted me too much. After looking around I found the best bang for the buck, and then I found an online factory reconditioned version and the decision was made. I’m now running the Netgear WNDR3700 (v1) N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router, and after playing around with the stock firmware, I installed DD-WRT on it, and couldn’t be happier with it. It looks and feels a bit more hardcore than Tomato, and unlocks all sorts of features of the hardware that the factory firmware blocked access to. But first let’s look at the router, it’s a shiny, thin, tall (if setup with the included stand) router with brighter than average lights that the rim of the router help reflect out, more blinky lights is always a plus in my book. It’s a dual-band Wireless-N router, it has simultaneous networks running on 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz which support supports A/B/G/N speeds, it has a 680 MHz MIPS 32-bit processor (for comparison the WRT54GL had a 200 Mhz proc), 64 Meg RAM (again, the WRT54GL had 16 Meg RAM), 5 Gigabit ethernet ports, a USB 2.0 port for external networked storage (or networked printer if you’re running DD-WRT), dynamic DNS, firewall, and expanded QoS settings to handle things like VPN and VoIP. So that’s about it, this is still one of the fastest routers out there, and big step up from where I was previously. I knew I wouldn’t need to reference much from it, but I pulled up the FAQ and grabbed the manual in PDF form. Since this was a refurb I didn’t expect it to have the latest firmware installed, and it didn’t, instead having some version 1.0.4, while the latest was 1.0.16. So I grabbed the latest firmware for it, and flashed away, after a few minutes it rebooted, and I had version 1.0.16.98dnsNA installed. Then the fun began!

LinkedIn spams all of my Gmail contacts

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:01:27 -0600

**UPDATE2 **I finally got a response on Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 7:24 AM, it said, “I would first like to apologize for the delay in responding to your inquiry. This is certainly not the customary wait time for a reply from LinkedIn Customer Support. We have been experiencing higher than expected volumes, and your patience is greatly appreciated.” So, they’ve been so busy that it took 2 1/2 weeks to get back to me? Still, they haven’t answered my questions, one what happened and two, who did they email on my behalf? I need a list. Stay tuned.

HOWTO install php5-fpm on Debian Squeeze

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:21:52 -0600

Once PHP hit version 5.3, it started shipping with PHP-FPM, which is the new way to handle PHP requests when serving web content. Their site describes it as, “PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites”, but this is being pretty modest when you consider the host of improvements it brings over the old way of doing things when running PHP with an ‘alternate’ webserver such as lighttpd or nginx. So, it sounds like a slam dunk, time to remove all the handwritten fastcgi-php scripts from /etc/init.d, update PHP and go to town, right? Not so fast hot shot, in Debian Squeeze (stable) they don’t include PHP-FPM with PHP 5.3 (reasons for this tend to fall in the ‘not enough testing’ variety), so we have to look elsewhere for a PHP with this (and other upgrades) enabled. This is exactly what the site and repo Dotdeb is there for, and they have the updated PHP 5.3 that includes the FPM module. So, to get it installed on Debian Squeeze we first have to add the repo line to sources.list

Guided by Voices new album, classic lineup

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:54:09 -0600

Since 1993, Guided by Voices has been one of my all time favorite bands, having seen them countless times, and hanging out having beers with Bob and the band a few times, they’re unlink any other. The band’s recorded output from 1992-1996 was amazing, but their live shows from the period were magical; it was just a perfect band. But after running through many other iterations of GbV, Bob Pollard (the heart of GbV) pulled the plug on the band in 2004. Fast forward to last year, Bob got the ‘classic’ lineup back together for a handful of shows, which turned into a 1 year victory lap around the country. I saw one of the early gigs in Austin, and they did not disappoint; the magic was still there. Now the band has recorded a new album! Mojo broke the news with, “_Last year, Robert Pollard reunited the mid-’90s “classic” lineup of Guided By Voices and played a whole bunch of beer-drenched marathon shows with them. There was talk that the band’s recent set at North Carolina’s Hopscotch Festival would be their final reunion show, but this reunion ain’t done yet. The lineup of Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Greg Demos, Mitch Mitchell, and Kevin Fennell have recorded a brand new album called Let’s Go Eat The Factory, their first since 1996′s Under The Bushes, Under The Stars, and they’re going to release it on New Years Day.” _If this wasn’t good enough, GbV’s manager Rich Turiel chimed in on Twitter with some details on the release; 1. New GBV lp is self produced & recorded at Toby’s home studio and Mitch & Greg’s houses 2. Toby has lead vocals on 6 tracks. 5 written by him the other Tobe/Mitch/Jimmy/Bob 3. New GBV lp facts; shortest song is :34 longest is 4:01 4. So you know the new GBV album isn’t a 1 off, there are already plans to record the next album.

HOWTO tame Apache Tomcat's logging

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:01:24 -0600

If you’re like me, you’ve had to support Apache Tomcat for a good chunk of your IT career, and it hasn’t all been wine and roses. Typically Tomcat will work great in a development, or in a proof of concept environment, but when it comes time to put it in production and have it face some real traffic, well, you get complaints. Now, why do I have a picture of Tomcat on a messenger bag here? It’s because I would like to put Tomcat in a bag…and throw it in a river! But, since I haven’t done that (yet), I’ll talk about recently when I had some tomcat servers pumping out hundred of MGs of logfiles that weren’t being rotated quickly enough, filling up the log partition and causing alerts to go off. Now logrotate is supposed to handle things, and while it’s defaults will generally work fine, any persistant error from tomcat will make the logs quickly eat up all your space and cause you grief, so it’s best to set it up to handle them ahead of time. First take a look at:

DJ Mehdi RIP

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:29:28 -0600

Wow, I hate to hear about new music this way, but the influential DJ Mehdi of Paris has died at the tragically young age of 34.

The quick background on his short life, “Mehdi Favéris-Essadi was born in 1977 in the suburbs of Paris. He got his start as a hip-hop producer, and found his signature sound by combining the style and attitude of hip-hop with elements of electro and house. Arguably his most important break came in 2006 when he released his album Lucky Boy on Ed Banger Records, the Parisian label that would be his home for the rest of his career. Over the years he collaborated with the likes of Daft Punk, Cassius and Chromeo. His most recent project was a collaboration with Riton called Carte Blanche. DJ Mehdi is survived by his wife, the French model and artist Fafi. Our thoughts are with his friends and family at this time.”

Plains Milky Way timelapse

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:01:12 -0600

Awhile back I found this article on Wired, with an amazing accompanying video of a timelapse of the night sky, done over three weeks. It’s some pretty amazing footage, if marred slightly by the music…but I digress. Here it is, details from the article below.

Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Far from starscape-dulling city lights, farmer and photographer Randy Halverson spent three weeks creating a new video of the spinning night sky. Shot from his central South Dakota farm, the video (above) features the Milky Way, which appears to our eyes as a fuzzy band but is actually an an edge-on view of dust lit by billions of stars. Summer is the prime season for North Americans to catch the Milky Way. “Now is the first good time of the year to go out and see it, and maybe the best,” said Halverson. “There’s not as many mosquitoes, it isn’t too muggy and the rattlesnakes aren’t around. Those can be trouble.”

Automate Debian installs via preseed

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:41:14 -0600

[ is the recommended method for automating Ubuntu installations and for building custom install CDs. With this in mind I set out to build a preseed config file that would automate installs of virtual KVM machines we were provisioning at a gig, but looking at how I do such bare-bones base installs, this would work for most of my normal Debian installs at home too.

Here is what I came up with to install Debian Squeeze to a system with the first harddrive on the SATA connector (/dev/sda), if you cut and paste this it won’t be too hard to modify it for your needs:

DEFCON 19: Taking your ball and going home

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:05:05 -0600

[ DEFCON 19 logo UPDATE you can now view a video of my slides, along with the audio of my talk on the DC archive page (45 Megs)

Two weeks ago, at this year’s DEFCON conference in Las Vegas, I gave a talk covering privacy and security issues concerning Dropbox, which led into questions about how much we should trust ‘cloud’ services, and my solution, the open source project lipsync. The full title of the talk is, Taking yourball and going home; building your own secure storage space that mirrors Dropbox’s functionality, and shows what can be done when you use multiple open sources applications to make something with new functionality (or at least new functionality to to open source world). You can view it below, but you should also view it from the previous link, so you can see the ‘Speaker notes’ which give the details I covered during each slide. (visitors to my site will recognize the timeline, and as you see in the talk, this all started with a post I made here in September 2009 titled HOWTO build your own open source Dropbox clone. This drove initial discussions about the idea that eventually convinced that this would be a good thing to build a project around). Enjoy…

New trends in computer hardware

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:48:14 -0600

While the trajectory of consumer laptops and desktops is obvious in consumer publications, the behind the scenes systems, such as the Industrial pc has continued to become smaller, more reliable and more power efficient. Embedded Systems handle a variety of application environments, with single board computers comprising of the majority of the silent, always on systems. Many run in a fanless configuration, which means not only less heat and noise, but less power and generally more reliability as there are no moving parts to wear down or break. Industrial ODM / OEM embedded computer systems & embedded motherboards can feature custom BIOS to address virtually any need, with some now offer lifetime guarantees of seven to ten years. Industrial computers can include everything from a PDA (aka tablets), or a panel PC, workstation, a rack mounted server or even a laptop. These devices are handled as any regular PC, so they can connect to other servers and devices over media such as RS-485, cellular networks, Ethernet, Most are fully RFID ready and built to stand up to water, dust, temperature extremes, shock, and vibration. In effect, industrial computing provides the tools and functionality of a standard computer, with the benefits of being able to stand up in harsh environments and without needing user interaction. Without such options the computing landscape would lack systems to go where most wouldn’t dare go

Fetchmail email, forward via procmail

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:40:56 -0600

I’m starting a new gig Monday, so I got a new email address for use while I work there. Now of course, I have many, many email addresses, but thanks to Google Apps, I still check them all through a Gmail frontend, and can ‘send as’ any address I want; which makes it almost seamless to integrate new email accounts. However, today we hit a snag, whereas my last client offered to simply forward my mail to another address, the new one wouldn’t with something about auditing as their reason, which I can completely understand, as long as they understand, having to check email via multiple clients just won’t scale. That’s right Anthony, ’this won’t scale’. So, since we’re rocking Linux and open source we know we can fix it some way, and that’s what I live for, the challenge. Ya, that’s right, I was given a stumbling block, I stared it down and proclaimed, “challenge accepted”.[

Start a detached process in screen

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:43:22 -0600

Ok, a quick one today - at work I had the problem of needing a process to be automatically started during boot, and have it running in the background, but it didn't have its own init.d script. I knew there was a way I could use [GNU Screen](https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/) (one of my favorite 'must have' sys admin tools) to do this, but it took me some time searching to find the right syntax to translate for my needs, so I'm posting it here.

su - phil -c "/usr/bin/screen -dmS solr /opt/start_solr141.sh"

Super Mario Brothers visualized on a curb

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:55:55 -0600

The timeless classic, Super Mario Brothers, visualized on a curb. What more is there to say?

HOWTO make a DIY Record Store Day sign

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:32:02 -0600

[ and to RSD organizers everywhere!

BONUS: I’ve got a shot of the finished sign, installed in my yard, at the end of the post now. Enjoy, and I’ll see some of you Saturday!

As you should know by now, Record Store Day (April 16, 2011) is rapid approaching, and to me it’s more of a holiday than most holidays. As a quick intro, their site states that, “This is the one day that all of the independently owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances. Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, djs spinning records and on and on. […] Record Store Day is now celebrated the third Saturday every April.” As I’ve blogged about it, each year, since it started - I wanted to do more this year, I wanted to promote Record Store Day to all the people in my neighborhood that might not appreciate the local record shop (Euclid Records) that I’ve spent time in for over 25 years. To do this my thought was one of getting offline, ya, going analog, taking it to the streets as it were, so I checked with @recordstoreday on Twitter to see if they had any ready made posters I could print out…

Jenny Holzer Truisms

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:47:38 -0600

I’ve long been a fan of Jenny Holzer’s art, dealing with text, originally printed as photostat, but later displayed on billboards, in Times Square on the big screen (pictured) and later projected in huge letters on buildings. The idea of presenting ones ideas, or as in this case, declared maxims for her Trusims. I can’t recall where i first came across this piece, but I love reading through them all, with the one “abuse of power comes as no surprise” being my favorite. Even after I forgot about this piece, I never forgot that line and thought of it often. I mean think about it, does that ever not happen? She’s an American artist, born in 1950 in Ohio, who started using text as her primary means in the late 70s. An original version of the piece is now part of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and they described it as “…her pithy, ironic, and often disturbing statements have been presented on posters, T-shirts, baseball caps, and a flashing screen in Times Square, New York.”

Mogwai 'Mexican Grand Prix' (video)

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:31:53 -0600

UPDATE: from now until Feb 15 you can stream the new cd from Rolling Stone, I’m liking it so far, natch!

While I haven’t seen Mogwai live since I lived in Austin, I’ve been a big fan for many years and by looking at my Last.fm profile, it’s clear that I’ve spent many hours at work trying to figure out some strange server issue, while their droning feedback played in my headphones. After the awesome live release from last year, I’m really looking forward to their next studio effort. Of course the fact that the title of the new disc is Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will only makes things better; could there be a better title? (and yes, that’s a rhetorical question) I found the video for the next single on Pitchfork, and it’s one of those that really makes me appreciate the fact that some are making really interesting pieces to accompany the music. It was directed by Danny McConnell, who apparently also shot the vid for their other single _Rano Pano. _While I haven’t seen that one, I really appreciate this one and wonder how much of a pain it was to make. So here they are, Mogwai, with Mexican Grand Prix.

HOWTO reclaim your Linux bootup messages

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:08:52 -0600

You know the drill, you bootup a Linux box and watch the boot messages scroll by on the screen, now prepended with lines telling you the seconds since boot, and then you end up at a shell prompt for login. Ahh, the way Linus intended, epic! Oh, you don’t see that? Instead you see some animated Linux distro logo or something as useless like a progress bar tracing across the screen? Uggh, I hate that, you don’t know what’s really going on behind the scenes, and if Linux is anything, it’s transparent. So, let’s get that fixed for you. Basically as Linux as ‘matured’, we’ve been forced to load and watch more animated boot ‘splash’ screens for branding, and to make Linux more user-friendly, or more likely, more Windows or Mac-like. This way new users won’t run for the hills if they see something like:

Best music of 2010

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:44:54 -0600

As always, this was a big music year for me, while attending less live shows I think I’ve bought and listened to more music to (sort of) make up for it. I’m also enjoying the home stereo even more now with my early 70s McIntosh MA-6100 pre-amp/amp, and now even some respectable headphones for work, the Grado SR60i. This year bands introduced via Twitter from other music freaks have greatly helped diversify my palate. I can highly recommend the following for this: @captainsdead, @truersound and @somevelvetblog. (if have other suggestions, leave them in the comments!) So here are the bands that I spent the most time with in 2010. Leave me feedback as to how my tastes compare to yours, as well as anything I may have missed. Finally, as always with music, see the bands when you can and buy locally, buy often.

A free Gorillaz album released

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 15:26:32 -0600

Gorillaz ‘The Fall’

Over** the weekend, GORILLAZ JUST POSTED** their new album The Fall, which was mixed and recorded using Damon Albarn’s Apple iPad during their recent US tour, for free. You can currently stream it (for the price of your email address) on thefall.gorillaz.com - or download it from file-sharing sites, linked to by good chaps such as 2dopeboyz.com. Additionally, a physical release of the album is planned for 2011, bringing to mind the first large scale attempt at this when Radiohead released In Rainbows. If this is a trend I fully support it, and think it’s (one way that) music will be (successfully) distributed in the future.

Cookies by Douglas Adams

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:19:50 -0600

To me it seems comforting to re-read bits and stories by Douglas Adams. Since his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series has been such a force since it came out, it’s clear that his humor and insight was no fluke; it’s continuous and holds up today. Hell, I played the text based Hitchhiker game by Infocom back on the Apple //e, his work is just timeless. It reminds me to reread the series, and his final, unfinished work, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, which he was working on when he passed away, a look. Some great stuff to give a fresh perspecitive on life, the universe and everything. Thanks Douglas!

The security mess that is Gawker

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:06:30 -0600

[ meme here:

You can (and should) get information about changing your account password for any of those sites here and learn how to run an audit of all of your passwords, if you use/trust Lastpass, here, but hell, the damage is likely already done. We can only hope that this wakes up other companies, people’s personal information shouldn’t be so dealth with in such an insecure matter; at what point are they responsible for securing public data further than posting “We care about your privacy!!!” on their ‘About’ web page?

Monitor Tomcat with monit/munin in Debian

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:45:58 -0600

[ for years on this server too, however I never got the Tomcat plugins to work with it, so I can’t gauge how hot Tomcat is running, and how changing the heap size is effecting things. Because of this, yesterday I got serious about it and finally got it working, but I had to take an end run to get it rolling and it wasn’t fun; which is why I’m posting it here. If anyone knows a better way to do this, please share in the comments and I’ll update this, but here’s how I was successful.

HOWTO set Facebook privacy settings

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:36:54 -0600

** UPDATE ** (2017-09-20) added a link to Comparitech’s Reclaim Privacy which looks at securing Facebook as well as other accounts and online applications. Thanks!

While I’m working on a Facebook inspired privacy discovery project, I need to highly recommend that everyone take the time to review their the official Facebook privacy settings page to understand how data about you is used and shared, but in a nutshell Facebook tells us:

Your name, profile picture, gender and networks are always open to everyone. We suggest leaving the other basic settings below open to everyone to make it easier for real world friends to find and connect with you.

Roger Ebert's Journal: Put up or shut up

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:20:40 -0600

Every now and then I read something that makes so much sense, it almost seems silly that it has to be said; but this does. Leave it to the brilliant mind of Roger Ebert to make sense of the whole religious ferver that has been building up from Limbaugh, Beck, Palin and others keeping Republicans misinformed by spouting out fear based talk of Muslims with cries of Islamic law, religious wars and other crazy talk. Look, while I expect this from news salesmen like them, when people that I know and used to admire use religion to promote bigotry of others because they are of another religion, all bets are off. While you’ll hear other things on the news, our country was founded on the freedom of religion, which Wikipedia cites as, “…a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any religion. The freedom to leave or discontinue membership in a religion or religious group —in religious terms called “apostasy” —is also a fundamental part of religious freedom.” When I spoke candidly with Europeans last week in London about this they shared my concern and bewilderment about the ever growing pollariztion of the religious camps on this issue, so it’s not just us that are confused. I really appreciate Matt from Obtuse View for reposting this today, and I think it’s something everyone should repost so at least a voice of reason can be heard over the din of commercial “news”. Thanks Roger!

My name is John Daker

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:10:47 -0600

[ took notice. Now it’s your turn, I present to you the video entitled, My name is John Daker… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi8beYR1iBQ

More background on this fun from the Statemaster Encyclopedia

In the video, he performs two songs: “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” and “That’s Amore” in a pseudo-operatic voice with various odd and sometimes alarming facial expressions to accompany his vocal stylings. Daker remains totally still with his arms at his side during most of his performance. Additionally, during his performance, he tends to forget lyrics and either looks angry or simply hums along until he recalls a word (often, the wrong word). Simply by watching the video, it is difficult to tell if he is embarrassed, truly trying to sing the song, extremely nervous, or slightly inebriated.

HOWTO monitor your servers via Twitter

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:41:03 -0600

**UPDATE: **thanks to a reader’s comment I looked into what it would take to get this working again since Twitter has completely disabled the old style of authentication in favor of full on OAuth. Basically a lot. To just post messages now it seems far more complex than it once was.My original idea with this was to do it as low tech as possible so users wouldn’t have to install a ton of stuff and configure it - I wanted it to ‘just work’ easily. Now with OAuth it seems this will never work easily, first of all you have to ‘register an application’ for it to have access to OAuth - which seems crazy to me, we don’t want it to have access, just the ability to push a message to an account. Then if you look there are libraries out there that can post, but look at the directions for one of the libraries, it involves not only building the app and getting temporary access to the twitter API, then you also have to get the two keys from that and bake them into the app by recompiling it, and then more configuration, etc. So for now I am MARKING THIS IDEA AS DEAD. If I figure out a new way to do it that I can sketch out I will, or if anyone else has a simple way post it in the comments and I’ll update it here. Thanks for your interest and good luck!

Monit monitors sites and alert users

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:20:06 -0600

Ok, I've used the process management software, [monit](http://mmonit.com/monit), since at least 2004, and it is simply an indespensible tool in my sysadmin cache. Basically it watches a process, say like [Apache](http://httpd.apache.org/), and restarts it if it dies. But wait, that's not all, it does tons of other things. Want it to watch it and restart it at a certain time? Sure. How about if it uses 50% of system memory in 5 cycles (cycles are checks, 120 seconds by default)? Yep, it'll take care of that. How about watching a file and stopping a service and/or issuing an alert by email or web if the file's UID, permission, or whatever has changed? No problem. Disk space is greater than 90% on one partition you want an email to go out to the admin? Easy. Seriously, once you start using monit you'll be amazed at what you can cover, it's truly one of the best tools I've ever used, and of course it's GPL'd open source.

So, this week we had an issue where a some of our sites were down, and the monitor that watches them were internal to our network, and relied on some of the same resources; which is lees than ideal. I have a remote server running at one of our partner’s sites, so it’s the perfect canidate to watch our sites from a ‘real world’ view. I already had monit running on the server (it’s literally one of the first things I install once I bring a server up) so it was simple enough to have it watch our sites, in Debian you just put a new file in /etc/monit/include with the syntax of what you want done, and then add the path as include /etc/monit/include/service in /etc/monitrc. First in monitrc we list a global email address for the systems admin to get alerts:

HOWTO sort web-server logs to find top users

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:07:30 -0600

[ were. While watching a logfile tail by at high speeds is always fun, we wanted to be able to sort the web-server access log and find top users, to be able to narrow down where the traffic was coming from. While we don’t want to block users that want to access our data, sometimes we need to throttle things back so one requester doesn’t overwhelm all the available bandwidth and make the site unusable for others. So after some playing around and digging on Google, we came up with a nice, succinct one liner to do this, here it is:

Tea partiers: You get mad now?

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:35:22 -0600

Since the health-care debate brought out the worst in the tea party protesters, we’ve seen a shift from fear mongering, to the disgusting behavior of last weekend that included bigoted, racist name calling, spitting on on elected officials and finally vandalism and death threats. If it weren’t clear before, the ‘movement’ has truly showed us what is behind their manufactured anger, and it ain’t health care. Case in point, how can people be mad now, when they weren’t mad when the previous administration that just walked all over the constitution, sent us into a war with a country that never attacked us and raised the debt to record highs? Well as I tried to figure out how to condense my thoughts, who would have thought Rosie O’Donnell would have covered it so well, with a post on her blog titled We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, Now you get mad!? One of her readers was able to succinctly break down the blatant hypocrisy of this whole affair, providing a perfect platform for a tea party rebuttal, but don’t expect that, instead lets expect more gay bashing from those cowards. I’m reprinting the post here (just like the DailyKos did) because it needs more exposure, so please pass it on. After that, follow-up by reading Frank Rich’s Op-Ed titled The Rage Is Not About Health Care for more rational of what is the true driver for this behavior, it gives us a lot to think about.

School spies on student, he's eating candy

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:35:51 -0600

**UPDATE: **it looks like this case has been settled, Pennsylvania school settles laptop webcam spying suits for $610,000 -but- Less than a third of that will go to the students. “A total of $185,000 will be put in trust for the students. Their lawyer will receive $425,000.”

** **Today fak3r from fak3r.com and Matt from Obtuseview.com are working together to bring you a multi-perspective piece on internet security. Rarely are team-ups like this seen except in the pages of “Marvel Team-Ups” or “a very Special Episodes of Diff’rnt Strokes.”

Best music of 2009

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:41:16 -0600

Well 2009 was another stellar year for music if you ask me, and as usual, my yearly ’top’ list is going on a month late. I always have these grand designs of writting a short paragragh about each selection, why I picked it, how I first heard it, etc, but you know how that goes. I will say that this year, while I’ve gotten into many bands the way I have in years past (trolling record stores, randomly listening to anything I can find online), I’ve also found things I wouldn’t have found thanks to my Twitter account. While those who don’t get Twitter think it’s just folks updating what they had for breakfast, if you stick around, dig deeper and find the right people to follow, it’s amazing wealth of information. Not requiring the effort of say a blog post allows rapid, unvarnished opinions, spouted out between people’s day to day tasks, which I always prefer since I feel I’m more lucid after a few cups of coffee while something is blaring in my ears. New this year is the reissues section, what with things like OK Computer and Young Team being reissued, I can’t help but highlight them.

Upcoming live release from Mogwai

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:31:33 -0600

This year Mogwai will release a live cd and album, Special Moves, and a dvd, Burning, covering a three night set during the 2009 shows in Brooklyn. Here they are doing Mogwai Fear Satan, which while from the same tour, is not from the film, but is shot by the same people (thanks for the info Stuart, pictured above) so it’s a good look into what to expect. If it’s all like this it looks like the perfect live film in my opinion, focused on the band interactions and movement, not the audience. To find out more, and get a free mp3 download of _2 Rights Make 1 Wrong _from the set, visit Special Moves. Can’t wait to see/hear this, after taking a long time to get into The Hawk Is Howling, I’m ready to see them live again. I was still ‘digesting’ the re-release of Young Team that I bought in London last year, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen them live as they haven’t toured St. Louis, and the Austin gigs were too long ago to count. Just can’t wait for this release.

Securely delete files in OS X

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:51:44 -0600

[ and the sudo command to ensure all files would be deleted regardless of permission/ownership. In the end in looks like this:

sudo nice -19 srm -rfv ~/.Trash/*

Yeah, while the -v flag will slow things down slightly, I prefer to have ‘verbose’ output from the command to understand exactly what it’s doing. Does anyone have better/more secure way to do this? Leave a message in the comments if you do, I’d love to learn more about this.

Run ChromiumOS on Dell Mini 9 with wifi

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:48:23 -0600

**UPDATE 2: **it’s 2012, and now I’m running the special Dell builds, with wifi (Hexxeh’s builds (even Lime) don’t support wifi on the Dell Mini 9 for me, even though the docs say it supports Broadcom BCM43xx chipsets), but there are docs to get Dell’s custom builds rolling. The updated instructions are available on kirsle.net (thanks Kirsle!) Note that I also had the issue with the Dell April 15 build not booting after install without the USB drive, but there was a solution in the comments pointing to this page on My Dell Mini and now it’s all good. It’s so nice to have this working again, looks like now it’s going to be my laptop for next week’s DEF CON 20!

Defend DB from SQL attacks w/GreenSQL

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:26:16 -0600

UPDATE: as if to underscore the importance of this tool and approach, yesterday a story hit about a SQL Injection attack infecting over 132,000 systems in short order. Net-Security have the full details on this attack, including how it probes the host via JavaScript to check for known vulnerabilities, how it exploits them, and how it ultimately downloads a back-door trojan to get the game going. It’s really amazing to see how complicated and professional these things have gotten, and just adds to the reasoning that we have to step up to the plate and learn how to better defend against them.

Talking about clouds, TDWG and Eucalyptus

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:28:15 -0600

We had a alternate (un-official) cloud talk at TDWG. Organized here http://bit.ly/8LGUCr - one of the main things we wanted to cover, is to review what data is available now (or should be) out on Amazon’s free public data sets: http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=243 From there we derived a software stack from ideas of what would be useful for biodiversity folks to have on an EC2 compatible Debian Linux instance to do distributed computing against those sets. http://bit.ly/8GSEa7 This in turn builds off of what has already been done with BioLinux http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/jcvi-cloud-biolinux/ which is more of a desktop-able EC2/Eucalyptus image. Eucalyptus (http://open.eucalyptus.com/) is an open source project for you to bring up your own ‘private clouds’ that leave open the ability to migrate part of all of it to Amazon’s EC2 instances if you needed more power. But you know me, my idea would be to have a data base of participating parters worldwide that you could aim at, and if they were up/available, you could use their remote services to crank your data instead of using Amazon and being charged. I think this way scientists would really get to experiment with different data, without having to worry about cost. Of course enough institutions or partners would have to participate (and this doesn’t take into account any politics), but failing that, the Euca setup would at least provide a proof of concept that could be ramped up just by moving things to EC2.

EFF's SSD (Surveillance Self-Defense) Project

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:25:16 -0600

I run to join in the conversation. In other words, get involved and …

Know your rights!

Ruby on Rails: gem install versus apt-get

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:09:35 -0600

that contained the steps and explained how to install ruby via apt-get, then get the latest rubygems, install that manually, ran gem to update itself, then run gem to install rails - as suggested. The steps I took from that page:

On a Debian Lenny system that does not have ruby, rubygems or rails installed on it yet:

apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get install ruby-dev ruby ri rdoc irb libreadline-ruby libruby libopenssl-ruby sqlite3 libsqlite3-ruby libsqlite-dev libsqlite3-dev

Dark Night of the Soul

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:20:22 -0600

Notice: the text of this post in the gray, blockquote area was taken from the website Look Into My Owl, and I forgot to attribute it to them. The reason I used a blockquote was to signify that it was a direct quote, and that it wasn’t mine, but I didn’t say it wasn’t, and didn’t put a link to the original work as I usually do. It was an oversight on my part, and I regret it.

Build an open source Dropbox clone

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:21:03 -0600

**UPDATE #4 **It’s 2012, and this project is still alive, although I haven’t worked on lipsync as much as I should. I want to, and have new ideas to implement and try out in the next few months. The two way sharing is a bit hacky, and I don’t like it, the installer creates a cronjob: that checks for server changes to sync back every minute - and it tries to avoid conflicts by not running if a sync the other way is happening. Yes, if you’re using 2 computers at once it could get confused, but so far, it’s pretty good - but something I want to improve. I’m also very interested in ownCloud and using remote storage auth protocol like Unhosted proposes - these are two things I’d love to integrate into lipsync over the next few months. I really think having something that is all owned by the user, and in full control of the user, is still the ultimate way. Watch the lipsync.info site for more details, thanks.

Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:29:32 -0600

that debunks many of the non-truths that are being thrown around as justification for calling people Nazis. Let’s grow up and figure out a way to see both sides without name calling, please review these and expose them to others who are not using facts in their arguments.

Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200

A notorious analysis of the House health care bill contains 48 claims. Twenty-six of them are false and the rest mostly misleading. Only four are true.

Architecture for future LSID resolvers

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:32:20 -0600

**_ where they were discussing this, and wrote the following for another attendee to submit on my behalf. I’m posting it here for further exposure and discussion of the merits and shortcomings of these ideas. _

“In thinking about the architecture for future LSID resolvers we need to remember that a single point of failure will fail. This has been proven true too many times, and it’s clearly not the way to proceed if we want to build a system the community can rely on. To succeed we should follow successful implementations of distributed software services such as the domain name server (DNS), and the network time protocol (NTP). These succeed because the protocols are standardized and the software to connect to, and utilize, these services are simple to deploy. If we had a package-able server that would connect to these services and be easy to deploy, an institution could ultimately count on its own server (with other servers providing automatic fail over) to serve as a resolver that would be updated against lead node servers regularly.

Equating Obama to Hitler is very dangerous!

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:34:34 -0600

I came across this image online, and I had to look into it to see if it was real or not. After I did that I knew I had to bring more people’s attention to it. Look, this is just too much, agree or disagree with our president, but equating him with Hitler destroys any chance of a reasonable conversation of the issue. The URL on the pamphlet is a real website for the LaRouche PAC, so I hit their site, and read many of their beliefs and press releases. Among other things, heir site promotes bringing swastikas and using SS symbols at anti-Health Care rallies, and states “…the proposed legislation which is an exact copy of the legislation for which the Hitler regime was condemned” I don’t think I should be giving this insanity too much attention, but just read a bit more of what this person is calling for (emphasis mine):

fak3r twitter post regarding silos...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:11:50 -0600

this is vendor lockin...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:19:23 -0600

File system full, but why?

Tue, 26 May 2009 22:23:35 -0600

and I’ll be testing the proper fix on the server soon. I’ve got a server that keeps filling up its disk space and failing to serve images after it gets to the file system full error message. First of all let me say, I don’t blame it in the least, if the admin (aka me) doesn’t do enough to secure the server enough disk space to do its job, I say, let me have it. But after I’ve set the suspect daemon to use a reasonable amount of space I stopped thinking of it as the culprit, so when this issue arose again, I looked elsewhere for the cause. Fast forward to today, the server’s file system filled up again, and refused to serve any more data, again, I totally understand where the server is coming from, if it doesn’t have enough disk space to do its job, it shouldn’t have to apologize to anyone; it’s all on the admin (again, aka, me), but what was going on? So, after I finally figured things out, I was/am still a bit confused here, but to my defense, when I did an ’ls -ltrs /tmp’ to look at directories of old cached files left over by adore-djatoka (which is the JPEG2000 (J2K) image server that I suspected of taking up all the disk space) :

Four free Linux eBooks

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:47:13 -0600

, here’s some great downloads to learn from:

Linux Starter Pack

By TuxRadar

Here’s your complete guide to using Linux, taking you from beginner level to an intermediate user with ease. This ebook will show you how to install Linux, navigate around the desktop, use common software, add more programs and fix any problems you may encounter. It’s based around a slightly older version of Ubuntu Linux so there may be some minor differences with newer releases, but you can always download the latest version from www.ubuntu.com or get a CD sent by post at shipit.ubuntu.com.

Resolving LSIDs with CouchDB

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:29:04 -0600

, I’m looking at you. While much of it is theoretical, it is doable, and if it covers all that needs to be addressed, would be a cool, sustainable way forward for link resolvers for all kinds of usage.

I’m with Tim on this one, and taking one of Rod’s other posts ("LSIDs, disaster or opportunity") a bit further, I think coming up with a simple, extend-able URL resolver would give us many benefits and allow LSIDs with extra, added information around them for all to use. Looking at his example, a URL would get permanent tracking that would also post referrers, location and traffic. A summary of the link could even be a page in itself, a cached version, a screenshot, or just a scrape of the code - pulling out the HTML tags, for future reference in case the real link goes down. We could use the ability to create a customizable prefix (ie- http://someresolvr.com/bhl/SDFoijF), to somewhat follow DOI conventions, but could even save old DOIs or handles for historical purposes in a field attached to the new URL, or for reuse, making the new URL resolve to a current DOI with a simple post at the end of the new URL (ie- http://someresolvr.com/bhl/SDFoijF/DOI). In the same way we could use user input, data pulled about the URL semantically to generate RDFa (by using pyRdfa), then exposing that for all newly created URLS, and coming up with a standard to make it predictable (ie- http://someresolvr.com/bhl/SDFoijF/RDF). The example at bit.ly shows the use of Open Calais to get more background information on the original link to provide more information, but it could also be pointed to other services we provide/use in biodiversity to provide a snapshot across the board of more context/content. Users of the service could login to examine/add/edit the data by hand if desired, so they would still retain ultimate control over how their record is presented. Thus, from a simple URL, we could build a complete summary that would build on what we’re given while sharing it all back out.

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:07:50 -0600

The British comedy Red Dwarf has been a favorite of mine for many years, and this year it celebrates its 20th year anniversary. While they show hasn’t constantly been in production this fact is a bit misleading, but regardless, this year the crew of The Cat, Rimmer, Lister and Kryten are reuniting for a new 3 part series, Back To Earth. Their previous adventures cover all sorts of ground, but basically there’s a skeleton crew left in a mining ship lost far out in space. I’ve been in the loop on the new episodes since I’m following Robert Llewellyn on Twitter, he plays Kryten, the android on the right in the picture. It’s been really interesting learning about the man behind the character as he goes about his day, with a lot of his efforts focused on Car Pool, an interview show he produces where he interviews celebrates while car pooling in his Prius. Really funny stuff. As a bonus, a few weeks back he had Chis Barrie, who plays Lister in Red Dwarf, as seen standing next to Kryten above. It’s a funny interview, file those two under guys I’d like to have some beers with. You can find the show on Robert’s own site, Llewtube or download them as podcasts over at iTunes. For the uninitiated who are interested in Red Dwarf, the best way to start is at the end, and by the end I mean the pilot for the show entitled The End. The shows are all on DVD and hilarious, and next to AbFab I can’t think of a British Sitcom that I enjoy more.

Install Fedora-commons repository on Debian

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:25:57 -0600

store, change to a different database if you need to.

download the latest version of Fedora-commons (my example uses wget, since that’s how I roll, and is with the latest currently available version, modify as needed)

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fedora-commons/fcrepo-installer-3.3.jar

create a filed called ‘install30.properties’ so you don’t have to answer all the questions the installer asks. Read through this example and modify as needed.

# example install.properties
ri.enabled=true
messaging.enabled=true
apia.auth.required=false
database.jdbcDriverClass=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
ssl.available=false
database.jdbcURL=jdbc\:mysql\://localhost/fedora33?useUnicode\=true&amp;characterEncoding\=UTF-8&amp;autoReconnect\=true
messaging.uri=vm\:(broker\:(tcp\://localhost\:61616))
database.password=secret
database.mysql.driver=included
database.username=root
tomcat.shutdown.port=8001
deploy.local.services=true
xacml.enabled=false
database.mysql.jdbcDriverClass=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
tomcat.http.port=8080
fedora.serverHost=localhost
database=mysql
database.driver=included
tomcat.home=/opt/fedora/tomcat
fedora.home=/opt/fedora
rest.enabled=true
install.type=custom
servlet.engine=included
fedora.admin.pass=fedoraAdmin

create a database as defined above (NOTE: this could be different for you, if you’re not using a DB, enter database.jdbcDriverClass=com.mcoi.jdbc.Driver and remove the MySQL specfic lines)

mysqladmin -h localhost -u root -p  create fedora33

then run the Fedora-commons installer, using the -jar switch with Java and calling out your properties file at the end

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java -jar fcrepo-installer-3.3.jar install.33.properties

to start Fedora-commons, define your FEDORA_HOME, JAVA_HOME, etc in your profile, or a simple BASH start script - here’s an example, again modify as needed.

# example start_fedora.sh
export JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun"
export FEDORA_HOME="/opt/fedora"
export CATALINA_HOME="$FEDORA_HOME/tomcat"
/opt/fedora/tomcat/bin/startup.sh

run the BASH script, watch for any errors

./start-fedora.sh

view the Fedora Admin within a web browser (change the URL to suit)

http://localhost.domain.com:8080/fedora/search

later, learn how to import stuff

Record Store Day - April 18, 2009

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:36:06 -0600

UPDATE: read Euclid Records excellent post from last year by the owner Joe, “Record Store Day: What It Means To You and Me” for some insight into why you should care and participate in RSD If you’re like me, you can’t wait for Record Store Day 2009. If you were with me last year, you’ll recall that I blogged about it and gave my review of it afterward - I really enjoyed walking up to Euclid Records where I saw the same old staff I’ve seen for years, along with people from the neighbor hood, a local(ish) band play (which my kids said were too loud (win!)) and of course picked up some new music. This year’s event will be April 18th, and you know I’m saving my pennies for the day. I think this year I’ll surprise the staff with some donuts to kick the day off right! If not for local music shops, the music world would be even less human, here’s to them rallying a comeback around the world. As, looks like this year bands and artists are seeing the value of having a day devoted to the music merchants, and are chipping in a bunch of exclusive releases to celebrate.

Röyksopp - Happy Up Here

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:57:29 -0600

Profiling no better than random screening

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:05:45 -0600

in finding terrorist suspects. Just as people with the same names as potential suspects are showing up on watchlists, this is not a good way to determine their threat level. While there certainly are many challenges to generating profiles of potential terrorists, this study released by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science does a mathematical analysis how we’re deploying the profiles we do have, and suggests we may not be using them wisely.

HOWTO: configure MySQL's my.cnf file

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:05:09 -0600

, I basically went with what it told me, but I’m using a higher query_cache_size than it recommends, basically because I don’t see anything online saying it will hurt things. So I’m now using the following values on my server:

[mysqld]
user=mysql
bind-address=127.0.0.1
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
socket=/var/run/mysql/mysql.sock
port=3306
tmpdir=/tmp
language=/usr/share/mysql/english
skip-external-locking
query_cache_limit=64M
query_cache_size=32M
query_cache_type=1
max_connections=15
max_user_connections=300
interactive_timeout=100
wait_timeout=100
connect_timeout=10
thread_stack=128K
thread_cache_size=128
myisam-recover=BACKUP
key_buffer=64M
join_buffer=1M
max_allowed_packet=32M
table_cache=512M
sort_buffer_size=1M
read_buffer_size=1M
read_rnd_buffer_size=768K
max_connect_errors=10
thread_concurrency=4
myisam_sort_buffer_size=32M
skip-locking
skip-bdb
expire_logs_days=10
max_binlog_size=100M
server-id=1
[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/usr
[safe_mysqld]
bind-address=127.0.0.1
err-log=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
open_files_limit=8192
SAFE_MYSQLD_OPTIONS=”–defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf –log-slow-queries=/var/log/slow-queries.log”
[mysql]
[isamchk]
key_buffer=64M
sort_buffer=64M
read_buffer=16M
write_buffer=16M
[myisamchk]
key_buffer=64M
sort_buffer=64M
read_buffer=16M
write_buffer=16M
[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout
max_heap_table_size = 64 M
tmp_table_size = 64 M
!includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/

I've gone back and forth over the years configuring [MySQL](http://dev.mysql.com/) for optimal performance, and while I know I'm not there, I now have a new baseline to build from. From a post called [Standard MYSQL my.cnf configuration](http://nakuls77.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/standard-mysql-mycnf-configuration/), you can see all the base information, but also things like:

 key_buffer=256M # 64M for 1GB, 128M for 2GB, 256 for 4GB

Which defines the value (256M) but then spells out ideal base values for you to start with if you have more RAM on your system. This is very helpful, I’m tried to go a step further by combining it with Debian’s default my.cnf that comes on 5.0 (lenny) for MySQL 5. As I’m always open for suggestions for improvements, please comment if you have a different view on these choices, thanks. Here it is:

Jpeg2000 from a scalable infrastructure

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:47:51 -0600

, so here I’ll cover my rationale and decisions I made to provide a scalable, stable infrastructure to provide the images as efficiently as possible.

When I started sketching out how I wanted to run djatoka, I knew I wanted it to provide security, caching for performance and scalability and fault tolerance. Our server runs Tomcat, which I didn’t want to be public facing. Because of this I proxy Tomcat requests through Apache with the use of ajp_proxy, the successor to the old mod_jk. Initially I was using nginx in place of Apache, but after reading about all the functionality and performance improvements ajp_proxy offered, it was a no brainier; this is how to present Tomcat in a production environment.

Mick Harvey quits the Bad Seeds

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:24:12 -0600

I'm still a big fan of The Birthday Party, and while I'd categorize them as punk, they were unlike any other punk band you've heard. Their raw/abrasive sound was like a jolt of electricity for me - they were bold, unique and driven. I've always explained their sound as being a mix of art school damaged compositions, layers of screeching guitars with Nick howling and caterwauling trying to keep up; truly a rock band unlike any other. After moving the band to Berlin and disbanding, Mick co-founded the Bad Seeds with Nick in late 1983. While early Bad Seeds felt like a continuation of The Birthday Party, it quickly evolved, moving from blues based rock, into a more layered, orchestrated, dramatic sound. Mick, along with the rest of the Bad Seeds, provided the baritone chorus backing Cave that became a staple of their sound. While the band has gone through many incarnations, Mick and Nick stuck with it, until this week. In his statement he explains, "_For a variety of personal and professional reasons I have chosen to discontinue my ongoing involvement with Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. After 25 years I feel I am leaving the band as it experiences one of its many peaks; in very healthy condition and with fantastic prospects for the future. I'm confident Nick will continue to be a creative force and that this is the right time to pass on my artistic and managerial role to what has become a tremendous group of people who can support him in his endeavors, both musically and organizationally_."

You can learn more about Mick’s other work as a producer, solo artist and collaborator, with folks such as PJ Harvey (unrelated), on his Wikipedia page. If you want to hear some of his work I’d recommend starting with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Murder Ballads” or “The Boatman’s Call” (which contains “Lime Tree Arbor”, phrases of which I used in my wedding program), or if you’re looking for something raw and different, dig into The Birthday Party’s “Junkyard”.

Day one, Obama calls for open government

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:53:11 -0600

UPDATE: the memo is already posted on the whitehouse.gov site for anyone to review! How refreshing!

During this, his first day in office, President Obama called for open government, and issued a memorandum which spells out to approach the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) “with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails.” This presumption of openness is in direct contrast with limits the Bush administration put in place, a fact driven home by the last line of the memo: Sec. 6. Revocation. Executive Order 13233 of November 1, 2001, is revoked.. Now we’re talking! More of the memo reads:

01-20-2009 - new day rising

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:34:10 -0600

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

Barack Obama, Washington DC, 20 January, 2009

01-20-2009 - the end

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:32:58 -0600

“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.”

George W. Bush, Washington DC, 12 May, 2008

So I did some checking to get a source for this, and as I expected, it’s slightly taken out of context (Bush was trying to infer that someone would be impressed with what he accomplished). The interview was done by Shmuel Rosner of Haaretz.com - you can see the full transcript here.

Best music of 2008

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:25:01 -0600

page. What selections below do you dig? What did I miss? Please, go on…

"Cardinalogy"

“Get Awkward”

“Furr”

“Red, Yellow & Blue”

“Living By Yourself”

“I’ll Be Lighting”

“Feed The Animals”

“Heritic Pride”

“The Healing Power of Injury”

“Distortion”

“The New Year”

“Trees Outside the Academy”

“Elephant Shell”

Obama to take a stand on detainee rights early

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:44:02 -0600

Late next month we’ll know where Obama stands on one of the most contentious actions of Bush; that the US can indefinitely detain anyone deemed a ’terrorist’ without charge. He’ll make his thoughts known in a brief due February 20th which will address the specific case of a student from Qatari, who has been held on our mainland since December 2001. “Just a month after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration — that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime. The new administration’s brief, which is due Feb. 20, has the potential to hearten or infuriate Mr. Obama’s supporters, many of whom are looking to him for stark disavowals of the Bush administration’s legal positions on the detention and interrogation of so-called enemy combatants held at Navy facilities on the American mainland or at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. During the campaign, Mr. Obama made broad statements criticizing the Bush administration’s assertions of executive power. But now he must address a specific case, that of Ali al-Marri, a Qatari student who was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in December 2001. The Bush administration says Mr. Marri is a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda, and it is holding him without charges at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. He is the only person currently held as an enemy combatant on the mainland, but the legal principles established in his case are likely to affect the roughly 250 prisoners at Guantánamo.” This seems pretty cut and dry to me, we have rights in this country and Bush ignored them; it’s time for Obama to make a clean break and stand up for what this country was founded on.

Varnish web accelerator - the right tool for the job?

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 13:29:27 -0600

Note: The following testing and writeup occurred in the Fall of 2007 following months of research and conjecture. I repost it now because it was not originally posted publicly, and because the results are still a driving factor in how I architect systems for web production. This week I am implementing Varnish to enhance an image server’s ability to scale and serve images online.

The Job

A client’s new ’enterprise’ content management system proves to be far too slow to serve the multiple dynamic web sites that it’s scheduled to handle, and a reverse proxy was recommended by the company that sells the CMS to remedy the issue.

Log user IP, not the proxy IP in nginx access log

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:55:27 -0600

So back in January I had a post about HOWTO: log the user’s IP, not the proxy’s, in Lighttpd access log, but today I switched that system to run nginx (actually nginx has been running since early this year, I just got lazy on running Varnish) fronted again by Varnish. I had the same issue, but not much trouble solving it. Since I often refer to my own notes on fak3r, I’m recording it here for myself, and anyone streaming in from Google. So, as I talked about before, when you run a webserver behind Varnish doing http acceleration, the webserver access logs will display the IP of the proxy (generally 127.0.0.1) instead of the end user’s IP. This not only breaks any kind of tracking or reporting you want to run against your webserver logs. Since this server runs Varnish in front of nginx, and it reveals the end user’s IP in the header as X-Forwarded-For, so it’s just a matter of making nginx use that variable in its access logs instead of the default variable defining the referring IP. Once we know that, the configuration is simple. Edit your nginx.conf file:

Daily Digest for 2008-12-16

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:59:59 -0600

        8:46am
    

    

        Posted a tweet on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/fak3r).

Open Semantic Collaboration Architecture Foundation http://www.oscaf.org/node/13

        9:38am
    

    

        Posted a tweet on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/fak3r).

@kopper ok, I just bit too, what does this give us that MyBlogLog doesn’t?

        9:38am
    

    

        Posted a tweet on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/fak3r).

@cminor9 but with that many buzzwords it must be good!

        9:53am
    

    

        Posted a tweet on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/fak3r).

Dries on his software Drupal, the semantic web and search - http://tinyurl.com/3ft4oa

Bush dodges shoes during surprise visit to Iraq

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:55:29 -0600

UPDATE: Iraq Shoe Tosser Guy: The Animated Gifs

In a surreal event, an Iraqi reporter hurled his shoes at President Bush in his surprise ‘farewell’ appearance in Iraq. Amazingly the reporter was able to throw both shoes - with nary a sign of resistance from those around him. The first pitch came in on the inside, and Bush (showing more speedy judgment than I expected) barely got out of the way. Apparently many in the audience were there to heckle, instead of praise Bush, and the reporter is being hailed as a hero to the people in the streets. I’m sure many will say it was a savage move, but hey, it’s not like the reporter started a fak3 war in his country that killed thousands of innocents!“Yesterday, in Baghdad, an Iraqi TV reporter threw two shoes at George W. Bush during a news conference the self-styled “war president” took part in alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; the shoe-thrower referred to his gesture as a

HOWTO: disable IPv6 networking in Debian

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:45:39 -0600

UPDATE 3 Ohai! now it's 2015 and Debian lists an [offical way to disable ipv6](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianIPv6#How_to_turn_off_IPv6) in `/etc/sysctl.conf`, just add:

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.eth0.disable_ipv6 = 1

Then reboot, or issue the command sysctl -p

So, while I’m (still) all for IPv6 becoming the new standard, until it does I’m going to turn if off on my servers if it’s not being used.

UPDATE 2 It’s 2014 now, and this is much easier. Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add:

Black Friday: deals cause total carnage

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:09:05 -0600

When I was younger I worked retail, and I remember dreading the holiday season; we’d be completely busy, and customers were never ruder. I’ve seen ads poking fun at rabid crowds trying to break down doors before stores open to get the latest deals around the holidays, and it’s always some comment about how the store’s prices left the customers chomping at the bit to save that 15%. Of course when parody becomes reality, it’s always ugly, and today had to be worst, aptly named, Black Friday ever. The reports of people getting violent in an effort to secure a cheap blue-ray dvd player, or flatscreen TV is enough to tell you things have gotten out of hand, but today there’s plenty of examples that show that this kind of frenzied shopping needs to end. I’ve compiled as many as I can stand just to point out that is a systemic problem, and our consumerism culture has once again gone too far.

Olbermann's commentary on Prop 8

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:44:45 -0600

[, who says all I’d like to, and more. While it’s small solace, we just have to remember that this kind of racism is dying off.

Install Ruby on Rails on Debian or Ubuntu Linux

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:07:59 -0600

[, first install the dependencies for good measure:

apt-get -y install ruby irb ri rdoc ruby1.8-dev build-essential

Then install rubygems and rails:

apt-get -y install rubygems rails

Yep, that was easy. Now create your first rails app to ensure things are working as they should be:

rails newrailsapp cd newrailsapp script/server

Then hit your server to see it live, hit it in your browser: http://120.0.0.1:3000. Or, if you’re like me, you’re running it on a remote server, have it bind WEBrick to the IP that you use to access it, so in my case I quit out of WEBrick, and restarted it with:

Equal Rights for All

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:25:44 -0600

[_" [New York Daily News, 8-18-08] Good luck with that buddy.

Wassup 2008

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:17:15 -0600

File under: it’s funny cause it’s true. I mean, tru, tru.

A rural county pining for a racist past

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:14:13 -0600

With all the polls it feels like there’s been a sea change in how America sees race, or maybe not. Maybe it’s W’s 22% approval rating skewing the numbers, because there are obvious still some serious misconceptions and racism playing big in the election. Interviews in the ‘bootheal’ region of Missouri (only a few hours South of me here in St. Louis, where Obama drew 100,000 people under the Arch last week) show that indifference, mixed with the old school racism and ignorance, is still alive and well. My favorite part is:

Army: Twitter could be a terrorist tool

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:39:03 -0600

Hmmm…so the Army has claimed that terrorists may be ’tweeting’ along to plan and organize attacks. Well yeah, I guess they could use Gmail, Slashdot comments and other things the same way, it seems their claim is that since this is more ‘real time’ it could be a danger. Ok, oh, and they take a swipe at Skype as well. Additionally they define a new name I would happily accept, “The report describes hacktivists as politically motivated hackers”. Hacktvist, that’s awesome. The report goes on with,

Distributing biodiversity data globally

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:00:25 -0600

, a project that has somewhat similar goals.

First, a great first introduction of what bittorrent is, and what it accomplishes:

“BitTorrent does not centrally manage resource allocation. Instead, each client attempts to maximise its download rate by controlling various protocol parameters. Clients make direct connections (using ports 6881-6889 by default) to one or more of the clients in the list, to exchange parts of the file. Direct connections between clients are duplex (bi-directional), and every client tries to maintain the greatest number of active connections. A client’s refusal to upload temporarily is known as choking. Connections are choked to prevent leeching a situation where another client is downloading, but not uploading.

How to become a hacker

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:26:22 -0600

There has long been a movement in the geek community to expunge the negative thoughts attached to the word hacker, the image to the right The Glider, being one of the latest and most visible. In the beginning there were hackers (people who worked on computers, programmed and made things work) and crackers (people who would use computers for nefarious purposes, crimes, viruses, etc), these were two distinct camps, with some miscreants jumping the fence back and forth to confuse the issue. Regardless, somewhere along the way popular culture (movies, news, your teachers probably) began to equate hacking as being the bad, crime ridden activity that cracker was supposed to cover. I think it’s a moot point now, as even my Dad was shocked when he learned my annual DefCon trip is billed as “largest hacking conference in the world”. I gave him the above explanation, but I’m unsure if he really believes it. Regardless, the original “How to become a hacker” paper written by Eric S Raymond is always cited as the quintessential word on the use of the word hacker. I found it mirrored online, and it’s a worthwhile read if you have any interest in the topic, or want to cement your own views of your hobby. For now, if you don’t want to read the entire verbiage, here’s the intro to learn and take with you.

Volunteering for change

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:27:28 -0600

This afternoon I volunteered at the local field office in South St. Louis for Barack Obama. When I got there there was a flurry of activity, and I could tell people were there because they wanted to be. As we waited for others to show up to get started, I saw a pile of boxes; they had just gotten in a huge shipment of yard signs, after being back ordered for weeks. I think I built at least 50 of those in the half hour I worked on them, but then Laura came around with our assignment, “Who wants to knock on doors?” I likely had a look of shock on my face, but still manged to say, “Great!”. After all, even though I hate people coming to my door, and wasn’t looking forward to being on the other side, what place did I have to complain? This is for something much bigger than that. Fortunately the paperwork was really well organized, with the map and route all planned out. I was paired up with another volunteer and we hit the road. The canvasing went really well, most were very polite, regardless if they Obama supports or not (most were). One thing about the neighborhood, it’s only about 15 minutes South of me, but there were absolutely no political signs anywhere, and it wasn’t the kind of neighborhood that wouldn’t allow them, so it was very strange. Most in my area are pretty outgoing about showing their affiliation and staying educated about the days events, I had the feeling things were different which made me all the more retisent to do a good job. We walked the streets for a few hours and got more comfortable with the idea of banging on people’s doors as time went along. I think the fact that our contry is in such a crossroads made it much eaiser for me to participate, and I’m really glad I got to do it. Now it’s time to regroup and map out more time to help out at headquarters. If anyone is hesitant about doing something like this, try it, I don’t think you’ll regret it. Leave a message for me if you have any questions, or search for your local field office and volunteer - we’re 40 days out - it’s time for action.

Send commandline email with attachments

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:36:55 -0600

[

Are you like me, do you have scripts running on servers and you need to know what they know? If there’s output in a file you can sed/grep/awk info out of them and have them emailed to you, but if you don’t know specifically what you’re looking for you may need the entire file/log/whatever. You’ll need a utility called uuencode, which is a utility that, “…writes an encoded version of the named input file, or standard input if no file is specified, to standard output. The output is encoded using the algorithm described in the STDOUT section and includes the file access permission bits (in chmod octal or symbolic notation) of the input file and the decode_pathname, for re-creation of the file on another system that conforms to this specification.” All this means of course is the standard computer method; garbage in, garbage out. Whatever you have uuencode encode, it will decode the same way, but while it’s in the middle state it can be sent via email as an attachment. It’s pretty easy, first you need uuencode, Debian/Ubuntu users can install it as part of the ‘sharutils’ group of Unix utilities with `apt-get install sharurtils’. Got it? Ok, so all you need to do is point it to a file, pipe the resulting stream to mailx, give it a subject and destination email and you’re done.

McCain's acceptance speech echos Bush's

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:20:36 -0600

This is glorious, The Daily Show obliterates McCain’s acceptance speech by interspersing clips of Dubya’s acceptance speech. It’s funny that much of it is the same - WORD FOR WORD! So I guess that’s the change they keep talking about. Damn McCain, you crazy Mavrick! (sic)

HOWTO: webserver in 100 lines of Bash

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:48:38 -0600

[ of it for. If anyone has details on who originally wrote this I’m all ears.[sourcecode language=‘xml’]#!/bin/bash

function debug { local severity="$1" shift local message="$@"

echo -n “date -u” 1>&2 echo -ne ‘\t’ 1>&2 echo -n “$severity” 1>&2 echo -ne ‘\t’ 1>&2 echo “$message” 1>&2 }

function fix_path { echo -n “$1” | head -n 1 | sed ’s|^[/.-]||’ | sed ’s|/.|/|g’ }

function serve_dir { local dir="fix_path "$1"" if [ “$dir” = "" ]; then dir="./" fi echo ‘HTTP/1.1 200 OK’ echo ‘Content-type: text/html;charset=UTF-8’ echo echo LISTING “$dir” echo ’
' ls -p “$dir” | sed -e ’s|^(.*)$|\1
|’ }

The ongoing hypocrisy of the Republicans

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:43:39 -0600

This shows what I hate about the conservative “right” - blatant hypocrisy. As usual, The Daily Show highlights these … let’s say shifts of opinions, with recent videos that show them playing both sides of the issue, depending on the subject. If it was a liberal issue, they’re all over it, if the EXACT issue comes up with them, it’s off limits and we’re the “angry left” for bringing it up! Just watch a few minutes here, you’ll see what I mean.

No downtime for online free speech

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:27:43 -0600

EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation

In a statement today, EFF reminds online service providers to stand firm against alleged terms of use violations that are used to bully and silience online critisims. We only need to look at EFF’s work with the MIT students at Defcon, and the fact that so many ISPs are now filterning previous unfettered access to Usenet newsgroups to know that these tactics are alive and used to push debate offline and away from the limelight. During this election season free speech must remain so as we debate and uncover facts about the people who are to lead America for the next 4 years. “As the country enters the most “wired” election season to date, EFF and the ACLU of Northern California strongly encourage online service providers (OSPs) and content owners to take special care to safeguard free speech. Copyright claims, trademark claims, and alleged terms of use violations can be misused to silence critics and stifle political dialogue online. Even temporary takedowns can harm open debate, as political speech depends on the spiritof the moment and the rapidly evolving arguments of the participants. The Internet can continue to revitalize our political lives – but only if service providers, content owners, and users all do their parts. No matter where you stand on the candidates or the issues, we should all agree on one principle: No downtime for online free speech!”_ _

Credo mobile: eat yr iphone

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:16:31 -0600

Since its introduction, my beef with the iPhone has been obvious; buying it ties you to AT&T, a company that violated the law, and the rights of its customers, by allowing and assisting with the illegal wiretapping and data-mining for the NSA. Keep in mind, there were other phone companies asked … but AT&T is the one that said yes. So if you want to put your money where your mouth is, be like me and consider Credo Mobile. Their recent promo postcard (seen to the right) has a permanent place on my refrigerator, so I’ll wait until they sell Android based phones, or support an Openmoko phone (drool) to get rid of my ancient (aka- 1 year old) cell phone. The copy on the flip side of the postcard tells it like it is; if you’re paying AT&T for anything, you’re contributing to the current administration.

Join the McCain G00gle b0mb - spread the truth

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:53:06 -0600

Moved by Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver? Yeah, me too. I wanted to find out how I could help highlight the differences in Obama’s vs McCain’s stances. Chris Bowers had some great points about finding factual McCain quotes and the easiest way to get these facts in front of voters is to raise their prominence in search engine results; this is my attempt to help. If you have a site and want to participate, read Chris’ comments here. So, lets get on with it:

Anthropomorphic cannibalism at Flickr

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:41:29 -0600

Someone has taken time collecting pictures of Anthropomorphic Cannibalism at Flickr, which is essentially ads for food, showing the subject of the food, eating itself. Really funny when you think about it, but it took this pool of pics to really make me see it.

[

Pretty cool, but anytime you look at ads too closely you’ll find disturbing things - I really long for a place without the constant distractions of ads thrown in your face, and no, me having ads on my site does not play into that…

HOWTO: conky config (conkyrc) for Debian Part 2

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:45:50 -0600

[. It looks good, it’s light, it’s all I need. Nice to bring some of the memory requirements down from Gnome as well.

Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus)

own_window true own_window_hints undecorated,below,skip_taskbar background no

Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone)

double_buffer true

fiddle with window

use_spacer right use_xft true

Update interval in seconds

update_interval 3.0

Minimum size of text area

minimum_size 10000 5

Super Mario Bros voted greatest computer game ever

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:42:30 -0600

[

Here’s some news that near and dear to my heart, Super Mario Bros has been voted the greatest computer game…evar! (in one poll at least) “The classic platform game was first released in 1985 and has since become one of the biggest selling ever with more than 40 million copies flying off the shelves worldwide. In the game brothers Mario and Luigi - now recognized the world over - try to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom in a bid to save Princess Peach. Super Mario Bros 2 was released in 1988, and Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990. The third version was considered by many as the best, and has sold 18 million to date. The poll of 2,000 gamers, conducted by www.onepoll.com, revealed ‘old skool’ games are still firm favorites with Britain’s army of gamers.” A few weeks ago I played Super Mario Bros. on the Wii, yeah, the original one from 1985, while the rest of the family watched. I was flying through worlds jumping at nothing when a coin would appear. My wife asked, “How do you remember that that invisiable spot became a coin?”, to which I couldn’t answer, it’s just that ingrained into my mind - the simple game means/meant that much! What I like about this, and the other 19 in the list, is that it shows what really matters to make a game immortal as it were; it has to be creative and fun. Damn to the graphics, the 5.1 sound, the online play, if the game isn’t fun, forget it. “This shows that classic games will live on forever in the hearts of computer game fans. The gaming industry is getting more and more competitive, releasing more and more innovative games by the minute - but this survey proves that sometimes the most simple formats work well to keep game players hooked."

Free Obama - Biden bumper sticker

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:17:41 -0600

UPDATE: check it - now MoveOn has, free buttons available too.

It’s old news now, but earlier today Obama chose Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate. What a great pick, I’ve always been a fan of Biden, especially his appearances on The Daily Show. He has generally voted with Obama, and along party lines but has been outspoken on many issues. He’s a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and national security issues which should help blunt Republican attacks on Obama’s lack of experience in these areas. You can get a Free Obama/Biden bumper sticker over at MoveOn. Man, November can’t come fast enough! Obama and Biden FTW in 08

Stream 'Everything That Happens Will Happen Today'

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:14:09 -0600

Stream the new David Byrne / Brian Eno disk, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today below, it’s their follow-up to the cult classic In The Bush Of Ghosts from 198-. Both are recommended listening.

[

US Citizen's laptops may be detained at border

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:32:50 -0600

written NOW!

Black Hat and Defcon: all the drama you've been craving

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:46:38 -0600

[

This is great, Defcon16 is a mere few days away, but already, the drama has started! Of course there’s the excitement about security guru/celebrity Dan Kaminsky discovering the DNS flaw a few months back that will be revealed this week (so that folks won’t be able to reverse-engineer them to exploit the vulnerability…ahead of time at least), but now there’s a reneg by Apple that’s sure to raise a few feathers, as well as highlight how they weren’t the most forthcoming with their DNS fix (which hasn’t hit yet even though all other vendors have released patches). In an interview, Kaminsky talks about the ‘bug’ he found in DNS, “We got lucky in this particular bug, because it’s a design flaw,” Kaminsky said in an interview. “It shows up in everyone’s network, but the fix is a design fix that doesn’t point directly at what we’re improving.” After peer review it was deemed this was indeed a huge deal, and even the original developer of BIND (the dns software in question) urged everyone to patch. “It took a couple of hours to find the bug,” said Kaminsky, “and a couple of months to fix it.” Kaminsky said he stumbled across the hole in the so-called DNS system for steering people to the websites they are seeking “by complete and total accident.” Smaller DNS flaws have been used before to “poison” the servers that send people to the numerical address of the website name they enter. […] “This is about the integrity of the Web, this is about the integrity of e-mail,” Kaminsky said. “It’s more, but I can’t talk about how much more.” So learning more about that exploit will be very interesting, and should lead to more people investigating and deploying DNSSEC, a DNS option built with security in mind from the ground up. So there’s that, but now there’s something even more fun because it deals with a companies lack of openness in regards to their security methods. A talk at Black Hat yesterday was scrubbed at the last minute by folks over in marketing at Apple. It seems that they blocked the scheduled presentation that was, “…to give an inside look at the ultra-secretive company’s security response team. “Marketing got wind of it, and nobody at Apple is ever allowed to speak publicly about anything without marketing approval,” a Black Hat organizer told IDG News.” This is unfortunate for Apple, who are reeling after a week of beatings in the ‘blogosphere’ over their handling, or non-handling, of their update for the DNS flaw we mentioned above! “Apple’s policy of saying next to nothing about how it goes about protecting its users from escalating threats is, to say the least, unfortunate. Just last week, the company said it had patched its software from a serious flaw in the net’s address lookup system. Three days after two separate researchers warned Mac clients are still vulnerable to the flaw, Apple hasn’t uttered a word, an omission that generates confusion and doubt in those who depend on the vendor. Apple’s tight-lipped policy.” Come on Apple, you preach about how you’re ‘Open Source’, but then continue along the path of the old school hide and seek ways. Hell, people are already pointing out how their methods are less open than Microsoft’s in releasing information about security. What are they so afraid of? Ah, but we’ll learn more come Thursday, I’ll be in Vegas for my third Defcon and can’t wait. Watch for updates here, or more timely ones over at our Twitter profile.

Total borrowing from the Federal Reserve

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:38:17 -0600

What’s wrong with this picture? Can you say debt? Good, how about recession? Notice the gray areas, those are recession periods, we’ll wait for ours to appear here. Who thought it could get this bad this quickly? Here’s the graph at the Federal Reserve for you to research. Enjoy

[

Google mp3blog search widget

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 10:54:23 -0600

Found this mashup of a script that searches +5000 mp3blogs for tunes. Just type something in and see what you can find. I still contend that MP3s are the best way to discover new music - and having something so open like this allows you to hear any band you can think of. Put quotes around multi-word entries to narrow things down. (ie- “The Smoking Popes”)

This was a gadget/script someone wrote so you get directed to his page, I want to look into making my own search like this, but have it be a stand-alone, down loadable script, maybe in PHP.

HOWTO: convert an AVI or to DVD (VOB) in Linux

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:48:47 -0600

[ and create a new file:

vi dvdauthor.xml

with the contents (NOTE: change all ( and )s to brackets, apparently neither the pre or code tag accepts brackets in them in wordpress - reminder to self, fix this):

(dvdauthor dest="DVD")
  (vmgm /)
   (titleset)
     (titles)
       (pgc)
         (vob file="movie.mpg" chapters="0,15:00,30:00,45:00,1:00:00"/)
       (/pgc)
      (/titles)
   (/titleset)

Now run dvdauthor referring to new XML file:

dvdauthor -x dvdauthor.xml

When it’s done you’ll have a new directory called DVD, with the contents VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Open your favorite DVD burning app (I recommend GnomeBaker) and place those two direcotries in the root of the DVD and burn. Notice that in the XML file we called out chapters as 0, 15, 30, 45, 1 hour - obviously these can be further tweaked to be ‘real’ chapters, or left out all together. I’m sure there’s a GUI DVD authoring app that helps you do this, if you figure it out post below and let me know. HTH!

Blublocker photography

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:04:15 -0600

Here’s a cool idea, shoot pictures through some old Blublocker sunglasses and you get Blublocker photography! While I’ve shot through different lenses before I never thought of aiming through sunglasses, but it makes sense, it’s just another filter. Judging by the shots he’s posted on flickr, it gives things an almost otherworldly Mars-like appearance. Cool effect, I’d like to see this done in a low light enviroment to see what really stands out.

Reasons to use a web proxy in a production environment

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:52:09 -0600

NOTE: at work I installed a web proxy to separate internal user traffic from external traffic hitting our prod__uction servers. While I’m not part of the network team, they asked me to do this because of my prior experience and interest in such things. The idea of this was to be a temporary fix until they get a new line installed providing greater bandwidth, but my argument is for the continuation of this segmentation even after the new line is installed. Below is a slightly sanitized version of my arguments for this. Note that my thoughts and comments are driven by years of running networks, thus it is something I care about and have spent years thinking about, so it is wordy. I’d be very happy to discuss this, or other solutions, via the comments below because I never want to stop learning.

TIDL: mock turtleneck shirts

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:51:29 -0600

paints them with the same brush as a polo neck shirt. So they clearly fail as a turtleneck, so what’s the point? They look lame, and I suspect most people who wear them are unaware of this fact, so please, pass it on; mock turtlenecks are on the list of things that I don’t like!

HOWTO: recursively download only specific file types

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:04:29 -0600

Have you ever found a batch of mp3s online on someone’s ‘Index of’ page? I know you have (and if not, do a search for ‘google hacks’ in google to learn about the fun) The issue always comes up that I find an album I want to grab, but the individual files are in a directory, so you have something like band_name-album_name/01-songone.mp3, and so on. To grab all of them I used to issue a wget command, with the -r (recursive) switch like this:

Commentary: AB sold to InBev

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:07:26 -0600

NOTE: _As a St. Louis native, I was asked to comment on the sale of local St. Louis brewer Anheuser-Busch to European beverage conglomerate InBev. The following are my comments from the thread. _ A couple of things here, AB has been a big STL employer for years sure, but just because they’re big doesn’t mean they’re good. Look at other big employers here; Boeing, AG Edwards and now AB - while they’re headquartered here, they’re not much more than bragging rights for St Louisans - just because they’re based here, they’re far from ’local’. They’re all multi-national corporations which means the money is a) not staying here and b) is fluid, ready to be munched up by the next corporation up the chain, which leaves the employees as a line item - so much for loyalty. So why should a local market worry about a corporation that doesn’t care about them?

HOWTO: fix fonts in Debian Lenny/Sid

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:39:02 -0600

UPDATE: also, before you try this, make sure you have some good fonts installed, after a fresh install of Lenny at work, I needed to run this first: apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer msttcorefonts

After a…slight slip up, I finally had the chance to install Linux from scratch on my laptop (Dell Vostro 1500) the way I’ve always wanted it with Debian GNU/Linux - Lenny and partitioned with LVM (Linux Volume Management). After that I set out to get the desktop fonts to look as good in Debian as they did (by default) in Ubuntu. After much scouring around online I found a pretty easy tweak that got me most of the way. As root:

Use a safer browser!

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:20:51 -0600

If anything, that should be the message to all Internet surfers out there. This graphic shows the danger, the percentage of users who have their browsers at their most secure, in regards to patches/updates being applied. Clearly people running IE aren’t going through the trouble of updating, while Firefox has updates built in that you can even automate. Another thing to keep in mind is plugins; Firefox has millions of those, and now it takes care of keeping those updated, and disabling ones that aren’t. So just from a software security point of view, Firefox is just a no-brainer. The report concludes with, “Although Web browser users wish perfect software that will never have any exploitable software vulnerabilities, the nearest they can realistically hope for is that any vulnerabilities are promptly fixed by the software vendors and instantly applied to their browser. Critical to this instantaneous patching process is the mechanism of auto-update. Our measurement confirmed that Web browsers which implement an internal autoupdate patching mechanism do much better in terms of faster update adoption rates than those without.”

iPhone activation nightmares

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:00:16 -0600

Wow, it sounds like this wasn’t thought through too well, apparently Apple requires you to activate your new iPhone at the store you buy it from. On a normal day this should work out alright, but not on today, with the rash of people snapping up the new model. “Problems with the iTunes server caused some enthusiasts who had waited in line for hours to walk out of the store unable to use their new iPhones, according to the disgruntled customers. “I’ve got two phones on me and neither of them work,” said Adolfo Peralta, a Brooklyn resident who lined up to purchase the iPhone 3G at 6:30 a.m. local time for the 8:00 a.m. SoHo store opening. “I have to go find a pay phone to make a phone call.” Ouch, so apparently the employees couldn’t activate the phones since they couldn’t connect to the iTunes server. “All of the systems are down,” Perillo said, adding that she had finished two crossword puzzles while waiting for her iPhone activation to be complete. She said employees were shutting down some computers at the store to try to fix some of the problems with the iTunes network the store was experiencing. Apple requires customers to activate the iPhone 3G in stores where they were purchased. This was not a requirement for the original iPhone, which was released a little more than a year ago.” Sounds like the most fun was had at Apple’s swank SoHo store where the backlog forced people to snake around the block. Damn, I think if I wanted a new iPhone I’d just wait until tomorrow…would be awesome to play Super Monkey Ball on too!

Stupid human tricks

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:30:22 -0600

[

While sitting at your desk, raise your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Source

The dangers of auto-replace!

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:33:09 -0600

A auto-replace fail example, where runner Tyson Gay’s accomplishments were introduced with the line “Gay eases into 100 final at Olympics” becomes the much more interesting headline, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympics”. Other times when runner Tyson Gay’s name is ’re-spelt’ to conform to the sensibilities of the more conservative set:

“It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”

10 Unconventional Diet Tips: lose 50 pounds in 3 months

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:18:01 -0600

[

“The following are 10 unconventional weight loss tips that worked for me. Between January 4, 2006 and March 31, 2006 I lost fifty pounds. These tips work well because almost every tip is focused around completing a small goal. In my opinion, to stay motivated and lose a significant amount of weight, you should complete many goals in a short period of time. The reason I call these tips unconventional is that I had not seen a majority of them before starting my diet.

Zoomii - a new kind of online bookstore

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:51:02 -0600

Half the fun of the Internet (capital ‘I’ please) is discovering new things, but it’s rare that you see something new that really changes your perception of things. For me that happened when I came across the online bookstore Zoomii.com, which sells books via Amazon; think of it as a new front-end to the Amazon book site. You really have to try it out to understand it, but in a nutshell you navigate the ‘store’ via a huge overview of all the ‘books’ with an interface that feels quite a bit like Google maps since you can click and ‘drag’ the background. You can use your mousewheel to ‘zoom’ in on particular sections, all the way down to a particular book, which you can then click on to get all the info you normally get on a Amazon page. This is a cool UI, I’d like it if they released some source or a framework for this.

HOWTO: burn an iso file from the command-line

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:34:34 -0600

Put this in the ‘post it here so I won’t forget it’ section, here I show how to use cdrecord to burn an ISO from the commandline. When I download an ISO I hate having to open the cdburning program and get everything configured to burn, I’d rather shoot off a one liner, that’s what this is all about.

cdrecord -v speed=24 dev=/media/cdrom filename.iso

And for extra credit, I now have a shell script called burnit.sh that just contains the following:

Gandhi's top 10 fundamentals for changing the world

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:12:49 -0600

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

_“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.” _

_“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.” _

Mahatma Gandhi needs no introduction. Everyone knows about the man and his incredible words of wisdom, here I print a list I found online once entitled 10 fundamentals for changing the world, with accompanying quotes from him on the topics. Read through them and think about how they could be used to improve current situations; from your own, to our countries’, to the world. We can do better and treat others better for the benefit of all, here are some ways.

American Family Ass. boycotting McDonald

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:52:42 -0600

Right-wing American Family Association (AFA) are boycotting McDonalds of their ‘gay agenda’. They’re pissed because McD’s Vice President of Communications Richard Ellis’s is serving on the Board of Directors of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). Sounds like the end of the world to me, lets get their word on the matter:

What the boycott of McDonald’s IS about? It is about McDonald’s, as a corporation, refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars. McDonald’s has chosen not to remain neutral but to give the full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage.

HOWTO: conky config (conkyrc) for Debian

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:44:09 -0600

If you run a Linux desktop you need to be using conky. It compiles all those shiny gadget you see on other desktops eating system RAM, down to what you need; information on what your system is doing. So try it out, install conky, and then drop this into your home directory as .conkyrc - then run conky. The file is pretty self explanatory, enjoy!

# Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus)
own_window yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,skip_taskbar
background no
# Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone)
double_buffer yes
# fiddle with window
use_spacer yes
use_xft yes
# Update interval in seconds
update_interval 3.0
# Minimum size of text area
minimum_size 400 5
# Draw shades?
draw_shades yes
# Text stuff
draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes
draw_borders no
uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase
# Stippled borders?
stippled_borders 8

# border margins
border_margin 4
# border width
border_width 1
# Default colors and also border colors, grey90 == #e5e5e5
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
own_window_colour brown
own_window_transparent yes
# Text alignment, other possible values are commented
alignment top_left
#alignment top_right
#alignment bottom_left
#alignment bottom_right
# Gap between borders of screen and text
gap_x 10
gap_y 10
# stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen
override_utf8_locale no
xftfont Terminus:size=8
xftalpha 0.8
TEXT
${offset 0}${color slate grey}${time %a, } ${color }${time %e %B %G}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}${time %Z,    }${color }${time %H:%M:%S}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}UpTime: ${color }$uptime
${offset 0}${color slate grey}Kern:${color }$kernel
${offset 0}${color slate grey}CPU:${color } $cpu% ${acpitemp}C
${offset 0}${cpugraph 20,130 000000 ffffff}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}Load: ${color }$loadavg
${offset 0}${color slate grey}Processes: ${color }$processes
${offset 0}${color slate grey}Running:   ${color }$running_processes
${offset 0}${color slate grey}Highest CPU:
${offset 0}${color #ddaa00} ${top name 1}${top_mem cpu 1}
${offset 0}${color lightgrey} ${top name 2}${top cpu 2}
${offset 0}${color lightgrey} ${top name 3}${top cpu 3}
${offset 0}${color lightgrey} ${top name 4}${top cpu 4}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}Highest MEM:
${offset 0}${color #ddaa00} ${top_mem name 1}${top_mem mem 1}
${offset 0}${color lightgrey} ${top_mem name 2}${top_mem mem 2}
${offset 0}${color lightgrey} ${top_mem name 3}${top_mem mem 3}
${offset 0}${color lightgrey} ${top_mem name 4}${top_mem mem 4}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}MEM:  ${color } $memperc% $mem/$memmax
${offset 0}${membar 3,100}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}SWAP: ${color }$swapperc% $swap/$swapmax
${offset 0}${swapbar 3,100}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}ROOT:    ${color }${fs_free /}/${fs_size /}
${offset 0}${fs_bar 3,100 /}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}HOME:  ${color }${fs_free /home}/${fs_size /home}
${offset 0}${fs_bar 3,100 /home}
${offset 0}${color slate grey}NET:
${offset 0}${color}Up: ${color }${upspeed eth0} k/s
${offset 0}${upspeedgraph eth0 20,130 000000 ffffff}
${offset 0}${color}Down: ${color }${downspeed eth0}k/s${color}
${offset 0}${downspeedgraph eth0 20,130 000000 ffffff}

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) options

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:27:33 -0600

Does anyone have any CDN experience they’d like to share? At my gig we need to move about 80-100GB of files to another provider, because we’re serving up ~8.5GB/day, and it’s killing our internal bandwidth. (yes, we’re going to segment this soon) We’ve considered things as basic as GoDaddy, but at 6.99$/month that has to just be file hosting, not a CDN right? A package for that amount of data at Cachefly looks like it’d be around 99$/month. Other things like Amazon’s S3 are being priced out, but what about Akami, Level3, etc. Any advice, guidance appreciated, we’ll likely go with the easiest way for now, but come next year we’ll need a real strategy for a global content system, be it a CDN or a distributed filesystem spread across clusters. (aw yeah, that’s the stuff…)

Moore, Internet Archive, PLoS, Flickr in San Fran

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:56:43 -0600

I’ve gotten my pictures online from my San Francisco trip. The city was everything I always hoped it would be, and I really loved it there. I had the opportunity to meet with diverse people that all intersect with various aspects of my job (now being refered to as my career). From The Moore Foundation (the most amazing workspace I’ve ever seen) that provide us grant money to do our research to other non-profits partners like Internet Archive, The Smithsonian, Califonia Academy of Science, Public Library of Science to some of the folks that run the servers and dream up new ideas at Flickr (they use MySQL shards, Squid and memcached all over the architecture to navigate all that data - so I’m on the right path!) The best part was meeting more people like me who are learning how to deal with and distribute all of this life data that just increases daily, the fact that I’m using my skills that I learnt by doing things like…running this blog, to do things on such a global level is an honor. And fun, lots of fun!

Blitzen Trapper Furr

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:30:35 -0600

Over the past few days I’ve become quite the fan of Blitzen Trapper from Portland, Oregon. A single on Subpop’s 20 year anniversary CD (which I got in a goodie bag on Record Store DayBTW) led me to this track, which turns out to be NOT indicative of their style. I’m giving their recent release a run now, and it reminds me at times of another Portland band, Menonema which is good. This track is more acoustic, but I love the Elliot Smith sounding vocals and the dreamy, story like lyrics - it’s a winner.

Developers' operating system of choice

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:39:32 -0600

[ and only 3 running Windows XP! Again, it was a certain subset of folks, so I know that ratio won’t hold up most places, even this year’s DefCon in Las Vegas, but at that meeting things just clicked. I even talked to some of the Devs running Linux and we have the same feelings about OSX, it’s great, but it’s just not as open or free as Linux is; at some point someone is making the call on how you’re going to use the software and, for us, it just ‘didn’t fit’ right. Anyway, seeing that many like minded folks was very cool, I’ve not worked with people like that in the past, so to have this opportunity is a dream.

John McSame: McCain = 4 more years of the same

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:17:04 -0600

Say what you want about Barack Obama’s ‘change’ message, just know if you go with J.o.hn M.c.Cain you’re saying yes to four more years of Bush style politics. While he’s still hawking that ‘maverick’ tag, don’t believe the hype, instead, let’s look at some statements by the senator. Recently M.c.Cain perked my interest when he came out _in favor _of FISA, warrantless wiretapping/eavesdropping and executive power. Funny thing is, he had the exact opposite opinion on these topics when he was asked in December 2007!

The importance of understanding net netrality

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:24:37 -0600

To understand how importance net neutrality is you need to watch the following video. Think about the freedom that the Internet allows you, now think about how you are limited to certain ‘packages’ when you pay for cable or satellite access to watch TV. This is exactly how the corporate behemoths want to make your choices for the Internet. It makes sense, they’re not stupid, they see the opportunity to make money, and making your freedom into the proverbial carrot and stick makes perfect sense…for them.

HOWTO: automatically reconfigure Xorg in Debian

Tue, 27 May 2008 09:38:58 -0600

If you’re like me, you’ve messed up your xorg.conf before and wanted to start over with the default that you know dpkg-reconfigure can set it to. Because of this I’m posting here because I’ve needed it multiple times in the past and have tired of looking it up! To automatically reconfigure Xorg in Debian or Ubuntu issue the following:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Then logout/login or restart X via contrl-alt-backspace. As one who tweaks things a bit more than he should, this has saved me a few times now. Props go to a poster on this page.

bloxtr.com - the network is the computer

Fri, 23 May 2008 10:49:02 -0600

Haven’t we seen this before?

clipped from www.mumbaimirror.com

bloxtr.com

Tired of lugging that heavy laptop around? Today’s Web site lets you take your computing online, and access it from anywhere. Bloxtr is completely free, and offers a familiar Windows-like interface; complete with an office suite, games, and accessories.

clipped from objsam.wordpress.com

Don’t have a laptop? Try the virtual computer!

K. Ansar and P.P. Ismail, final year computer science students at an engineering college in Kerala India, have set up www.bloxtr.com, the prototype of a virtual computer in which you can store all your important documents, favorite music, colorful pictures and even videos.

Morrissey turns 49

Thu, 22 May 2008 08:54:58 -0600

Meanwhile he’s said to be at work on his latest album, set to be released this Fall.

California to allow same sex marriage

Fri, 16 May 2008 13:11:12 -0600

, making it only the second state to allow/acknowledge same sex marriage. Here’s hoping this will be the trend, or at least a precident, for the future. Which will be the next state to grant the basic right of marriage to everyone? Human rights, what a concept! The court’s comment is very powerful, “Our state now recognises that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person, and responsibly to care for and raise children, does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and more generally that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.”

Radiohead was freaking fantastic

Thu, 15 May 2008 15:15:41 -0600

. Now to find a soundboard or matrix sourced recording somewhere and we’ll be all set. Full set list after the jump.

Radiohead Verizon Wireless Amphitheater St. Louis, MO May 14 2008

All I Need
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Airbag
15 Step
Nude
Kid A
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
The Gloaming
You And Whose Army?
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Everything In Its Right Place
Reckoner
Optimistic
Bangers and Mash
Bodysnatchers

Encore One: 18. Exit Music (For A Film) 19. Myxomatosis 20. My Iron Lung 21. There There 22. Fake Plastic Trees

Chat on Skype via Pidgin on Linux (or Adium on Mac)

Wed, 14 May 2008 09:33:37 -0600

, which uses libpurple, which is the backend for Pidgin, on Mac. So now I’m using Skype again, which is a propreitary app, thanks to them providing an API for the Open Source community to latch on to. Ah, the circle of life…

HOWTO: Configure nginx for Debian / Ubuntu

Mon, 05 May 2008 12:20:19 -0600

**UPDATE: **I'm reworking my config blending in the security ideas found on [camomel.org](https://calomel.org/nginx.html) they're really thought things through on this, this should make for a very secure environment.

I'm always trying new software, and with the webserver I've moved from Apache 1.3 to 2.0 to 2.2, and then later I moved everything over to Lighttpd, which I've liked, save for some memory issues that popped up. Now, enter a web server named [nginx](http://nginx.net/) (engine x), written by a Russian hacker. It's already proved it's meddle by running some of the largest Russian sites for years now. It has the [speed of Lighttpd](http://superjared.com/entry/benching-lighttpd-vs-nginx-static-files/), but with none of that memory weirdness, plus it uses a fraction of the CPU, so scaling should be smooth for highly visited sites. It also does cool things like load balancing, reverse proxy, IMAP and POP proxy, etc, so I can see it being used in a variety of ways on a network. It took me some time to understand [how to configure it](http://wiki.codemongers.com/Main), which was a case of me just making it harder than it really is, so I wanted to post it here. Look for updates as we go along, but this is currently backing a Production site I manage.

user					www-data www-data;
worker_processes  			5;
pid 					/var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include				/etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type			application/octet-stream;
log_format main 		'$remote_addr $host $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" '
'"$request_time" "$gzip_ratio"';
access_log			/var/log/nginx/access.log  main;
error_log			/var/log/nginx/error.log;
sendfile 			on;
tcp_nopush        		on;
tcp_nodelay      		off;
keepalive_timeout		65;
gzip				on;
gzip_http_version		1.1;
gzip_vary			on;
gzip_comp_level 		6;
gzip_buffers			16 8k;
#gzip_proxied			expired no-cache no-store private auth;
gzip_proxied 			any;
gzip_min_length			1000;
gzip_types			text/plain text/html text/css application/json application/x-javascript
text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
server {
listen			80;
client_max_body_size	50M;
server_name 		server.domain.com;
root 			/var/www;
index  			index.html index.php;
access_log  		/var/log/nginx/access.log  main;
error_page   		500 502 503 504  /500.html;
location = /500.html {
root		/var/www;
}
location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif)$ {
root		/var/www;
expires         30d;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
}
}
}

4 reasons why Macs are moving into the enterprise

Mon, 05 May 2008 08:38:18 -0600

on my production server. What kind of support do I need from IT? Gimme an IP and a gateway IP and I’m all set. So, in conclusion, I believe four reasons for Apple’s success with people using more Macs at work is due to the following reasons:

x86 processor which allows the bridge to those who still think they need Windows.
Microsoft’s epic fail with Vista has frustrated users to no end, witness the stay of execution XP has recieved from Dell.

Nomina meeting in Woods Hole

Fri, 02 May 2008 15:07:04 -0600

Last week I traveled to Woods Hole, MA to attend Nomina 2. Woods Hole is the home of the Marine Biology Lab, and it’s where Encylopedia of Life is based. EoL played the host, and did a wonderful job at making us confortable in a very quaint, peaceful town. The meeting was organized by TDWG - an international group that proposes biodiversity information standards and protocols for sharing biodiversity data. Basically they’re a taxonomic group that have and collect data on zoology, biology, botany, viruses, insects, (don’t know what *logy those last two fall in) etc, in order to be able to provide that data to the world in a way that can be shared between different groups. So standards that disparate groups can abide by for now into the future to permanently organize their collections. This was the second meeting of Nomina, (Nomina means “Sacred names” in Latin) with the goal of coming up with a way that 1) unique names can be assigned to specims in biodiversity so that they can be used to share data across disciplines, and 2) a global index of all of this data can be generated so individual nodes can search across all of it and know where to find the details. So the cool thing is I get to work with all of these people from around the world (during this conference we had people from the US, England, Ireland, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Russia, India, New Zealand), so that it’s not only a true Open Source, community effort, but it’s focused to provide a certain goal, that a ton of people are either behind, or will be once this large of a group builds/adopts it. You can see my photos from the trip on Flickr, and some in session meeting shots on the Encylopedia of Life’s blog. TDWG’s next meeting is in October in Perth, Australia, and they’ve told me they want me there for that. This is getting fun.

First ever Record Store Day rocked!

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:57:25 -0600

[ while The Bottle Rockets get set up on the stage behind her. Notice the vinyl, and the resurgence of turntables in the background!

Off we go...

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:53:45 -0600

Image via Wikipedia

Heading out today for Woods Hole, MA - it’s supposed to be beautiful (expect pictures on my grossly underused flickr account). I’m representing the Biodiversity Heritage Library in a meeting with the Encyclopedia of Life folks as we discuss standardizing data streams for upcoming sharing of data. It may not sound like it, but this is fun. While I’m on more of the technical end of the spectrum, the way these things will be shared/directed/pushed along the wire is where I’ll come in and I’m very interested in their efforts and methods, so I expect to learn a ton. For more info on EOL and what they’re working towards, check the links to some articles below. (that Zemanta feature is pretty slick)

Back up

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:13:43 -0600

[ and start building an open network to blanket the neighborhood.

Early Morning, April 4

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:18:52 -0600

[Source]

Record Store Day - April 19, 2008

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:00:11 -0600

“On Saturday, April 19, 2008, hundreds of independently owned music stores across the country will celebrate Record Store Day. On this day, all of these stores will simultaneously link and act as one with the purpose of celebrating the culture and unique place that they occupy both in their local communities and nationally.” There you go, April 19th I expect all of you to visit an independent music store in your area and buy some music; records, cds, 45s, posters, tshirts - hell, consider getting a new turntable, the kind with the USB plugs so you can rip that new vinyl! I’ll be swinging by my neighborhood store, Euclid Records for sure on that day (and likely before…) - the thought of not having that as an option terrifies me.

White trash charms Japan

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:40:12 -0600

This has to be my favorite ’lost in translation’ picture ever. If that’s not a band name or a website I don’t know what is. [Source link]

Open Source is good for you

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:47:17 -0600

, enterprises increasingly deploy open-source software, and look to specialized application development on top of it, to drive business value:_

The rise of open-source software in application development puts developers with a specialization in those technologies in a position to ask for a 30 (percent) or 40 percent pay increase, Kirven says. “We’ve gotten more requests from our permanent-placement division for open-source developers in the last six months than in the last five or six years combined,” he says. “It’s not as easy as getting free software; someone has to get it up and running. LAMP is everywhere now–these types of technologies no one heard of 18 months ago are all the sudden becoming a hot commodity.”

Refused live album forthcoming

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:25:00 -0600

Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent, for primer; this is an important band, even 10 years after their demise.

New Noise

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72vEVSt6lpo]

Life Support Addiction

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MFIe2DuYhM]

Arthur C. Clarke has died

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:20:46 -0600

Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri-Lanka, at age 90. Now I’m by no means a big reader, I’d love to be, but I really never have the time. Still, from where I’m typing this I can count 25 books authored by Mr. Clarke on my bookshelf. His stories are an amazing blend of science fiction with facts or actual theory behind it. I was always a big fan of, 2001: A Space Odyssey, a flick my Mom first took me to when I was 8. The eerie (and accurate since there there is no atmosphere in space for it to travel through) lack of sound gave the movie its own unique character. Seeing the huge ship move through space without the usual roar of the engines sets it apart from the other films bogus atmosphere, and this sense of detail was pervasive throughout his writting. If pressed to pick a favorite, it would have to be Childhood’s End (with Randevous with Rama a close second). Each deal with the idea that while we’re the dominate force on this planet now, we weren’t in the past, and ultimately we won’t be in the future. We can only hope for more people as forward thinking. The New York Times has a fantastic writeup on his life, and accomplishments. “_…The author of almost 100 books, Mr. Clarke was an ardent _ was based on an earlier short story called The Sentinel, time will tell if Mr. Clarke served as a sentinel for us all as our species eventually finds it’s place in the universe.

Hawaii Chair

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:20:08 -0600

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Props to Cofano for pointing this out and making Infomercial Hell a new favorite site of mine.

Make old Firefox extensions install in 3.0 betas

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:14:06 -0600

If you’re like me you’re already running one of the Firefox 3 betas and loving the new features and stability lacking in the earlier series. The only issue now is that it’s taking extension writers time to update their extension to be compatible with the new Betas. Some of these extensions can almost hold me back to the 2.x series since they’re so useful, but 3 is just so much better in many ways. So, to install an old (2.x) extension into a new (3.x) Firefox just takes a little tweak to the install file. By default the extensions are hardcoded to something like 2.0.12 or the like, and generally nothing else needs to change to make it work with the 3.x series. (please re-read the generally part…done? ok). To do this, just right click on the extension (I’ll use the Gspace one for this example) and choose ‘Save as…’ Once you have it, open up the commandline (or force WinZip to open it, unsure of how to do that) with unzip (the extensions end with .xpi, but are really a kind zipfile):

The biggest pool in the world

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:18:59 -0600

Ok, it covers 20 acres (eight hectares), is more than 1,000 yards long, is 115 feet deep at the deep end and holds 66 million gallons of water, so it’s no surprise that this pool in Chile has been named the biggest in the world by the Guinness Book of Records. The previous champ is in Morocco, but it’s a mere 150 yards long and 100 yards wide. For reference, an Olympicsize pool measures 50 yards by 25 yards. I don’t know what to say besides, how much are tickets to Chile?

Determine optimal fastcgi settings for Lighttpd

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:50:58 -0600

, I’ve settled on the this for my fastcgi config block within my lighttpd.conf file.

## Start an FastCGI server for php5 (needs the php5-cgi package)
fastcgi.server    = ( ".php" =>;
    ((
        "bin-path" =>; "/usr/bin/php5-cgi",
        "socket" =>; "/tmp/php.socket",
        "max-procs" =>; 1,
        "idle-timeout" =>; 20,
        "bin-environment" =>; (
            "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" =>; "2",
            "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" =>; "10000"
        ),
        "bin-copy-environment" =>; (
            "PATH", "SHELL", "USER"
        ),
        "broken-scriptfilename" =>; "enable"
    ))
)

Once I have this in place and running well for a few days I’ll shift over to MySQL and show how I have configured and optimized that for performance.

Man stabs brother-in-law over political argument

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:53:11 -0600

! “…Jose Antonio Ortiz, a Clinton supporter, allegedly stabbed his brother-in-law Sean Shurelds in the stomach after they argued over the race for nomination. Shurelds, 41, an Obama supporter, told Ortiz his candidate was “trashing” Clinton, in reference to a string of recent victories by the Illinois senator in preliminary voting in various states. According to the police report, Ortiz replied that “Obama was not a realist” before the argument, in the kitchen of a Pennsylvania home, turned physical. After some mutual choking and punching, the 28-year-old allegedly stabbed Shurelds in the stomach. He has been charged with aggravated assault, among other charges, while Shurelds was flown to a nearby hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition.” Uggg…so I assume Jose will be voting by ‘absentee’ ballot this year.

An educated guess: new Black Crowes album blowes

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:43:29 -0600

Olbermann: Bush's nexus of politics and terror

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:48:11 -0600

Watching the “coincidences” between political decisions and terror alerts since 2001 (we’re currently at Bert!) has been a favorite spectator sport of mine, but of course it takes Keith Olbermann to fully chronicle the ongoing Bush legacy. Called “The Nexus of Politics and Terror” it provides “…the Bush administration’s exploitation of terror threats for political gain. Olbermann’s exhaustive account weaves from each revelation of an intelligence failure or a Democratic political victory to an almost immediate orange alert or “new threat” from al Qaeda. The clip is 17 minutes long and entirely worth it, and its conclusion — “what we were told about terror, and not told, for security reasons, has overlapped considerably with what we were told about terror, and not told, for political reasons” — is a telling summary of our past six years. It will be interesting to see how history judges these events.

Sound after hibernate in Linux (Gusty/Lenny)

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:51:31 -0600

that creates a new task for Linux to do before it shuts down and before it starts up.: “Create the file /etc/pm/sleep.d/49sound…

mkdir /etc/pm
vi /etc/pm/sleep.d49sound

with the following contents:

function kill_sound_apps() {
pidsnd=$(lsof | grep /dev/snd | awk '{ print $2 }')
pidmixer=$(lsof | grep /dev/mixer | awk '{ print $2 }')
piddsp=$(lsof | grep /dev/dsp | awk '{ print $2 }')
kill $pidsnd $pidmixer $piddsp
}

case "$1" in
hibernate|suspend)
kill_sound_apps
modprobe -r snd_hda_intel
;;
thaw|resume)
modprobe snd_hda_intel
;;
*)
;;
esac

exit $?

Then just make it executable:

(Paranoid) Android demo

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:05:02 -0600

Here’s a working demo of Google’s Android operating system in action. It’s got some pretty fly features, with a few bits that remind me a bit too much of the iPhone, but hey. Now if they put it on a decent phone (OpenMoko anyone?) with a data plan that doesn’t require the use of AT&T, we’ll talk…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg]

HOWTO: Speedup Firefox in 5 easy steps

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:39:29 -0600

so here’s what you need to do to fix that.

Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to 8 (recommended by Firefox devs)
Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. With it set to zero the page just pops up, it’s a dramatic change.

An historic auction of millions of records, cds, etc

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:41:34 -0600

[ all the more. In the end, what I like about this auction is the seller’s mindset that the music belongs to everyone, and is not just some commodity. “Mawhinney says he’d like the collection to be available to the public, which is a proviso of the sale. “I want the history of American popular music to be available for future generations,” he told The Toronto Star. The buyer is required to either donate the collection or create a public space for people to access it.” It sounds perfect for the Library of Congress, but apparently they didn’t have the funds.

Use monit to keep Lighttpd, Varnish running

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:51:00 -0600

[, the little monitoring app we use at work to keep things sane. I was getting around to installing it at home, but it became more urgent when Varnish went down last week; without it running there’s nothing to handle requests on :80, so as a webserver it’s dead. So here’s my monitrc for the webserver Lighttpd fronted by Varnish, acting in the reverse proxy/http accel role. Varn is listening on 80, then, if things aren’t cached, it forwards things on to Lighttpd listening on 82. Lighty also listens on the standard 443 for HTTPS requests, so we check that as well.

Amy Winehouse had to cover up pin-up girl tattoo

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:26:30 -0600

This is just silly, so apparently during her Grammy performace, Amy Winehouse was told to cover up exposed breasts…on one of her tattoos! The reason given was that, “Grammy bosses were scared she’d offend US audiences” with her pin-up girl tattoo on her left upper arm. Really, that Pla-lee-zz.

Latest e-mail scam: death threats

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:51:40 -0600

with the recipient being the intended target, but the killer will renege on the killing if the person will cough up some cash. It said, in part, “Am very sorry for you my friend, is a pity that this is how your life is going to end as soon as you don’t comply. … I don’t have any business with you, my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL/ASSASINATE you and I have to do it as I have already been paid for that. […] Get back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your life, If you are not ready for my help, then I will carry on with my job straight-up.” The FBI reports that it started seeing these emails about 6-8 months ago, and they’ve traced at least one to Eastern Europe. It looks like they’re even starting to resort to some standard phishing tactics to get more personal information out of people, “…some bold thieves have even used the e-mails on FBI letterhead, or claim to be from the Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration or Better Business Bureau. Typically, they say some kind of complaint was filed and ask the recipient to make a phone call, click a hyperlink or open an attachment — tricks designed to steal personal information.” So just remember, if any of this were true they would not be contacting you via email.

Thanks for your anticipated action

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:28:10 -0600

From Alfonzo Merrill bbpesq@aol.com Date Feb 12, 2008 7:18 PM Subject employment Dear

International company Web Electronic Industry is taking the candidates in the USA for the position of Local Agent. We are looking for the trustworthy person with excellent organizational and communicative skills. Good knowledge of computer and business relations practice will be your advantage. This is a part-time job which can be combined with any permanent or another part-time job. Average workload is up to 8 hours a week. No special experience is necessary. Excellent compensation package, the salary starts from $20,000 a year. If you got interested in our vacancy and you have any questions, please contact us !

Amy Winehouse to perform at Grammys via satellite

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:27:02 -0600

. Good for her.

While I can’t think of a time I looked forward to the Grammys, this year is the exception. After getting approval from the rehab center she’s currently staying in, she was still denied a visa to travel to the US to attend the Grammys, but Amy Winehouse will perform via satellite for the show. She has the most nominations shy of Kanye West, and with good reason, her cd Back To Black is a stunner. Between her strong, soulful voice, her songwriting and arrangements, this is amazing music that I can heartily recommend to everyone. It’s great to hear she’s doing better, and I look forward to seeing her belt it out as only she can. “_I’m raring to go and really excited to be performing at my first Grammy Awards,” says Amy, “I’d like to thank everyone for their support over the last couple of weeks. I’m really sorry I can’t be there but I appreciate that I’m being given a second chance via satellite” Winehouse said in a statement to Access Hollywood. _ […] She is nominated for six Grammys, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Female Performance for “Rehab,” Album of the Year, Best New Artist, and Best Pop Vocal Album for “Back to Black”.

Super Tuesday results

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:51:18 -0600

Robert De Niro on Obama's inexperience

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:26:57 -0600

http://www.fak3r.com Today one of the greats gave Obama the nod at a rally in New Jersey. He surprised people by seeming attacking the Senator though, “Barack Obama does not have the experience to be president of the United States. He wasn’t experienced enough to authorize the invasion of Iraq. And that’s not all, it’s clear Barack Obama does not have the experience to let the special interests run the government. That’s the kind of inexperience I can get used to. I’ve never made a speech like this at a political event before, so, what am I doing here? Finally, one person has inspired me”

Arrested Development movie in the works?

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:08:20 -0600

Wow, amazing news of late for people like me that are still laughing so hard it hurts while rewatching the Arrested Development DVDs, a movie deal is brewing. From a recent interview with Bluth family spokesperson…er, I mean Jason Bateman “I can confirm that a round of sniffing has started,” Bateman says. “Any talk is targeting a poststrike situation, of course. I think, as always, that it’s a question of whether the people with the money are willing to give our leader, Mitch Hurwitz, what he deserves for his participation. And I can speak for the cast when I say our fingers are crossed.” Meanwhile, Jeffrey Tambor echo’d comments on a recent XM Radio appearance, “_I think we’re going to make a movie. I talked to [Arrested Development’s executive producer] Ron Howard and he hinted that there’s a push to get the movie made.” And not only did Jeffrey say he would jump at the chance to sign on, he also revealed one more member of his faux-family that was definitely in!” Producers and the execs behind it have ideas in mind for the flick as well, “_While there isn’t a script in place, Hurwitz reportedly has a strong idea of what he wants the movie to be. Even better, Universal seems to be interested in what he may have in mind.” That sounds like even more postitive news to me, since often ’the buck stops here’ mentality will nix a good idea. Who knows, maybe we have another Futurama style comeback, if they could make 3 AR movies, and spin them off as ‘Season 4’ that’d be a co. It seems to have that feeling about it. “If the Arrested Development movie actually goes forward, it will be vindication not only for the cast of a beloved show that ended before its time, but for the devoted legion of fans who watched the show when it was on Fox, continue to obsessively watch the DVDs and make bizarre Arrested Development jokes to confused family members, co-workers and strangers. Not that I would know anything about that. Or chicken dances. Ca-Caw, Ca-Caw!”

Obama challenges Clinton to breakdancing duel

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:34:11 -0600

Ok, now to lighten the mood a bit after my prior post, apparently Obama has challenged Hillary to a breakdancing showdown, who saw this coming? With Clinton could result in splintering the Democratic party. Apparently Barack is, “…planning to “turn the tables and take it old school. Bring your cardboard, woman, and that busted hair, because we are going to settle this with a break-off,” Obama told the crowd at a press conference in Reno. “Two dancers enter, one leaves.” […] “I’m way blacker than Obama,” an exasperated Clinton said.” There’s already bold predictions from each camps’ inner circle, “It’s a fascinating strategy, but I think B-Boy Barack is grossly underestimating the moves of Hillary,” noted political consultant James Carvel. “She has been known to pop and lock with the best of them, and nobody does a suicide better than H’dub.” This should make the one on one debates far more entertaining…too bad Kucinich isn’t still in the race, I suspect he has some awesome moves.

It's time to lose the faith talk in politics

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:47:13 -0600

, you know they’re deliberately targeting those people, and those people only. The fact that so many have been called out to ‘prove’ their conviction is the true one, and in line with the vote heavy evangelicals, is a sad commentary on how people vote.

Now politicians trying to relate to their audience is the oldest and most used tactic in history. Everyone is the ‘Washington outsider’ without lobbyist ties, that are going to get the job done for Barry Bluecollar; anytime you see them don a construction helmet and protective goggles at a plant is a great example (makes me think of Ducacus in that tank…), but the fact that they are forced to spell out their religious stances always leads to the same thing; they have the same ones as the majority of the voters do. We know they’re not being honest, remember John Kerry running? He started going to church all the time, causing church leaders to say they wouldn’t serve him the Eucharist since he wasn’t going all the time and being a ‘good Catholic’ because of his abortion stance. Which leads me to the other point, it’s not just that I think religion should have no basis in how someone votes, but when politicians spell out that they’re one of the flock, it is disingenuous and condescending. That this works is testimony to, again, people not voting for the candidate they think will do the best job for the country, but just the best for their niche (however large). Remember united we stand? Anyone? So Alternet covered this with a great article titled, What Religion’s Blind Stranglehold on America Is Doing to Our Democracy. They talk about a candidate stating religious ideas and assuming that from then on the candidate will hold those ideals as objective truths one which by definition couldn’t be changed or questioned.

New Rambo film most violent yet

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:15:19 -0600

. Gather round kids, be proud of your freedom, and our apparently innate manifest destiny to go forth and pillage!

Texas is number one

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:59:06 -0600

. “Texans’ fondness for large, manly vehicles has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation. The headquarters state of America’s oil industry spewed 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2003, enough that Texas would rank seventh in the world if it were its own country, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The amount is more than that of California and Pennsylvania — the second- and third-ranking states — combined. A multitude of factors contribute to the carbon output, among them: Texas’ 19 coal-burning power plants; a heavy concentration of refineries and chemical plants; a lack of mass transit; and a penchant among ranchers and urban cowboys alike for brawny, gas-guzzling trucks — sometimes to haul things, but often just to look Texas tough.” Obviously living in Austin I didn’t see as much of this, but when we’d visit Houston you could see the facts to support the above claims; it was a mess.

Running Windows XP on a Mac

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:36:48 -0600

Boot Camp simplifies Windows installation on an Intel-based Mac by providing a simple graphical step-by-step assistant application to dynamically create a second partition on the hard drive for Windows, to burn a CD with all the necessary Windows drivers, and to install Windows from a Windows XP installation CD. After installation is complete, users can choose to run either Mac OS X or Windows when they restart their computer.

Do the collage - the art of Bob Pollard

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:48:21 -0600

On December 9, 10 Robert Pollard had his debut art exhibit called Do The Collage (a play on the title of Guided by Voices 1999 release, Do The Collapse) at Studio Dante. in New York City. Now the entire exhibit is online (but note the person pictured at that link is not Bob), and it displays the talents of Bob’s cut and paste collages, much like the sound of his band’s early recordings.

[

Some of these images will be familiar to GbV die hards, as Bob’s artwork adorned many of the cds, LPS and singles that GbV put out over the years. Additionally, the above shows up as a prop onstage when he tours with his current band. Of course with all things Bob Pollard, the quality is there, despite the quantity that you sometimes have to wade through; persistence and patience will pay off, keep digging! Having said that, if anyone doesn’t have Alien Lanes or Bee Thousand, you’re missing out on some of the best rock from the early 90s. Here’s another salty salute to Bob! Kick it…

Radiohead coming to St. Louis next tour

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:08:43 -0600

, 05-14 St. Louis, MO - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre

So it’s been confirmed, Radiohead **will **play St. Louis on this tour; what incredible news. I last saw them during the tour for The Bends, far, far too long ago. “St. Louis is confirmed as a stop on British rock band Radiohead’s upcoming North American tour. Exact dates and venues are to be announced. The tour will be broken down in two parts – a first leg prior to a European summer tour, and another leg after the European tour. Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” CD is the top-selling album in the country this week.” F - yes! I have seen far too many concerts of them on video - must see the new shit live…so damn cool.

The premature crowning of Hillary

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:31:25 -0600

you’ll see the results:

In the New Hampshire Democratic primary

CNN estimates:

Hillary Clinton has won 9 New Hampshire delegates (3 statewide, 6 district-level)
Barack Obama has won 9 New Hampshire delegates (3 statewide, 6 district-level)
John Edwards has won 4 New Hampshire delegates (2 statewide, 2 district-level)
22 Democratic delegates were at stake in the New Hampshire primary

Ok, so it was a tie in regards to the delegates, but Hillary won the popular vote, but wait, what about the ‘superdelegates’ in New Hampshire? Back to the article:

5 steps for surviving using XP in the workplace

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:53:00 -0600

UPDATE: Fixed the link to Password Safe, and also learned about an updated guide covering why people shouldn’t reuse passwords, The Real Life Risks Of Re Using The Same Passwords. Thanks Bill, happy to hear the project is still being actively developed, it’s still needed!

Ok, I’m not typical by any means when it comes to operating systems, but desktop systems - even less so. I’ve run Linux on the desktop since ~1997, and I’m very comfortable with it…at home. While there are a few exceptions where companies would let me run Linux on the desktop, that’s not the theme of the larger companies I’ve frequented of late, so of course I’ve had to use XP for the past 3 years, and it hasn’t been all blood and roses. First of all I can’t stand the Fisher-Price UI - it’s awful, really, how dumb do I look? (that’s a rhetorical question) The first thing I do to a new system I have to use is to revert the UI back to its ‘classic’ looks - at least this way I wouldn’t be reminded of how much better XP was supposed to be since they changed the way some widgets look (seriously, right click on yr desktop, choose ‘Properties’ then look at that same dialog box that you saw in Windows 95!). I usually end up making Windows look and act as much like a Linux desktop, to make it more tolerable for me to use, but first we’ll start with what really bugs us about Windows, resources that seem to be constantly straining, regardless installed RAM! Disclaimer: use my suggestions as just that, if things catch on fire, businesses fail, war breaks out, I can’t be held responsible. Having said that, life is short, and what’s the worst that can happen?

Log user's IP, not proxy's IP in Lighttpd

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:17:41 -0600

use that variable in its access logs instead of the default variable defining the referring IP. Once we know that, the configuration is simple; in lighttpd.conf, enter this:

accesslog.format = "%{X-Forwarded-For}i %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b /
\"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""

For the definition of these variables, and plenty more, hit Lighty’s wiki. Props to the poster on the Varnish mailing list for bringing this up and reminding me to fix it! I’ve sent this link to the list so now it’s out there.

Stewart, Colbert back on without writers for now

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 08:41:26 -0600

reads my thoughts and lays them up on the screen for me to read to the audience." His director advised him the words would have had to be furnished by staff writers. “The writers!” Colbert scoffed. “The guys on the fourth floor with the opium bongs, playing Guitar Hero all day! I find that a bit of a stretch.” “I don’t like unions,” railed Colbert, whose on-air persona is a right-wing blowhard, “and I don’t need writers. Which brings me to tonight’s Word” — a favorite feature of the show. But Colbert was quickly mortified: There was no word. That would have required a writer._" Ah, so nice for them to be back, maybe tonight I’ll actually have the TV on again; bring on the election coverage Jon!

1 2 3 4 by Feist

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:47:40 -0600

Ya, you’ve heard the song 1 2 3 4 by Feist, even if you don’t realize it; it’s that iPod ad. That ad gave you a sense of the melody of the song, which is beautiful IMO, as is the cd which easily made my best of 2007. Why am I bringing this up? It’s the full video, you must see it. Rarely does a video move me enough to want to talk about it, I can think of some Sigur Ros ones, and a couple of others, but this one is just fantastic and suits the song very well. Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think, and pickup the cd if you like this track; it’s a solid one.

Best music of 2007

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:50:08 -0600

It’s that time again, our annual list of our favorite music from each year. New for 2007’s best of list is far more detail and interactivity than before, and it’s even linked to the fak3r’s aStore at Amazon in case you want to pick up any of the recommendations from the page, how convenient!. As always, scroll to the bottom for picks from years past. Leave comments here if you have ones you disagree with, or ones we missed. See ya next year…

Neko Case on NPR

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:28:00 -0600

. While The New Pornographers style is straight up, fun, power-pop, Neko’s solo work is steeped more in bittersweet country and gospel, however she seems to combine both on her solo shows, which I have not experienced in person. Her prior release to ‘Flood’, was the strong live effort, The Tigers Have Spoken. TNP are a different story, I’ve seen them twice and they’re even more fun in person than they releases hint at; highly recommended. Give her a listen.

Virallink - Link Exchange Program

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:36:01 -0600

Below is a matrix of 120 stars, I have already added a link to my blog onto oneof the stars, all you need to do is copy and paste the grid into your blog and add your own link to one of the other spare stars, and tell others to do the same!

Viralink

********************

******** ************

****** ************

******************

New Addition:When I receive a ping back once you have added the Viralink to your site I will add your link to this grid, and each person who copies the grid from here will also link to your site! Rules

Little pink houses for you and me; Brad saves NOLA?

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:08:30 -0600

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have a home in the French Quarter in New Orleans, and are spending the holidays there this year to support Brad’s “Make It Right” foundation. The foundation aims to build 150 homes by next Summer in the Lower 9th Ward, a neighborhood decimated by Katrina. Brad is pulling this off with residents of the area, Democratic fundraiser and movie producer Steve Bing, and a team of world-renowned architects launched a national fundraising campaign this week to help the city recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Pitt and Bing have already pledged to kick in $5 million each toward project development and construction.

They Might Be Giants

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:59:19 -0600

on vinyl in 1986. At the time it was only available on vinyl, so I had to go to a friend’s house who had his parent’s stereo setup with a good turntable so I could tape it, and then play it in my car. Yeah, that’s funny, both in how long ago it was, and that I remember all of it. As I’ve mentioned before, I love music, and even the act of visiting a music store is some religious experince for me, there’s no telling what will happen that I’ll be retelling some 20 years later…

Glassbooth - how do you line up with the candidates?

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:10:05 -0600

but I’ve never read so much about Gravel, he’s pretty damn impressive too. With all the candidates jockeying for position on the seemingly 100s of debates, it’s nice to have a resource to get some facts. There’s no third party candidates thought, but hey, it’s far more than what most American’s will know about the stances of the candidates on the issues. Everyone should register to vote, then become educated about things; if you don’t you can’t complain.

Music that stands the test of time

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:59:43 -0600

. I’m more interested in your comment: _

“Who we recall a year later, or a decade later, are only a handful of the bands who exist at a given time. […] Or who was the Collective Soul of previous decades?” That’s what I’m after, what will stand the test of time, free to be judged by unbiased listeners who can’t tie the music to the time that it first appeared. My kids, ages 7 (girl) and 4 (boy) are my ongoing research project on this topic. While my daughter was initially groomed on The Beatles she’s now under the Disney spell (hey, we’ve all been there at some time) but she regularly hears everything we do, likes the Dixie Chicks, as well as some Jazz (Monk, Coltrane, Bird, Roach, et al) at times, but in the long run I think she’ll be better off for the base we’re still providing. As for my Son, he fell hard for The Ramones early with almost no prompting. It makes perfect sense, they’re basically kids songs in that they’re so simple, they’re all fun and full of energy. Yeah, he has a Ramones poster in his room and wears the faded tshirt handed down from his sister; so he knows he’s cool (he and I do a punk rock dance while the disc spins). He’s also into The Pixies, The Clash and They Might Be Giants, again, from all the music we listen to these are the ones he’s requested copies of (we burn it, let him trash the CDR, repeat). So while that’s fun, my long term question is; what music that is important to me make that jump and be important to them when they’re my age, 38? All I’m doing is providing a large base for them to grow on and then decide on their own. It’ll be fun to find out, but hey, I’m in no hurry to find out. Thanks"

Aquadots sweetened with the date-rape drug

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:52:49 -0600

! And how could such a hazardous chemical have ended up in a child’s toy? Remember, it’s all about money… “The toys were supposed to use 1,5-pentanediol, a nontoxic compound found in glue, but instead contained the harmful 1,4-butanediol, which is widely used in cleaners and plastics. The Food and Drug Administration in 1999 declared the chemical a Class I Health Hazard, meaning it can cause life-threatening harm. Both chemicals are manufactured in China and elsewhere, including by major multinational companies, and are also marketed over the Internet. It’s not clear why 1,4-butanediol was substituted. However, there is a significant difference in price between the two chemicals. The Chinese online trading platform ChemNet China lists the price of 1,4 butanediol at between about $1,350-$2,800 per metric ton, while the price for 1,5-pentanediol is about $9,700 per metric ton.” Indeed, the Wal-Mart ‘race to the bottom’ mentality of needing everything to be cheaper rewards this kind of ‘cost cutting’.

HOWTO: create a pidfile for a startup script

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:32:44 -0600

On the monit mailing list today someone asked how they could monitor a process that didn’t have a pidfile associated with it. Without thinking I jotted this down, there’s likely a better way, but this should work and may be all I need for some init.d scripts for a couple of apps on ramon (the home server). In the the beginning of the startup script, define the PIDFILE with the path and the cmd followed by the pid suffix and then just dump the PID number from the ps output into it:

Allow Varnish to reuse its shared object

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:15:10 -0600

** into production environments. fak3r uses Varnish in front of its webserver, Lighttpd, so it’s likely that the page you’re now reading was served to you not by the webserver, but via Varnish_.

Currently Varnish requires a C compiler to be present on the machine it’s running on, since it needs to compile the VCL config file into a shared object each time it starts. During shutdown, Varnish removes this shared object since it will be rebuilt during the next start. This routine repeats regardless of if anything has changed in the VCL config file, and serves as a road bump to getting Varnish into certain production environments since traditionally development applications (such as the C compiler) are not allowed in such instances. For now I am putting aside the arguments as to why it’s is acceptable to have development applications in production instances, since that argument’s outcome will vary in different situations, and I am aiming for a solution that will cover all instances.

Stewart pays writers out of pocket during strike

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:40:38 -0600

. “In a show of solidarity with his fellow scribes, the Daily Show host has told his writing staff that he will cover all their salaries for the next two weeks, according to a well-placed source. He has also vowed to do the same for writers on The Colbert Report. A Comedy Central spokesman referred my inquiry about this to Stewart’s personal publicist, who has yet to respond. Stewart’s intention, says the source, is to ensure his writers will face no financial hardship should the strike, which kicked off at 3 a.m. local time, conclude within that time frame.” I was wondering if we were going to have to endure weeks of reruns and loss of coverage that the strike would have brought, cool! Wonder what Colbert has planned.

shutdown -h now

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:14:06 -0600

Just shut down the old server, chavez, which was running FreeBSD 6.1 - it was an awesome server. I’ve switched to Debian for now, and I’m really loving it, having used it in the past I really never dug into it as a server until recently. Administration is just easier, and it’s in line with me trying to cut back on things I have to do on the computer; gives me more time for other efforts. Anywho, it’s down now, for the record here’s the uname/uptime:

Colbert into double digits in recent poll

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:03:39 -0600

The host of “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central declared his newfound political intentions last week and clarified his position a few days later, telling NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday: “I don’t want to be president. I want to run for president. There’s a difference._”

Paul Raven dead of a heart attack

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:58:48 -0600

CD and give it another go. The combination of rhythm with Chris Connelly’s vocals made it a classic industrial record, with Paul Raven and the then current incarnation of Killing Joke.

PayPal: Open Source Essential to Success

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:18:08 -0600

[ – and four tips for you if you’re thinking of making the switch._"

Johnny Marr: The Smiths might reform

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:07:47 -0600

for years, no one in the band has ever said it would ever happen, so that he’s not ruling it out seems a big change. “Different members of the band have ruled out offers of reuniting over the years, with Morrissey most recently revealing that he turned down a near $80 million offer to tour again. He added: “It’s no biggie. Maybe we will in 10 or 15 years time, when we all need to for whatever reasons, but right now Morrissey is doing his thing and I’m doing mine–so that’s the answer, really.” O’RLY? It’s no BIGGIE? To WHO? Are you KIDDING ME? “Marr has said that “stranger things have happened.” He added: “Not much stranger things, but stranger things have happened. So you know who knows.” … “Right now I am personally working in a band that I have been in for the last 2 years, with Modest Mouse,” he told the BBC. “You know we are doing a lot of good stuff and kind of strikes me, hits me with surprise really whenever I’m asked it because I’m like well if you are interested in what I’m doing, there is a record I put out in February that a lot of people like so why would I want to talk about a band I was in 20 years ago.” Um, hello, because that band was The Smiths, a huge band for many from the era, yours truly included. I’ve really liked Modest Mouse for years now, and am really excited about Marr’s contribution there, but come on, to act surprised that people are more interested in The Smiths?

crash Internet Explorer with a link

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:09:51 -0600

I thought the days of crashing IE with just some malformed code were over, apparently not. I just takes a misplaced wildcard in a style declaration to send it down. <style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input /></table> This took out IE on my work computer which is fully patched. I’ve read that people running IE under Wine in Linux have it crash as well, so it’s certainly app dependant. For those of you playing at home, just click here to try it for yourself. Extra credit if you actually save the file on your windows machine and then try to open it within Windows Explorer! Enjoy.

Scammers (not) showing heart by donating to charity

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:10:36 -0600

Publishers shifting significantly to Wii

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:47:45 -0600

, “…publishers are “flocking to Wii” and that this holiday season will lead into a 2008 with plenty of Wii fun to come. “Nintendo’s success is reaping the rewards of great support from publishers … 86 titles are scheduled for release on the Wii in Q4, compared with 47 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and just 38 for the PS3. Furthermore, a quarter of the Wii releases are exclusive to the platform, compared with eight for the Xbox 360 and five for PS3. Screen Digest sees Nintendo’s success and external support for Wii only accelerating, primarily thanks to the quickly growing installed base and lower cost of development on the platform. The firm “expects that the number of games available for Wii will surpass Xbox 360’s library in early 2008 at current release rates.” So momentum building with many more games for the Wii, and judging by past victories we can only anticipate more fun games from the original creative minds of Nintendo.

PJ Harvey photos from New York Show

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:49:27 -0600

show from a few years back. For now here’s hoping she plots out another tour, with more than two dates!

Buying a Linux laptop in 2007

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:14:21 -0600

, I knew I’d finally have choices to consider. In the end I came up with a pretty current system, that Debian or Ubuntu will be 100% compatible with, and will be proud to call home. The detailed specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T5470, 1.6GHz, 800Mhz FSB, 2M L2 Cache 15.4 inch Wide Screen XGA LCD display 1GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 DIMM 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS 120G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive Integrated 10/100 Network Cardand Modem 8X DVD+/-RW with double-layer DVD+R write capability Integrated High Definition Audio 2.0 Intel 3945 WLAN (802.11a/g) Mini Card Integrated 2.0 mega pixel webcam Integrated Bluetooth 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

The Shins 'Wincing the Night Away'

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:10:49 -0600

current release, Wincing the Night Away, on a much higher level. It’s a fantastic release and displays a perfect cross section of light and dark pop that their earlier releases barely hinted at; it’s a great/solid listen. With critics, including my wife, in almost universal agreement of this releases’ merits, many don’t see anything better coming out this year. But of course with this being only October, don’t call it the album of the year…yet.

HOWTO: notes on securing Debian

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:13:54 -0600

Looking over the Debian own harden-doc guide online, (which is a monster of a resource) as well as Debian Help’s security page gave me some excellent new ideas on how to secure Debian and Linux in general. Also today i found a netstat command with some nice switches to help you figure out what is listening on each port in an easy to read layout, -plunt:

netstat -plunt

Plus it’s fun to say, ‘plunt’. Lastly there’s a good overview of deborphan (which assists you in keeping your system clear of unneeded packages) with coverage on how to use it at Debian Adminstrator.org. But in the comments a thread talks about how it’s better to use aptitude, as this does it automatically.

Wii - good for the body, good for the brain

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:41:13 -0600

play some Wii games that make us think versus just watching TV.

girls call me duckie

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:20:34 -0600

This past weekend I met up with an old friend from college who I haven’t seen or talked to in many years. Back in the day we took a two hour road trip together to see R.E.M. on their Document tour, and another time saw The Replacements on their very last tour. I credit him for getting me into other bands that remain favorites to this day like The Smiths (<3), The Cure and X. Now he’s living in Amsterdam covering soccer for a website, and loving life. He came back to visit a friend in Chicago last week, he’s in St. Louis this week, and will be in Italy in a few weeks before heading back home from there. At one point he bemoaned that, “…at this point, I don’t know if I’ll ever have kids”, but everyone is different, and needs to find their own way in life. I think he’s carved out a really interesting one while staying true to what is important to him and in the end he’ll have kids, if that’s what he wants out of life; that he’s made it this far assures me of that. Very cool to see him, makes me smile.

Radiohead groundbreaking release 'In Rainbows'

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:22:45 -0600

stores mainly because they insist the bands allow individual tracks to be downloaded, and they don’t want that. But think about it, if music comes straight from bands without having to pass through a myriad of record execs, or even online music stores, imagine how much truer the music will be to the musician’s real idea and concepts. Wow, this could be a big watershed moment for the music industry, and perhaps art distribution in general…or it could be a mere future trivia question. Either way I’ll have more on the new release here on October 12th once the download is complete.

Software support must evolve with Open Source

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:34:04 -0600

As a IT contractor I’m enjoying giving my opinion when asked, and sometimes even when I’m not asked; I have the confidence to be open and honest with everyone and want them to know that. Because of this I’ve been getting to do things I otherwise would not have since they would not have known I was interested or experienced in such things. One of the things I was hired for was to setup Apache on Linux to work with their web instances. It’s been fun, and while I’ve used Apache for over 10 years, there’s always new things to learn. Recently they asked for my opinion on ‘support’ options for Apache. Keeping in mind, they already have support for the hardware and support for the Linux distribution, they still think they need another support channel for Apache. To me this a big waste of money and have somewhat made my case to them. While I understand their position that this support is a way to cover themselves if Apache ‘breaks’, the fact that this software is Open Source has to change the way they have traditionally considered support.

Madonna in scuffle with Bloc Party road crew

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:48:19 -0600

. “To many Madonna is probably the most recognizable female face on earth, but apparently that is not the case with some members ofBritish band Bloc Party’s road crew. The singer of the indie band, Kele Okereke, described the “surreal” moment as the raunchy star responsible for “Holiday,” “Like A Virgin,” and “Vogue” tried to get backstage to meet them. Unfortunately for Madge, Bloc Party’s security officer–who clearly doesn’t know much about popular culture–got her in a headlock before escorting her out of the dressing room, while everyone looked on in stunned silence. The singer admitted that they could hear her in the corridor outside berating the guard and threatening to “kill” him.” Can you imagine her being dragged down the hallway yelling, “Do you know who I am, I’m going to kill you!” Oh boy, that’s some funny stuff. Sorry Madge, guess your indie cred doesn’t trickle down to the level of the latest brit-pop starlets’ road crew, better luck next time.

80G Black iPod classic FTW!

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:49:08 -0600

UPDATE: Hold the phone here, before going too gaga over the new iPods, it’s been revealed that they’ve been ’re-engineered’ to lock out folks trying to sync their iPods using 3rd party apps, or (gasp) Linux! That’s right, they want you to use ONLY Windows or OSX and iTunes…this is ridiculous. See my post on our sister site Left to chance to learn more. This is what we talk about when we say Digital Rights, we can’t give them up now and expect to have them in the future!

Dell's Linux support numbers

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:05:44 -0600

will likely solve most problems for you even before you’re done dialing.

Jazz drummer extraordinaire, Max Roach dies 83

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:25:43 -0600

in 1954_"

Perseid meteors this Sunday night

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:28:36 -0600

The site Bad Astronomy has a great article to reference for this Sunday’s meteor shower called, 12 things you need to watch the Perseid meteors Sunday night. Looks like after midnight, with a clear view of the Eastern sky are two of the main points. I’m going to try and get out for this one.

new elements in HTML 5

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 13:54:49 -0600

Want to learn elements that will appear in the upcoming HTML 5? Yeah, I didn’t think so either, but it’s actually really cool. New Elements in HTML 5 shows you how to use new tags like header, section, article, footer, menu, and such, show that you won’t have to define DIV’s all day, and laying out a page will be a snap, it’s much more CSS friendly. I wonder how long it’ll take to actually implement and be supported by the majority of browsers? I know when it comes out I’ll make a 5 version of my sites to show, if ppl hit them with 5 able browsers.

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:55:28 -0600

. He shows how different files, music, data and even written documents give up their internal stucture when viewed using DotPlots to visualize patterns within. Seeing how we can recognize patterns better than a string of HEX makes sense, but he presents very interesting/thought provoking examples. Very cool stuff, see ya tomorrow in Vegas.

Defcon15: new variant of Evil Twin to be revealed

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 09:28:36 -0600

All your data are belong to Microsoft

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:33:42 -0600

," and more._" If that’s not bad enough, read on…

Later more possiblities are revealed, “A word processor may display a banner ad along the top of a window, similar to a toolbar, while a graphical ad may be displayed in a frame associated with the application. A digital editor for photos or movies may support video-based advertisements,” the patent application says. … An e-mail client may specify that ads from competitors must be excluded, that its own display client must be used… (that) no more than 4 ads per hour are allowed, and that only text or graphical… advertisements are supported." The patent makes no mention of any method by which an actual user might exert control, nor does it mention very real privacy or security concerns. That’s okay. It’s still a good thing. It says so right in the application: “The ability to derive and process context data from local sources rather than monitor interactions with a remote entity, such as a server, benefits both consumers and advertisers by delivering more tightly targeted advertisements. The benefit to the user is the perception that the ads are more relevant, and therefore, less of an interruption. The benefit to the advertiser is better focus and a higher chance of conversion to a sale.” Incredible! I love how it’s such a bonus for us consumers! This is a huge deal…I’ll bet that soon we’ll see systems with ‘rebates’ in exchange for your use of such software; everyone wants a deal so it’ll sell and your leisurely time you used to spend with your computer will be gone. So much for productivity, and privacy.

Tux on a Visa

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:58:32 -0600

from OpenBSD on a credit card…but I’m not sure if I’d want to use that one!

birmingham baggage alibi

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:45:18 -0600

You get tons of spam daily, in my case 99% gets caught by various spam filters and I never see it, but I’m so glad I saw this one. With the topic, “bimingham baggage alibi” it has to be the best spam topic I’ve ever read. Should be a band name or the name of an art movement.

Confessions of SpammerX

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:32:45 -0600

A former spammer comes forth to tell his story, an amazing look at how easy something like this is to get away with. “Ed,” a retired spammer, built a considerable fortune sending e-mails that promoted pills, porn and casinos. At the peak of his power, Ed says he pulled in US$10,000 to $15,000 a week, storing the money in $20 bills in stacks of boxes." In his last year he pulled in $480,000.

Black Shoe Diary

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:31:08 -0600

. These articles give me hope for the future of mankind.

our daily gas consumption compared

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:26:00 -0600

Take a quick look at how much gas we use in America versus the rest of the world - EVERY SINGLE DAY. Amazing.

“With less than 5% of the world’s population, the US consumes 25% of the world’s oil production.”

Johnny Marr and Morrissey still friends

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:13:02 -0600

" deal that Morrissey spoke of? While I’ve glad they’re not about the money, the pair were incredible together; would they be again? Perhaps, perhaps not, but if songwriting didn’t work out they could always hold court somewhere and rip out the classics, many haven’t been heard in proper form live for over 20 years.

Moozaget: search for music online

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:51:20 -0600

on a system that has internet/web access. Wake up and smell the coffee.

do you have your id on you?

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:09:12 -0600

Getting carded for buying a 6-pack when you’re 25 is annoying, but when it happens when you’re 38 it’s pretty sweet. While it doesn’t happen as often as it used to, it’s not an isolated incident, so I must be doing something right…either that or I act pretty immature, but even with that, I really think they go on looks, so yeah.

Defcon15

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:49:21 -0600

again this year, just found out this Friday for sure. It’s August 3rd - 5th, in Las Vegas, and this year it’s all paid for by my new consulting group; what a great thing. I argued that I would learn so much more there than any class, for a fraction of the cost; and I will. More on this later.

Download iPhone ringtones

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:17:38 -0600

wii outsells PS3 in Japan 6 to 1

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:12:59 -0600

Wii have a winner, by a long shot! “Nintendo’s Wii game console outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 by a ratio of more than 6 to 1 in June in Japan, a game magazine publisher said, solidifying Nintendo’s leading position. Nintendo sold 270,974 units of the Wii in the four weeks ended June 24, compared with 41,628 units for the PS3 and 17,616 units for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 … The Wii’s lead against the PS3 was 4 to 1 in April and 5 to 1 in May.”

10 things to know before buying a solar system

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:03:24 -0600

Here’s a great list of ten things you need to know before buying a solar electric system. I’d love for it to be more affordable so I could build a starter system now, but it looks like I’ll be waiting for a refi.

The Verve reuniting

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 08:13:21 -0600

while making no money, but having the time of my life seeing bands.

Gumshoo

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:48:00 -0600

is the one to beat. Billed on their site as, “A simpler, safer, smarter way to shop eBay, Filter out junk, accessories, used items & more, Find misspelled auction bargains, See the seller’s 30-day feedback trend, Identify potential auction risks before bidding”, it does not disappoint. The searches feel quicker, and are presently simply, but it really weeds out the junk that you usually get from eBay searches. The items appear in a column on the left hand side of the browser window, and clicking on any of them causes it to open in the main window. It takes away most of the annoyances that I’ve had with eBay as far as trying to find things, and the fact that it covers misspellings automatically is fantastic.

tricks to keep your house cool this Summer

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:41:55 -0600

Some oft repeated ideas, but worth mentioning, tricks to keep your house cool this Summer. Some new ideas that I hadn’t thought of like, “plant trees or shrubs to shade air conditioning units” I will look into doing this weekend. There’s always more you can do, but while I’m not going to paint my roof white, covering it with solar panels would be even better; provide shade for the roof, while taking the brunt of the energy out of the sun and putting it to good use.

HOWTO: failed to set xfermode [SOLVED]

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 19:17:38 -0600

**, we now have a solution to have this option persist across kernel updates. In grub, “…at the end of this new menu item add it as an argument to the line:

defoptions=quiet splash irqpoll

I knew there had to be a way, thanks for the post Ted!

There’s a known bug in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) with some ata detection routine that causes the system to take over 2 minutes to boot. Since this has happened to me more than once I’m documenting it here for me, and for other desperate souls that may find their way here. If your system is very slow to boot, and you see error messages in your dmesg (dmesg | grep ata) such as this:

HOWTO: Jimmac mouse cursors on XP

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:33:38 -0600

and get into its config menu, which is a new tab under Settings > Mouse. From the drop down list choose , point it to the theme and you’re done. You wouldn’t think a change of mouse cursors would change the feel of a system so much, but these do; I feel more at home. Even if you’ve never used Linux you’ll still love this cursor set, try it, it’s all free.

AT&T DSL plan for $10/month

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:09:55 -0600

December_." The speeds are what you’d expect for the price, 768 kilobits per second and upload speeds of up to 128 kbps, but this is far and away fast enough for 90% of subscribers I bet, the ‘speed’ that they try to sell is not something a normal user is going to bump up against. In what makes it seem even more of a concession instead of a new marketing initiate is that, “The plan was not mentioned in a Friday news release about AT&T’s DSL plans, and is slightly hidden on the AT&T Web site. A page describing DSL options doesn’t mention it, but clicking a link for “Term contract plans” reveals it. It’s also presented to customers who go into the application process.” Let’s hope this is a sign of things to come, America trails most other countries in high-speed internet usage, and with so much going on online, you really need a high-speed connection to really take advantage of it. A $50/month 1.5/768 is really not needed by most, it’s a rip-off for them, but $10/month is something they would get great benefit from without being fleeced.

The best companies to work for

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:00:46 -0600

. That’s awesome, it really says something about the company if internal and external forces are agreeing on things. I’m happy since I get too play in Linux while avoiding the stress of support. /me ahhh…

Making the case for Google Linux

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:41:47 -0600

At the summit they had a _"…presentation by the Google Linux Client Team. What was it? Well, there are some “significant accomplishments” and other new Google desktop applications coming out this year for the Linux platform. Google’s Xianzhu Wang and Zhe Su delivered the ; though I have trouble seeing that. Whatever it is, it seems they’re gearing up for something, and it sounds as if it’ll be long term. If they are truly going to pair themselves up next to Microsoft, this would be an amazing way to do it; we live in interesting times.

Free Jazz legend Ornette Coleman hospitalized

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:25:15 -0600

“, which he released to an unsuspecting public in late 1959.

Apache server lockdown challenge

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:20:02 -0600

criticisms appreciated.

# Basic settings
Listen T_LISTEN
User T_USER
Group T_GROUP
ServerAdmin webadmin@server.net
UseCanonicalName Off
ServerSignature Off
HostnameLookups Off
ServerTokens Prod
ServerRoot "/etc/httpd"
DocumentRoot "T_DOCROOT"
PidFile T_PIDFILE
DirectoryIndex index.html

# HTTP and performance settings
Timeout 60
KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 15
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
StartServers 5
MaxClients 150
MaxRequestsPerChild 1000

# Access control
[directory /]
Options None
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
[/directory]
[directory T_DOCROOT]
Options FollowSymLinks -Includes -Indexes -MultiViews -ExecCGI
AllowOverride None
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
[/directory]
[Directory T_CGIROOT]
Options ExecCGI -FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
[/Directory]
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ T_CGIROOT
Alias /error/ T_ERROR

# MIME encoding
TypesConfig /etc/mime.types
DefaultType text/plain
AddEncoding x-compress .Z
AddEncoding x-gzip .gz .tgz
AddType application/x-compress .Z
AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz
AddType application/x-tar .tgz

# Logs
LogLevel warn
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent
ErrorLog T_DOCROOT/logs/error_T_INSTANCE.log
CustomLog T_DOCROOT/logs/access_T_INSTANCE.log combined

# Modules
LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so
LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so
LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so
LoadModule cache_module modules/mod_cache.so
LoadModule access_module modules/mod_access.so
LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so
LoadModule auth_module modules/mod_auth.so

That’s it, the whole file only takes up 59 lines (w/o comments or empty lines). If we look at what was statically built into the httpd binary that RHEL4 distributes, it looks pretty slim too, so credit where credit is due:`

Morrissey May 22 - Saint Louis

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:45:38 -0600

“Let this be a warning, this is what 48 looks like… So you may not want to stick around.” This is how Morrissey started his Saint Louis show, celebrating a birthday, and giving an all out incredible show, his first here since 1992.

Appearing completely at ease, he commanded the stage while the crowd went absolutely nuts; he could do no wrong.

Setlist (courtesy of Morrissey-solo.com)

The Queen Is Dead First Of The Gang To Die The Youngest Was The Most Loved In The Future When All’s Well You Have Killed Me Disappointed Panic Let Me Kiss You I Just Want To See The Boy Happy The National Front Disco I Will See You In Far Off Places All You Need Is Me Girlfriend In A Coma Everyday Is Like Sunday The Boy With The Thorn In His Side Irish Blood, English Heart At Last I Am Born I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty Life Is A Pigsty How Soon Is Now?

HOWTO: populate your term's title automatically

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:58:01 -0600

When you’re running a ton of termial windows or tabs, it helps to have the title of the box name, along with some environment values, easily available to keep you orientated. Here’s a quick script I created to do this automatically when called via your .profile file in your home directory.

#!/bin/bash
HOST_NAME=`hostname -f`
if [ `id -u` = 0 ]; then
OPT="`uname` (`uname -a | cut -f12 -d' ' -`) - ROOT USER"
else
OPT="`uname` (`uname -a | cut -f12 -d' ' -`)"
fi
REPLACE="${HOST_NAME} - ${OPT}"
echo -n -e "33]0; $REPLACE 07 "
echo "${REPLACE}"
exit 0

When I run this script in my term here at work, the title or tab becomes:

Tie goes to the runner

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:19:14 -0600

I’ve had a ton of jobs, some would say this is a liability, but if questioned I have perfectly good reasons why I stayed at x company 3 years, and y company 5 months. For backup my references have no problem singing my praises and sighting my work ethic and humor as positive components that I bring to the scene. My feeling about work is defined by a saying a former co-worker once shared with me, it’s simple: “What’s the worst they can do, fire you?” Think about it, it’s only a job, you owe it to yourself to do good work, but if it’s not making you happy it’s time to start looking. If you’re ever been fired or laid off like me, you may have a better perspective on this; it happens, it’s no big, people move on. This is reason why I (and you) have to keep networking with other worker (droids) and recruiters/consultants EVEN WHEN YOU’RE NOT LOOKING.

Sicko: The one film you must see this summer

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 07:41:58 -0600

too.

Fix a G3 iBook with a bad logic board for 26 cents

Tue, 29 May 2007 22:01:08 -0600

for the PowerPC runs very nicely on the iBook! So much more power saving features, and the promise of Gnash to cover all the flash sites makes it a great laptop.

Elliot Smith New Moon

Thu, 10 May 2007 12:41:12 -0600

, but the last was the finishing up of the glorious From A Basement On A Hill, and this is simply a collection of seldom to never heard tunes from the period, so it’s hardly the rehash you usually see. Regardless, this set replaces crummy mp3s that I have of some of these, while putting them in perspective with their brethren. I wish he could have seen it through, but like all artists their true measurement of their comes after their lives. Gentle voice, familiar minor chord changes, brilliant writing, it’s here for all to hear; thanks Elliot. Close your eyes and enjoy the view of the new moon…

Five ways to stop global warming

Wed, 02 May 2007 12:31:49 -0600

here, or read more for their Five Cool Ways to Stop Global Warming.

Your Earth Day To-Do List!

The bad news: Global warming is real. The better news: there are real ways you can help.

In honor of Earth Day, here are five things you can do to make a cleaner planet and a better tomorrow. The best part is they are low-cost or free – but have a huge impact.

tonight's fortune

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:55:36 -0600

My fortune cookie with tonight’s Chinese dinner read, “This year your highest priority will be your family". Here, here, let’s all remember what is truly important to all of us; material possessions will only take you so far.

The Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:18:16 -0600

I recently re-bought The Jesus and Mary Chain “Psychocandy” on the reissue DualDisc…and what a nice package. The stock album is a great upgrade in fidelity (props to them for NOT adding bonus tracks to the original recording - even going so far as taking out the ‘bonus track’ that appeared on the 1980s era tape!) and the second side boasts the DVD-Audio version of the album, as well as all of the videos from that release. Seems all of their releases have been have been remastered this way, and as always with anything Rhino does, it’s done top notch. Originally released in November of 1985, “Psychocandy” was the Mary Chain’s debut album and featured the singles ‘You Trip Me Up’ and ‘Just Like Honey’, which played over the ending of the movie ‘Lost In Translation’ from 2004. Psychocandy is just such a classic, filtering through the brashy/harshness of Velvet Underground inspired feedback while defining the shoegazer genre. I must have originally bought this in 1998/9, but pulled it out recently after listening to a boot from ‘86. I love things that stand up over time, and this is a perfect example of that.

Virginia Tech

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:06:25 -0600

or other mental issues, and you just have a ticking time bomb. That’s my take, I’ve made this post to say, look, if you have issues, PLEASE get help and seek treatment. Tons of people take meds and go to regular therapy to deal with issues, it’s not like you’re alone; I’ve been doing both for years now, and feel much better that I’m dealing with it this way instead of the way the person did on at Virginia Tech earlier this week. I think things are getting better in this regard since I’ve seen people’s willingness to talk about it becoming more common - because of this I know plenty of people going through the same stuff. Don’t think things will just ‘get better’ on their own, if you’re sad, or in an unusual state, talk to a doctor and get help, please. Not that I have much to offer, but I’m around if anyone is ever in a situation like that and needs advice/support/whatever. fak3r at fak3r dot com

HOWTO: ssh tunneling for fun and profit

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:34:28 -0600

Recently I had an issue at work; while trying to transfer files between Unix hosts we were unable to hit the known scp port, but we could still hit the ssh port. All of this was occurring from home, late at night on a Saturday where I was the main technical point man to move/install these files. In the past I had done ssh tunneling, but never on the fly to fix something like this, so I cracked open my notes and did a quick Google search for a refresher.

Lala.com

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:52:49 -0600

I’ve been a Lala member since November 2006 (I wanted to wait awhile before I came out and recommended it) and it rocks. (takes on a Dr. Cox voice) Look, here’s the deal, you create a profile, and then a list of cds you have that you are ready to trade, and then a list of cds you want. Lala sends you the envelops and cd cases for shipping, then you sit back and wait for cd ‘orders’ to fill and mail off (ala Netflix), and then watch your list as others send you cds. You pay 1$ a CD plus .75 cents shipping; with .20 cents of every trade going to the artists, via the Z Foundation that they’ve setup. So far I’ve traded, and gotten, 32 cds, all but 3 of them were in great shape, the other 3 are playable, but pretty scratched up. You get to note that once you receive them, so they have you covered there. It’s been a great way to try stuff that you’re on the fence about, while distributing old stuff you don’t want to people who do want it. You can view my trade/want list here, then if you’re interested go there, read the fine print and sign up if you want. If you mention I recommended you I get a free tshirt, and with my so-so concert showing status of late, I can use all the new shirts I can get! Rock on.

Silkworm drummer Dahlquist killed in car crash

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:10:18 -0600

Also, a fellow poster on digg.com shared a link to a memorial site for the victims here: http://www.dougjohnmichael.com/

NOTE: _I originally posted this to my old blog, July 19th, 2005, but have reposted it here after receiving an email about a Silkworm documentary in the works, with an accompanying trailer that gave me goose bumps. It reminds me of just how much their music meant to me, and how glorious they were live. I’ll post more on them in a bit, first I need to re listen and take them in again (you should too). Now playing, Silkworm “It’ll Be Cool”. _

Wedding Present to Recreate George Best

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:56:04 -0600

masterpiece of Sea Monsters.

Windows XP to be phased out by year's end

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:48:00 -0600

The evolution of the video game controller

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:24:00 -0600

and that controller bit, hard. But check out ‘The Nintendo Game & Watch’, a Donkey Kong game from 1982; the case is a dead ringer for the Nintendo DS! Damn, this is fun stuff.

Kurt Vonnegut dead at 84

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:58:24 -0600

at age 84. “Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island._ His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States. Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well? He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. “Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.”__ Not all Mr. Vonnegut’s themes were metaphysical. With a blend of vernacular writing, science fiction, jokes and philosophy, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, for example, or the destruction of the environment._” Viewed as a whole, his writings are timeless.

Painter Sol Lewitt dead at 78

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:01:44 -0600

, plus most major museums have pieces of his you can checkout in person. Back in the day when I worked at the gallery, I framed and installed a few of his pieces.

Homage to Donkey Kong in post-it notes

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:11:29 -0600

was the first appearance of the Itallian plumber we now know as Mario. While this game’s early ’80s arcade popularity predates most of today’s engineering students, it represents the amazing results that a small development team can produce. Today Donkey Kong is ranked as the 3rd most popular arcade game of all time, selling over 65,000 units._"

thought for the day

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:04:23 -0600

We have the following quote pasted on our refrigerator at home, and it relates to me, my wife and family. “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” - T. S. Eliot

Global warming: 51 things we can do

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:49:59 -0600

Time has an article about 51 things we, along with scientists, businesses and governments, can do to slow global warming and cut carbon emissions. “Here is our guide to some of the planet’s best ideas” This is getting more and more press of late thanks to Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvienent Truth, and regardless of what you think about that, thinking longterm for our environment helps EVERYONE! While we’re on the topic, to keep in this mindset and come up with new ideas, visit EcoGeek and Treehugger; both fantastic sites. I’m now researching how I can get started with solar panels on my roof along with all that it entails to either directly power something, or to contribute to the grid. What are you doing to help? At the very least we should all get a free energy audit of our homes via the local electric company.

Martin Luther King's other causes

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:56:35 -0600

On this, the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, there’s an important article by some truthout guest contributors titled The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV. It covers King’s under reported life from 1965-1968 when he was assassinated. After the civil rights bills were passed in 64 and 65 King took on economic rights. He argued that that for poor people anti-discrimination laws were hollow, since they couldn’t afford a house, or the right to eat in a now “equal” resturant. As King so eloquently put it, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” On this day in 1967 he presented his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered New York’s Riverside Church where he called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” The speech was criticized and ignored at the time, and it never gets the attention of his earlier thoughts, but listening to it now brings to mind how much it parallels our current situation. I’ve mirrored the article from truthout below, it’s just too good not to read, and it includes a link to the text and audio of the speech. MLK was one amazing human being, and his words are still pertinent today, if not more so considering how history is repeating.

TJX breach total: over 45.7 million card numbers stolen

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:43:07 -0600

covers the ongoing how did this happen question. “TJMaxx computer system intruders who stole 45.7 million credit cards. The **worm operated **undetected for at least 18 months, capturing credit card numbers, then __changing timelogs and moving data around to erase its tracks. Initial speculation suggested that the thieves had access to the retailer’s encryption __key. Now it may be that the program captured data before it was encrypted. If the latter, the ramifications are immense, as it means every single retailer’s credit card processing system is at risk.”

Explosions In The Sky live show online

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:54:14 -0600

I’ve been listening to Explosions in the Sky like crazy recently. I really love the new cd, and shows of theirs are available in a few places online. You can grab one from the current tour on npr.org, as part of their ‘NPR Live Concert Series’. It’s easy to download, as they have it packed as one 66Meg mp3 (hey, IMO concerts don’t have a forward or back buttons to skip songs, so why should this?) Read the article here, and then scroll down about half way and click on the link that says » Download Explosions in the Sky to download the show. It’s a great introduction to the band, props to npr for posting this, and props to EITS for allowing it to be shared.

NO CARRIER (Speakeasy bought by Best Buy!)

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 09:02:07 -0600

things go south with Speakeasy. To the Speakeasy CEO: Please don’t let us down.

Retirement community holds a Wii bowling tournament

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:12:26 -0600

[ are having so much fun with this. “A retirement community engaged in a Wii bowling tournament. The seniors got hooked during the holidays, when they sampled gifts residents were giving their grandchildren. Some retirees stayed up late at night playing Nintendo games, and a tournament soon followed: Residents at Sedgebrook, an Erickson community in the Chicago area, gathered for a bowling tournament recently. Find out how much fun they had playing ’their granchildren’s game’ and discover who won for high score and high series.”

Shellac's Excellent Italian Greyhound out in June

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:00:26 -0600

from a UK appearance in 2002, or sample a track from it below. Play loud.

Shellac “The Guy Who Invented Fire”

(live from Camber Sands, UK @ All Tomorrow’s Parties - 04.20.2002)

http://www.transmission3000.com/Media/Shellac/2002-04-20/02guywhoinventedfire.mp3

cooking with wine? go cheap

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:18:03 -0600

The New York Times tested the adage that you shouldn’t cook with any wine you wouldn’t want to drink. And guess what: It worked out just fine. “It wasn’t that the finished dishes were identical – in fact, they did have surprisingly distinct flavors – but the wonderful wines and the awful ones produced equally tasty food, especially if the wine was cooked for more than a few minutes.”

Coffee is for closers

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 08:45:37 -0600

Ah, being on call will do it to you, and this spoof of the classic Glengarry Glen Ross monologue sums things up perfectly today. At least it’s Friday, and it reminds me that I need to watch that movie again too. (warning, plenty of language, and it’s all bad).

Morrissey to tour the US this Spring

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 05:08:32 -0600

UPDATE: Tickets onsale for Tue 22 ST LOUIS, MO : The Pageant - 10 a.m., March 31. I’m assuming this is via Ticketmaster, but I’ll try to find out ahead of time. Also, the Austin show goes onsale at the same time.

Just announced, Morrissey is doing a Spring US tour, but for the first time in 16 years, he’s playing Saint Louis! Tuesday, May 22 at The Pageant, my favorite mid sized venue, holding only about 2000. I’ve seen him four times, once in Saint Louis, and three times in Chicago, but it’s clearly been too long. His last minute cancelation (literally the night before) in Austin a few years back was a heartbreaker, but hey, even my peeps down there will get to finally see him at The Backyard. Awesome.

Shigeru Miyamoto

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:22:08 -0600

, Shigeru Miyamoto serves as the creative force behind the world’s most popular and enduring video games for Nintendo video game hardware systems. Miyamoto joined Nintendo in 1977 as a staff artist and quickly built a reputation for himself. As the creator of the hugely popular Mario and Zelda games, he is one of the most revered figures in the video game world. In 1981, Nintendo released Miyamoto’s first masterpiece, the arcade game Donkey Kong. In 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System with Miyamoto’s Super Mario Bros. The classic side-scrolling action game set the standard for all future home console video games. Eventually, more than 40 million units were sold worldwide, and a series of mega-hit titles was born, including the 1996 Nintendo 64 best seller, Super Mario 64. More than 193 million video games in the Super Mario series have been sold worldwide. To date, Miyamoto has worked on more than 100 different Nintendo video game titles. As a producer for Kirby and Pokémon games, he has supported younger video game creators. Miyamoto’s most recent video game projects include Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nintendogs, Super Mario Galaxy and design work on the Wii hardware. He also was responsible for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Super Mario Sunshine, Pikmin, Luigi’s Mansion and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which has been called the greatest video game of all time._" All I have to say is, “Wow” and “Thanks”

Ted Haggard massage table on eBay!

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:10:39 -0600

Mike Jones, the former prostitute who Ted Haggard visited, has the offical massage table on eBay! It’s currently at 1175$ with 6 days to go, and with, _"__All proceeds benefit ‘Project Angel Heart’, who provides people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses nutritious home-delivered meals__"_ it’s for the right reasons. I took the opportunity to send him a note myself, _“Mike - Don’t think your bravery wasn’t noticed, thanks for doing what you did, and what you’re doing now. We live in a free country, but when someone who judges others (especially when that person welds so much power) they need to be held accountable for their own actions. Thanks”_ Regardless of your values and/or religious beliefs, I hope you feel the same about abuse of power and hypocrisy.

UPDATE: I heard back from Mike almost immeidately, “Thank you for your kind words of support. It means a lot to me. The best to you. Mike Jones” That makes me feel good, hopefully one day we’ll be able to treat everyone equally and not judge others.

Amon Tobin - Foley Room trailer

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:11:24 -0600

I’m a big fan of a few of Amon Tobin’s previous releases, especially _Briolage. _He created his upcoming release by recording real sounds from all over, and then taking them back to the studio to sample and mix. The results are very cool, but they still sound like Amon. There’s a limited edition that comes with a DVD of the process, here’s the trailer for it.

Kill Dash Nine!

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:07:47 -0600

Here’s a video of some Standford kids going by the moniker Monzy doing a pseudo (sudo?) rap to a Unix administrator’s ace in the hole: kill -9. It’s pretty dorky, but in a geeky way, and thus funny; at least to me. It’s Nerdcore Hip Hop at its best. MP3 download and Lyrics after the jump.

)

mp3:

Kill Dash Nine http://graphics.stanford.edu/~monzy/KillDashNine.mp3

Lyrics:

Kill dash nine

I guess I’ll have to shut you down for good this time, Already tried a SIGQUIT, so now it’s KILL DASH 9. You gotta learn when it’s time for your thread to yield; It shoulda slept; instead you stepped and now your fate is sealed. I’ll take your process off the run queue without even asking ‘Cause my flow is like reentrant and preemptive multitasking. Your sad rhymes are spinnin’ like you’re in a deadlock, You’re like a synchronous sock that don’t know when to block; So I pull out my keyboard and I pull out my glock, And I dismount your girl and I mount /proc And I’ve got your fuckin pid and the bottom line Is that you best not front or else it’s KILL DASH NINE.

More inroads for Linux

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:28:30 -0600

to run Windows apps on thin-client terminals – which the adults are most used to – on the new SUSE Linux 10.1 servers," Carver told DesktopLinux.com. “The kids, well, they adjust to new operating systems and applications very quickly, so a changeover to Linux is no big deal._”

Next up, the Federal Aviation Adminsitrion considers ditching Microsoft’s Windows Vista And Office for a Linux and Google Apps combo. While this could just be an effort to ruffle feathers and get a better deal from MS, if this hold true it will continue my “no one needs Windows and Office to edit some spreadsheets and do word processing. (see this video for a demo on how to signup and use Google Apps for your domain for free (I’ve set this up for my own domains, it’s very slick – look for a full post on this soon). “March is coming in like a lion for Microsoft’s public sector business. Days after InformationWeek reported that the Department of Transportation has placed a moratorium on upgrades to Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7, the top technology official at the Federal Aviation Administration revealed that he is considering a permanent ban on the Microsoft software in favor of a combination of Google’s new online business applications running on Linux-based hardware. “It’s a different sort of computing strategy,” he said. “It takes the desktop out of the way so you’re running a very thin client. From a security and management standpoint that would have some advantages.” Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition last month at a price of $50 per user, per year. It features online e-mail, calendaring, messaging, and talk applications, as well as a word processor and a spreadsheet. The launch followed Google’s introduction of a similar suite aimed at consumers in August. The new Premier Edition, however, offers enhancements, including 24x7 support, aimed squarely at corporate and government environments. Bowen said he’s in talks with the aviation safety agency’s main hardware supplier, Dell Computer, to determine if it could deliver Linux-based computers capable of accessing Google Apps through a non-Microsoft browser once the FAA’s XP-based computers pass their shelf life. “We have discussions going on with Dell,” Bowen said. “We’re trying to figure out what our roadmap will be after we’re no longer able to acquire Windows XP.”

Reduce ewaste with Linux

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:28:08 -0600

for comedic effect. I like it!

mod_security rules to prevent Wordpress 2.1.1 attack

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:14:42 -0600

[, simply update your httpd.conf with the following rules:

<IfModule mod_security.c> SecFilterEngine On SecFilterDefaultAction "deny,log,status:412"

`# RULES: Prevent Wordpress 2.1.1 attack

http://wordpress.org/development/2007/03/upgrade-212/

SecFilter “ix=” SecFilter “iz="`

[...]

</IfModule>

And then restart Apache. Note that while this is an effective temporary workaround, upgrading is recommended. Also, any install other than 2.1.1 is not effected.

Somebody set up us the bomb

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:47:33 -0600

post from the ‘suspect’ – which I’ve mirrored below. Enjoy.

This … is going to be a long one. And believe it or not, it’s a 100% true story. Its relation to World of Warcraft will not be immediately apparent. Anyway, the gist of what happened is here.

It all started when I got out of my seat to go to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands, and returned to my seat. A little while later the two stewardesses on the flight crossed each other in the aisle. They had a quick conversation that I was in earshot of.

Modest Mouse - Dashboard video

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:35:22 -0600

Modest Mouse’s new one, We Were Dead Before The Ship Sank, doesn’t come out until March 20th, but the video for the first single, Dashboard, is already out. It’s a really good song that sounds more rocking than their last release; harking back to a bit earlier days, which is good. And hey, give them credit for the video, it’s pretty nice as well, plus I think you can see Johny Marr in the backgroud there near the end, wowser.

Action video games can improve eyesight

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:46:30 -0600

, they have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics. In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart._" In the test, “Students had to quickly identify the orientation of the middle “T” – Action game players could do it better.” See graphic above.** **

Bob Mould's hard drive crashes, loses new album!

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 08:57:39 -0600

Boycott the RIAA in March

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:40:45 -0600

lately, and it’s about time we stopped merely bitching and moaning and did something about it. The RIAA has the power to shift public policy and to alter the direction of technology and the Internet for one reason and one reason alone: it’s totally loaded. Without their millions of dollars to throw at lawyers, the RIAA is toothless. They get their money from us, the consumers, and if we don’t like the way they’re behaving, we can let them know with our wallets. With that in mind, Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. We want to get the word out to as many people as humanly possible that we can all send a message by refusing to buy any album put out by an RIAA label. Am I saying you should start pirating music? Not at all. You can continue to support the artists you enjoy and respect in a number of ways._"

Explosions In The Sky - Live on Conan

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:41:11 -0600

Here’s another great band from Austin that I’m now only hearing about after being away for two years, Explosions in the Sky. In my defence, while I’ve heard of these guys, they’ve only been putting out discs since 2000, so I haven’t missed that much, but they are very good. Think of Godspeed You Black Emporer and Mogwai; two great tastes that taste great together. Here’s their appearance on Conan O’Brien with them doing Welcome, Ghosts. They had to be quick with this one, as most of their songs are much longer, but still they do a good job at it and it’s a great intro for the unconverted. For other samples there’s a live in the studio performance from 2000 at KVRX in Austin or a really great show from 2004 on Internet Archive. After that, go buy some CDs. RIYL - Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emporer, M83, and Mono

Sidney Poitier turns 80

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:22:50 -0600

, that are my favorites. Very recommended. Also, his autobiography “The Measure of a Man" was picked by Oprah Winfrey to join her “book club” just last month. “Poitier’s book combines memories of such plays and films as “A Raisin in the Sun” and “The Defiant Ones” with observations about the Academy Award-winning actor’s childhood, his religious faith, his thoughts on racism and the influence of such world leaders as Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. “He writes really candidly and passionately about his childhood, his family, relationships and his extraordinary career,” Winfrey said on her show, which airs from Chicago. “It really is about what makes character, what makes you be who you are. He is the measure of one of the greatest men I think who has ever been on our planet.”

how to figure annual salary from hourly rate

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:25:45 -0600

It’s funny, I’ve always figured how much an hourly rate transmitted to annual salary by taking the hourly rate and muliplying by 2080 (number of work hours in a year), but today I stumbled across a simplier/quicker way to estimate this on Life After Coffee. “…a simple way to estimate yearly income from hourly rate on the fly. Let’s say you are offered a job for $11/hour. If you assume you work 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year you can simply double the hourly rate and that will be the yearly income in thousands, so $11/hour = $22,000/year.”

Fitness experts endorse Wii for health benefits

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:34:00 -0600

has released results of a new survey into exercise and video games, finding that technologies such as Nintendo’s Wii “may prove to be just what fitness experts are looking for to help their clients get more active”. Dr. Josh Trout, Professor of Kinesiology at California State University Chico, who specializes in video game technology and exercise movement, is cited as saying: “Exertainment and home video consoles are the wave of the future.” He continues: “Exergaming can provide excellent health benefits, but so can a Stairmaster, lifecycle or treadmill, if you do it. If a person has chosen a sedentary lifestyle, there is not much a new technology is going to do for them. On that note, exergaming, and exertainment, is an excellent way for getting kids hooked on physical activity, producing good exercise habits that can last their lifetime.” The survey of the association’s members has them asked about possible health benefits and risks related to the use of ‘exertainment’ technologies implemented in such consoles as the Microsoft Xbox, the Sony Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii. Nichole Snow, an ISSA Certified Personal Trainer and avid gamer, was one of the more in-depth respondents, advocating Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution along with her fellow trainers as “…definitely more of an aerobic game - I see kids all the time enjoying it and losing weight - I think they gain a lot of aerobic exercise without realizing it.” She also noted of Nintendo’s new console: “The Nintendo Wii will show benefits for everyone. Whether you can sit down for the game or you have to be standing, it involves movement. The best part is its just fun - for everyone. De-conditioned and obese individuals will find it fun to play and gain aerobic movement out of the games. Seniors can enjoy gentle movements of bowling and golfing. Youth become a part of the game and don’t just turn into vegetables in front of the TV.” She concluded her comments by noting: “Everyone can burn some calories and learn some good health habits from Nintendo Wii’s fitness, and the system is just too hard to pass up__when watching anyone play.”

First post via Wii!

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:43:53 -0600

e. Plus, after my first round of boxing I had to take a break; it’s a real workout, with sweat included. Time to try the wii sports diet for myself. So far both kids and wife are lovin’ the wii just as much. In the words of Ferris Bueller, “It’s so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.” Also, notice the new wii topic; oh yeah. More soon…

Elliott Smith rarities compilation out in May

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:41:32 -0600

. The tracklisting for the upcoming rarities follows…

Disc 1

Angel In The Snow
Talking To Mary
High Times
New Monkey
Looking Over My Shoulder
Going Nowhere
Riot Coming
All Cleaned Out
First Timer
Go By
Miss Misery (early version)
Thirteen

Disc 2

Georgia Georgia
Whatever (Folk Song in C)
Big Decision
Placeholder
New Disaster
Seen How Things Are Hard
Fear City
Either/Or
Pretty Mary K (other version)
Almost Over

jazz quotes

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 09:36:44 -0600

A cat active in the Wordpress circles, PhotoMatt, has an awesome page of quotes from Jazz musicians through the years. I have a couple I want to submit, but cruising through them is very inspiring.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 08:53:39 -0600

A nice overview of what the Web 2.0 term means/could mean/will mean. My take? A moving target with no center, dot.com_v2 - but with ideas that can/could/will actually make money.

did you get that memo?

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:42:05 -0600

** BILL Lundberg:** Mmmm…yeah, you see, we’re putting the coversheets on all TPS Reports now before the go out. Did you see the memo about this? PETER Gibbons: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got the memo right here, but, uh, uh, I just forgot. But, uh, it’s not shipping out until tomorrow, so there’s no problem. BILL: Yeah. If you could just go ahead and make sure you do that from now on, that will be great. And Uh, I’ll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo Mmmm, Ok? (walks away) ** PETER: **Yeah, yeah, I’ve got the memo, I’ve got - (he picks it up to show bill, but Bill is already at another cubicle)

Transfer files via netcat and tar

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:23:34 -0600

is a “…simple Unix utility which reads and writes data across network connections, using TCP or UDP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable back-end” tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time, it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting built-in capabilities." Basically it’s another small, cool Unix tool that allows you to do tons of cool stuff. I found this example out there that lets you transfer files via tar from one box to another. As with anything to do with nc, it’s dead simple, and logical. On the target box, start nc to listen on a port, and tar up anything it ‘hears’ like this:

Andrew Bird - Heretics

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:48:32 -0600

Andrew Bird’s new release, _Armchair Apocrypha, _doesn’t come out until March 20th, but I’m already expecting it to be killer, simply because his last, The Mysterious Production Of Eggs, continues to amaze me. He’s touring pretty extensively for this one, coming back to St. Louis in March. Seeing him recreate the songs live with just him and a drummer is something else and his last appearance was a really good show, but I was hoping for a more intimate room than The Paegant for this go around, but no. Perhaps getting there early to sit up front would help. Here’s a single from the upcoming relase.

FBI lost 160 laptops in last 44 months

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:36:44 -0600

“Perhaps most troubling,” says the report, “the FBI could not determine in many cases whether the lost or stolen laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information. Such information may include case information, personal identifying information, or classified information on FBI operations.” Laptops can also contain goodies like the software that the FBI uses to make its identification badges, a copy of which was installed on a laptop stolen from the Boston Field Office in July 2002." If the FBI doesn’t keep records of what’s installed on their laptops, how can we expect or trust the private sector to secure customer data? Think about all the websites that have your name/address/etc, and then think of their employees taking their laptops home that may/may not have hooks in to ‘secret’ data…

Morrissey chooses final resting place

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:56:09 -0600

and thought it was very nicely placed_," he told The Daily Express. “I sat there for a long time and I felt quite good about it. It was nice his bones were under the soil I was sitting on. So yeah, that’s my spot.” He says he doesn’t want a big memorial, as neighbor Johnny has, “I want nothing other than name, birth date, death date”, and then leaves a perfect quote for my Morrissey collection “Death is a serious thing, certainly not to be sneezed at.”

psst, time to change your password

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 11:55:57 -0600

According to tech site Intechnology (does that name remind anyone else of Initech?) the top 10 most common passwords are: Thomas, arsenal, monkey, charlie, qwerty, 123456, letmein, liverpool, password and 123.

Dam it

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:14:10 -0600

[

Dam it.

(click image to download a PDF version, suitable for framing)

Current Sxsw band lineup now at 503

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:33:30 -0600

Blah, here’s an updated list of the now 503(!) bands scheduled to play this years’ SXSW music festival; and these are just the ‘offical’ bands, over the years there’s been more and more day shows that were mainly free, so you could see a ton more than we used to over the 5 days/nights. I used to go every year, from 1995 to 2004 - so to miss it for 3 years hurts. Ah, it was so much fun to go to in the earlier days; venues packed, discovering new bands multiple times a day, shopping at Waterloo Records with a crowd that made it feel like Christmas in Spring. It was the trip in 1995 that convinced my girlfriend and I to make the move, and we have never regretted it. Bah, if anyone hits the Emo’s Free Friday afternoon Pitchfork show, please down a Lone Star tallboy while standing at the outdoor stage in the Texas sun for me….sigh. One of these years I’ll be back!

Jon Stewart to appear on Jack's Big Music Show

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:54:37 -0600

like I have!

The Beautiful South calling it quits

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:41:41 -0600

, which is good, I think they deserve at least that. The lyrics were some of the most caustic, British words I have seen this side of Morrissey! “Pop group The Beautiful South have split after 19 years - blaming, with a humour typical of the band, “musical similarities.“Formed in 1988 out of the ashes of The Housemartins, the legacy of “the fourth best band in Hull” includes some of the most distinctive songs to make the top end of the charts - as well as perhaps the most-quoted single sales statistic in history. […] Their most famous songs, such as Song For Whoever, Don’t Marry Her and Perfect 10, took the opposite approach to most pop songs - by centering on what relationships that were not about endless love.”

1-31-07 Never Forget!

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:52:23 -0600

has great coverage of the image, and it’s use as a tshirt design; it looks like this is really going to happen! “…Cause we are the Aqua Teen (Hunger Force)!” As for all of the knee-jerk reactionaries in Boston that brought on this craziness (which didn’t happen in the other 8 cities this PROMOTION, NOT HOAX was set up in), I only have to say this, “we are not bombs” (credit goes to some dude on Digg.com that proposed this for a tshirt - hey, I’d buy one). For the two that got caught in this dragnet, props for giving the best press conference on 70’s hairstyles I’ve ever seen. More on this as soon as soon I talk to Fry Lock, meatwad, Carl and Mastershake (in that order) to get their side of this. Oh, and you can see the trailer for the movie that this was supposed to promote, here.

Volume of spam increased 147 percent in 2006

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:21:23 -0600

all ready to send out a distributed attack from anywhere; mail servers are helpless. Plus the problem is going to get worse because not only, “…the rising volume of spam that’s a problem, but the size of the spam messages. Because botnets use stolen bandwidth, spammers can send files of any size at no cost. And that’s just what they’re doing. In order to defeat content filters that might block their messages, spammers are increasingly using images. The result is that unsolicited bulk e-mail is getting bulkier. The 147% increase in spam that Postini observed in 2006 resulted in a 334% increase in e-mail processing requirement for companies. “This is causing the e-mail infrastructure of many businesses to melt down,” says Druker. “Nobody budgeted for four-and-a-half times more infrastructure capacity in one year.”

New PuTTY release

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 12:13:04 -0600

including speed, plenty of SSH-2 improvements and plenty of bugfixes.

one-third of students in Texas don't graduate

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:21:38 -0600

What a terrible statistic from Texas, “One out of three Texas students don’t graduate, and more students drop out than finish high school in the state’s largest cities, according to education experts. The research group says more than half of students in Texas’ largest cities drop out. The dropout rate among blacks, Hispanics and low-income students is about 60 percent, according to the Center for Education at Rice University. The statewide dropout rate is about 33 percent — or 20 points higher than what the Texas Education Agency reports. Experts warn that the high dropout rate will lead to economic and social problems. Dropouts are more likely to live in poverty, have health problems and end up in jail […] “We have a huge problem,” Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said.” I’d say so.

Return of the Muppets?

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 11:55:09 -0600

heckling with their smart assed comments from the balcony… “_You know, the older I get, the more I appreciate good music. _- _What’s that got to do with what we just heard? _- Nothing, just thought I’d mention it!”

Neko Case on Austin City Limits

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:34:50 -0600

Neko Case’s Austin City Limits appearance has been released on dvd, it’s worth checking out. Here’s a clip of her doing Behind The House. (damn I get homesick looking at that skyline in the background…)

[kml_flashembed movie=“http://www.youtube.com/v/-XJ4qi-PeMs” width=“425” height=“350”/]

stolen TJX data being used for fraud

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:17:34 -0600

As a follow up to TJX Companies data breach reveals credit card data, it’s now been confired that customer data stolen HAS been used to make fraudulent debit card and credit card purchases “…in the United States and overseas, the Massachusetts Bankers Association said Wednesday. The fraudulent purchases have been made in Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana, and overseas in Hong Kong and Sweden, the association said.”

Lester Borchardt, Cheerios inventor, dies

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:53:40 -0600

When I was a kid Cheerios were my favorite cereal, hell, I remember ~10 years back eating them at night after my wife and I would get home from bars, and I still eat them off an on to this day. Any parent is going to have a personal relationship with them since it’s one of the best first foods for infants, plus the ones that hit the floor are easily picked up by the dogs! The ‘inventor’ of Cheerios has passed on, but what a subtile legacy he left; certaining making the world a better place in his lifetime. I think it’s especially cool that he lived to 99, who knows, maybe it’s the cereal, we can only hope!

FreeNAS: network backup system

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 09:59:08 -0600

seem pretty complete…stay tuned.

mpg

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:11:33 -0600

So my new job requires me to drive 29 miles each way, a big farther than my last job, but since I don’t have as much traffic, it doesn’t seem to take that much longer, still, I’m using more gas. Just did a tank to tank to get my miles per gallon, and I’m seeing 26.825 - not bad, but not great, since we’re doing just about all highway miles. Oh well, I’m currently cruising in a secondhand 1998 Honda Accord, 4 cylinder, so I could be doing worse. This is a good time for me to be sporting a Prius or even my old ‘87 CRX, but hey, the CRX isn’t safe enough for us to trust with our kids, and the Prius would just be a recurring payment that we wouldn’t see returns for a long time (if ever). Once they make those hybrids cheaper though…

misplaced priorities

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:17:04 -0600

Damn, file this under pathetic and sad, Americans spend more time with PC than spouse. “A recent survey conducted by Kelton Research discovered what many spouses have known for years. A startling 65% of people asked to participate spent more time with their household PC than with their own spouse. The survey also found that 52% of those same people said their “most recent experience with a computer problem provoked emotions such as anger, sadness or alienation.” Among other things noted in the findings were that a staggering 84% of those surveyed said that they were “more dependent on their home computer now than they were just three years ago.” If this isn’t a wake up call to folks to get a life then I suspect psychology will be a booming business in 20-30 years…not to mention divorce court.

Born Ruffians

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 10:38:47 -0600

’s top EP of the year. Pitchfork sums them up with; “Born Ruffians are three Toronto teenagers with the precise sound we imagine when we think of indie rock in this post-Arcade Fire, post-CYHSY world. Of course, originality doesn’t matter much as long as the band gets the details right, as BR do. They’ve got some things going for them: a few of these songs are tremendously catchy; they’re funny and don’t appear to take themselves seriously…” Wow, more great tunes from Canada! Click below to listen to :: _ _

Google maps shooting Sydney

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:51:39 -0600

This could be interesting… “Search engine giant Google has announced it will be photographing the Australian city of Sydney this Friday, Australia Day, and is encouraging Australians to come out and hold signs, or arrange themselves into funny formations. If the photos are of a good enough quality, Google Australia has promised that the photos will be included on Google Maps, the free mapping software offered globally by the company. Google has special permission to fly at 600m across the city. Google Australia’s Lars Rasmussen said: “This is the first time we have tried this on any scale. We have no idea whether it will work, but we thought it’d be fun to try.” The flight will start at 9am over Centennial and Moore Parks.” Knowing Aussies’ sense of humor I expect good things. Of course whomever is on the Bridgeclimb at the time will have a real opportunity! (I went on the Bridgeclimb in 1999 - highly recommended!)

10 steps to becoming stress free

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 12:51:07 -0600

into our lives. We always have more to do and less time to do it in, this causes stress, but what to do about it? See if the following give you any good ideas. Here I’ll list the 10 suggestions, read more for the list with descriptions and examples.

Start by saying no.

Simplify your day.
Clean your workspace.
Change your surroundings.
Light your office properly.
Surround yourself with happy people.
Sit back and relax.
Take a break.
Eat healthy.
Exercise.

And here’s the list with the descriptions and suggestions from the article. These are good ones, and I already have some in place; to do list, eating healthy, exercise (yoga, though I need to do it far more than once a week), take a break, etc.

TJX Companies data breach reveals credit card data

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:59:38 -0600

, which has already been updated with this recent fun.

Flash Player 9 for Linux released

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:32:23 -0600

If you like Flash or not, it’s still a pain to surf without it since is so widely used (not always for the best; record companies, I’m looking at you), so it’s great that Adobe has released Flash Player 9 for Linux. They have a blog about their Linux development, and some nice wiki style docs as well. After Flash 7 they didn’t work on a Linux port, causing quite the worry in the Linux desktop arena, but their renewed investment only bodes well for more widespread use of Linux as a desktop (which 0wns all other workstations IMO).

Spam levels mysteriously fall 30 percent in a week

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:40:12 -0600

. I’m sure buying a new computer next year will solve that.

HOWTO: have vim create backup and tmp directories

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:54:21 -0600

. Basically it uses directories it creates in your home directory, so you’ll have something like ~/.vim/backup and ~/.vim/tmp which is perfect; files are moved out of the way, but still backed up in a place you can rely on. I slightly reworked this, you can try it out by opening your ~/.vimrc file, and find the line:

<code>set backup            " keep a backup file</code>

Then after that cut/paste the following (if you don’t have the set backup line, add it first):

The Wii Sports Experiment

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:15:05 -0600

. “Six weeks ago, I began what has become a huge obsession of mine. It is called the “Wii Sports Experiment” I outlined a 6 week game plan for myself, the idea being that I would continue ALL normal activity and eating habits, and simply add 30 minutes of Wii Sports to my day. For the past month and a half, I’ve stuck to these guidelines very strictly.” The condensed version is that he lost 9 pounds and 2% of his body fat by playing the games, and he plans to stay on it even though the experiment is over. This confirms what I have heard from friends who’ve played Wii; you can get a workout from it. While I always knew I would someday soon buy a Wii as the step up from our beloved, purple Gamecube, now I have a date, next month for my birthday. That we can play all the games that I, my wife and the kiddos ~~like~~ love is just gravy as we transition over to the new Wii games. Who knows, perhaps I’ll try out the 6 week plan myself.

Perspective

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:03:21 -0600

The Earth, as seen from 4 billion miles away, photographed by Voyager 1 on June 6, 1990.

Secure passwords keep you safer

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 11:28:24 -0600

Bruce Schneier, a long time computer security guru, has a great article up on Wired about passwords, and how most are crackable even with some thought put in to making them safe. Read up and learn how to build better passwords, and if you’re like me and can’t remember them all use something like Password Safe (created by Schneier) for Windows. or Password Gorilla, which is bassed on Password Safe, but available for Windows, OS X, Linux and *BSD. And no, using ’leetspeak’ like fak3r instead of faker doesn’t help make your password safer!

Download 'Linux Kernel in a Nutshell' for free

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:13:09 -0600

, writes “If you want to know how to build, configure, and install a custom Linux kernel on your machine, buy this book. It is written by someone who spends every day building, configuring, and installing custom kernels as part of the development process of this fun, collaborative project called Linux. I’m especially proud of the chapter on how to figure out how to configure a custom kernel based on the hardware running on your machine. This is an essential task for anyone wanting to wring out the best possible speed and control of your hardware.” He goes on to say that the book is now free for download in order to give others the experience of compiling their own kernel to understand how easy it actually is to contribute to Linux. A little code here and there, patched into the kernel, and submitted for inclusion.

Voxtrot starts debut album

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:51:04 -0600

demo of a new song titled Sway. Sway Sway

For the otherwise uninitiated, please try and catch up by giving a fair listen to these tracks, the first one just continues to floor me.

_The Start of Something _The Start of Something

Trouble Trouble

Sharing the truth

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:58:43 -0600

If you haven’t seen An Inconvenient Truth, now you can get a copy on DVD for free. Just fill out your details on this site. From their blurb, “…__it is so grounded, so filled with integrity that even a lifelong republican who despised Al Gore in 2000 concludes that it’s “simply great” (cite). And our generous donors will buy you the DVD. Oddly enough, this is probably the last movie on Earth that you need to be paid to see. There’s no catch.”

A Picasso for 1$

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 08:31:23 -0600

_. “Pete Bivens and his fiancé had the painting analyzed last week by art historians. They think the painting could be an original piece. Now they have to begin the lengthy process of having the painting carbon dated and authenticated. Bivens and his fiancé bought the painting at a yard sale more than a decade ago for one dollar. Experts think a Carolina Beach couple owns a real Pablo Picasso masterpiece.”

Generate a list of installed packages for DR

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:25:48 -0600

I came across this page again, seems they took my advice to heart on the one line command to grep out a list of all installed packages on a Debian or Ubuntu system. This creates a file that you can use as a DR (disaster recovery) map of all installed apps – you only need to install your base system, and then use this file to reinstall all of your apps. Their earlier versions didn’t produce a clean list and it certiainly didn’t go the extra mile of emailing a copy to you.

Prejudice at Age 6

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:12:10 -0600

[. Damn, this is awful.

By age 6, many kids are well schooled in societal prejudice. In a study, researchers interviewed 92 African-American first- and sixth-graders from varying socioeconomic backgrounds about job status and their own interest in particular occupations.

Children from all economic backgrounds associated white workers with jobs that they saw as higher in status. Furthermore, when asked about unfamiliar and even imaginary jobs such as a “tenic,” someone who organizes and marks handicapped parking spaces, children rated careers pictured with white workers above those depicted with black workers or a mixed group.

Poo Poodles free EP

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 12:55:38 -0600

. It’s about time you put some new toons on that iPod, and what better way than to try out something completely new. They have an edge to them, and I suspect you’ll either like them or not, middle ground won’t be an option, but hey, taking chances is how you find new sounds. Be sure to read their ‘disclaimer’ first: “POO POODLES RECORDINGS are used to treat different types of problems, such as difficulty in enjoying music, difficulty in maintaining consciousness while listening to music, and becoming angry while listening to music. Most people have more than one of these problems. … POO POODLES RECORDINGS can help alleviate these feelings. If your feelings do not improve after 1 to 2 minutes of listening to POO POODLES RECORDINGS, see your doctor, because it may be a sign of an underlying condition. Some people have chronic musical enjoyment problems that may require more prolonged listening to POO POODLES RECORDINGS. However, you should not listen to these RECORDINGS for long periods without being aware of the risks and benefits of prolonged listening. Side Effects POO POODLES RECORDINGS have side effects. The most common side effects are: Giddiness, Elation, Glee, Exhilaration, Bliss and Rapture.”

Nevada going geothermal

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 21:16:26 -0600

UPDATE: the links in this post are dead, and the site http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com is dead. For more infomation, check https://evergreensolar.com

A new report from the Geothermal Energy Association shows that Nevada is going after geothermal energy, a limitless, pollution free energy solution. “Nevada is on-track to be producing more than 1000 megawatts (MW) of geothermal power in the next 3-5 years, a level that would meet roughly 25% of the state’s total power needs, according to a new report from the Geothermal Energy Association here (GEA). The report identifies up to 29 new geothermal power projects now under development in Nevada and finds that new power plants would produce as much as 853 MW. Click here for the full report (pdf download).”

How beer works

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:43:54 -0600

Pssst…this is a new kind of post, an aside. Think of it as me leaning in and just telling you something quickly without much explanation. So this is cool, it talks all about how beer works. As a beer lover and sometimes home brewer, I consider this very important reading. Note to self, I need a cool hat like that dude has on.

Kickin' it Technorati style

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 10:47:06 -0600

UPDATE: check it to the right, you can now add fak3r.com to your Technorati favorites, or subscribe in a few different ways. The email one is the easiest, you just get one email each day when there’s an update; no muss, no fuss.

I’m now kickin’ it with a new Technorati Profile - which is something I’d been meaning to checkout. According to them I’m ranked as number 230,035…so there are a few before me, no matter, this is just another attempt to open up fak3r.com to more eyeballs, just for fun, not for profit. So file this under one of those New Year’s resolutions I guess, but put it in the column of ‘achieved’ goals.

James Brown is dead

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 09:45:21 -0600

Best of 2006

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 17:43:35 -0600

of my favorite releases of the year, 2006. It was a great year, again, as I found a lot of new stuff that I will take with me. Band of Horses came out of nowhere with an incredible cd, if I had to choose one from the year, that could be it. Straight outta France came Birdy Nam Nam, four DJs playing their 1200s as if they were a band, and it works! Of course old-timers as well, witness Sonic Youth’s release, how do they keep doing it? Oh, and let’s hear it for mp3 blogs to help us find our way! Noise, beautiful noise.

Parting shot

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 13:57:10 -0600

Today I leave my current job, ending a tenure that saw me at the biggest corpy-corp workplace of my career. With over 10,000 employees, the feeling of being a cog in the system doesn’t begin to describe it. If you’ve seen the movie Brazil (and if you haven’t, what’s up with that?), you likely know how I feel, but don’t worry, I’m actually taking the ‘alternate ending’ version of the movie; yeah, the happy one. So I’m off, having done my time and learned some things here, while working with ‘some’ very cool, bright people. Here’s a parting shot of the view from my cube, utilizing my new camera phone:

The Good, The Bad, and The Queen

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:55:40 -0600

This is just a crazy Brit supergroup, The Good, The Bad and The Queen features Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz), Paul Simonon (The Clash), Simon Tong (The Verve) and Tony Allen (Africa 70, Fela Kuti). All of these guys have solid pedigrees coming into this project, add to that Damon who is on a tear with everything outside of Blur that he touches. Oh, did I mention who’s producing? Yeah, that’d be Dangermouse, who again, seems to have a golden halo lighting everything he’s near. Let’s see, so we have Brit-Pop, Punk, Hip Hop, and Afrobeat…and production by the cat who gave us “The Grey Album” and the fantastic “Mouse and the Mask” along with MF Doom. The debut disc by The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, Kingdom of Doom, will drop on January 22nd in the UK, and the following day over here. Give this track a listen, I think it’s going to be a happy new year indeed.

mod_security for Apache

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 11:44:51 -0600

before, but now it’s running on this webserver, as I’ve just seen a ton of crap being thrown at the server. Webservers are just a good target, they’re out there and they usually ‘just work’ so most people don’t keep on top of them. Plus, plenty of crafted URLs can do funny POST or GET commands and cause trouble, or worse, expose a system that is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. Since I last looked into mod_security they’ve been acquired, which explains the marketing verbiage they list:

Silversun Pickups

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:03:23 -0600

put forth a lot more rock than I was expecting. Like Band of Horses earlier this year, my wife hipped me to this band during a Letterman performance, and it left me interested. Here’s the single from their long player that came out earlier this year called Carnavas.

Silversun Pickups - Well Thought Out Twinkles Well Thought Out Twinkles

Velvet Underground record back on eBay

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:31:23 -0600

_ last week, but as we have reported to the international press which has enquirer, the winning bid was found to have been perpetrated by prankster. We are rerunning the auction this time with amendments to the effect that in the present auction, identities of bidders will be kept private to avoid attracting non-serious attention-seeking bidders, and we are also requiring that interested bidders register before bidding so that we may examine their references. We are hopeful that this will ensure a fair and accurate auction result which will reflect actual market interest. - Scott Wax, Saturn Records" Should be interesting to see how much this really goes for.

Separating the man from the soy

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:19:48 -0600

“. Yep, apparently it’s just that simple folks, Mr Rutz blazes on without nary a mention of sources or anything resembling science, but I’m sure those things will just fall into place. Here’s the gist of his commentary, but feel free to read it yourself from the link above.

Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

I heart music

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 10:42:56 -0600

Here’s a relatively current picture of my front closet at home, with my custom/built-in cds shelves running floor to ceiling. Yes, I have a lot of cds, but note that this composite picture (roughly pasted together with The Gimp) doesn’t show the ~300 that I’ve pulled for sale/trade in. I’ve been shopping for cds since 1985, and I used to really enjoy hitting used stores all around the St. Louis Metro area. Once I moved to Austin my shopping focused a bit more thanks to Waterloo Records (sigh), but then the used powerhouse Cheapo hit town; they had so many used cds constantly coming in it was insane. Now I’m a regular at Euclid Records, browsing the racks and barking out special orders non-stop. While I haven’t seen the number of rawk shows that I used to, I still needmoresongs! Some call it a sickness, but I contend it’s just part of the therapy.

Thom Yorke 'The Clock' (acoustic)

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 09:17:43 -0600

Here’s Thom Yorke performing The Clock , a song off his solo album The Eraser, acoustically on Jools Holland this past weekend. I really love this disc, but to see him perform this so stripped down like this really shows it off.

[kml_flashembed movie=“http://www.youtube.com/v/huXb6lLLy10” width=“425” height=“350”/]

NOTE: for some reason this video is showing up on/off here, not sure why but I suspect it’s the new caching system I put in place. Blah, regardless, if it’s missing reload the page or clicky-click this link to jump to it on YouTube.

Math and Physics Club

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:11:00 -0600

the Lucksmiths: “Once more won’t hurt/ So let’s do it once more._” So RIYL the above mentioned bands, or if you want a break from all things loud, check this out.

Darling Won’t You Please Come Home

[audio:http://mathandphysicsclub.com/files/mp3/MAPC-Darling_Please_Come_Home.mp3]

Weekends Away

[audio:http://mathandphysicsclub.com/files/mp3/weekends%20away.mp3]

Velvet Underground Vinyl on eBay for over $100K

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:00:42 -0600

[

UPDATE4: The top bid(s) were bogus, and the auction ended without a buyer. Looks like it was too good to be true. Regardless, sounds like he’s going to give it another go, “Montreal man thwarted in eBay auction of rare record to try again” As always there’s some fun Monday morning quarterbacking going on over at digg.com on the issue.

UPDATE3: The auction is over, winning bid $155,401.00

UPDATE2: I’ve found more info on the original recording (and the likely source of the FLAC posted for download here - which while it has plenty of surface noise is still very, very cool) plus a full listing of this record on a VU archives site. Check it after the jump.

UN warning on e-waste 'mountain'

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:17:26 -0600

that is being generated and distributed overseas. Currently e-waste including old TVs, CPUs and phones are being shipped off to China, India and more recently, Africa. It’s estimated that up to 50 million tons of waste from discarded electronic goods is generated annually, and of that up to 75% of the shipments are defunct - in other words e-waste. The article states the amazing statistic that, “A recent study by the Basel Action Network concludes that a minimum of 100,000 computers a month are entering the Nigerian port of Lagos alone.” Some of the chemicals in computers called out in the article are lead, arsenic, antimony trioxide, polybrominated flame retardants, selenium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt and mercury; all nasty stuff. If dumped the chemicals can leech into the earth, contaminating land and water, or if burnt, which is the more common disposal method, they release toxic fumes and leach chemicals such as barium and mercury into the soil.

Dead children playing - Stanley Donwood

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:22:04 -0600

While the artist Stanley Donwood might not be a household name, his artwork is immediately recognizable. As the former art-school friend of Thom Yorke, he has been Radiohead’s resident cover artist, having designed all of the band’s record art since 1994’s My Iron Lung EP. Most recently he created the frontispiece of Tom Yorke’s solo debut, The Eraser.

He now has a show at Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona, Spain opening this week entitled Dead Children Playing highlighting his work with the band, and features the art for Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail To The Thief, among others. I’ve always loved his work, although I never knew who created it. I always assumed it was some offshoot alias of Thom Yorke’s, so it’s nice to see more of the background of the artist.

Tokyo Police Club

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 22:13:28 -0600

Tokyo Police Club hail from Toronto, land of indie favs the New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene, among others. I just grabbed their debut EP, A Lesson In Crime, and it’s fantastic. Think of some of the manic efforts of Brianiac, but with a more reined in feel, ala The Strokes. With their back and forth they sometimes sound like We Versus The Shark, but it’s a more focused song structure. Generally a debut EP will be hit or miss, hinting at a good long player, but chuck that thought out the window, this one is perfect. Trotting along, there are no clunkers in the bunch, with only the last song threating to fall into the mediocrity category only to be completely saved by the rocking breakout at the end, leaving you wanting more. This is really great stuff, check the first two tracks below, including the single Nature of The Experiment to get a feel for them.

Back in black

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:38:46 -0600

server that I built a few years back, and it’s humming along nicely. Going to try and make things simpler here, add a little more focus and less razzle dazzle - which seems to be something like feature creep here in the blog world. For now, sit back, I’ll have some new music coming up, geek talk and later maybe some beer. You can keep up by subscribing to the feed. I’ll update it to point to feedburner and put up the sub by email option again soon to get this show back on the road.

Grinderman

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 11:23:23 -0600

, which starts with a dirge of a riff, that deconstructs into a noise fest in the middle and end. Damn, earmark this one for best of 2007 if the this is any indication of the album.

You might be a geek if

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:52:00 -0600

Got this in my email today, recommendations from Amazon based on previous purchases. As you can see, I’m a father, and I’m a geek. This week’s recommendations: Dora’s Book of Manners, FreeBSD 6 Unleashed, Count with Dora!, Good Night, Dora!: A Lift-the-Flap Story, Dora’s Big Book of Stories, Network Security Hacks, Secure Architectures with OpenBSD and Linux Server Hacks.

Since I have a few of these, now all I need is: Boots learns about Open Source Software, Dora: GPL vs BSD Licensing Considerations and Stopping Swiper with OpenBSD’s Packet Filter Firewall.

The hold steady

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 12:52:07 -0600

I’ve been going back and forth with the “Boys and Girls in America” by The Hold Steady, listened to the standout single, and streamed the full CD…it’s got some really good tunes, but I’m not sure if it’s going to get the nod at the local rekerd store or not. Feel free to give your feedback after some listens, it shouldn’t hurt.

Give a listen to ‘Chips Ahoy’: [audio:http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Hold%20Steady%20-%20Chips%20Ahoy.mp3]

Then you can listen to an acoustic version of the album opener, ‘Stuck between stations’

City of Chicago Begins Migration to Linux

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:29:41 -0600

a “Linux in Munich” initiative. Munich hopes to have four out of every five PCs switched to open source technology by the end of 2008."

Firefox 2.0 tweaks

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:29:18 -0600

First, the only add-on or extension that I install is called Fission. Fission allows you to combine the address bar and the progress bar, allowing for the Safari feel of page loading, which is something I think Apple did very well.

Another of its options (and one that I now use) is to also allow the ‘Status bar’ messages to appear in the Address bar, this way when a page is loading, or when your cursor hovers over a link, the URL appears in the Address bar. Now you can click ‘View -> Status bar’ and turn it off, giving you a tad more real estate, but also making the browser that much cleaner. Hard to explain, but really nice in my mind. Check out Fission’s preferences for a guide.

Bad Brains - Pay to Cum

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:16:41 -0600

Between listening to lots of early Ramones, thanks to my son, and the closing of CBGB, it’s very cool that I found this today; it just made my day. Bad Brains at CBGBs in 1979, damn, just behold the power of punk!

Imagine Earth without people

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 11:30:56 -0600

A fancinating article at New Scientist looks at what might happen if all of a sudden we weren’t here to ‘impact’ the earth’s natural growth. “Humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species the Earth has ever known. In just a few thousand years we have swallowed up more than a third of the planet’s land for our cities, farmland and pastures. By some estimates, we now commandeer 40 per cent of all its productivity. And we’re leaving quite a mess behind: ploughed-up prairies, razed forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, mass extinctions and now the looming spectre of climate change. If they could, the other species we share Earth with would surely vote us off the planet. […] “The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better,” says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. But would the footprint of humanity ever fade away completely, or have we so altered the Earth that even a million years from now a visitor would know that an industrial society once ruled the planet?”

Watering down music for kids?

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:47:09 -0600

I was amused, and then annoyed to learn that there is now a ‘kid friendly’ cd with Ramones tracks called Brats on the Beat: Ramones for Kids. Coming out in November on Go-Kart Records, it, “…lets 12 punk and hard-rock veterans get their Raffi on and recreate classic Ramones songs in a kid-friendly format.” So the lineup of artists covering them seem cool enough, it will expose kids to one of the best rock bands ever, which is fantastic, but my beef is, why? Why water down something as classic and series. For those that haven’t seen the commercials, Kidz Bop, “features newly recorded, kid-sung, and “kid friendly” versions of best-selling hit songs.” I don’t consider myself too much of a fuddy-duddy, but I’d much rather my kids listen to The Ramones singing “I wanna be sedated” or “Beat on the brat with a baseball bat” than some inappropriate Kidz Bop song. Examples and more commentary after the jump.

R.I.P. CBCB

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 10:28:29 -0600

Not much to say on this one, while it’s shame it closed, I sure am glad it opened; it changed a lot about rock, giving bands like Television, Talking Heads, Blonde and (of course) The Ramones, a , including shots of the inside of the bar, with a slideshow showing fans and staff watching the last show.

The Daily Show is as substantive as the real news

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 12:31:46 -0600

“The Daily Show is much funnier than traditional newscasts, but a new study from Indiana University says it has the same amount of meat on its bones when it comes to coverage of the news. The brand of news coverage Jon Stewart and the rest of The Daily Show’s staff brings to the airwaves is just as substantive as traditional news programs like World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News, according to the study conducted by IU assistant professor of telecommunications Julia R. Fox and a couple of graduate students. The researchers looked at coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions and the first presidential debate of the fall campaign, all of which were covered by the mainstream broadcast news outlets and The Daily Show. Individual broadcasts of the nightly news and corresponding episodes of The Daily Show were analyzed by the researchers, who found that the “average amounts of video and audio substance in the broadcast network news stories” were no different from The Daily Show. Perhaps more telling, The Daily Show delivered longer stories on the topic.

Art teacher suspended due to museum trip

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 13:10:39 -0600

An Art teacher with 28 years experience is out of a job after taking her fifth-grade classes last April to the Dallas Museum of Art. Why? One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended! This infuriates me beyond belief! Why is this a problem? A Times article relays more of the details, please notice the OFFENSIVE art pictures in this post, yep, those are the pieces of OBSCENE art that got this teacher suspended! Consider yourself warned, get the kids outta the room!

First Beta Release of Ubuntu 6.10

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:16:03 -0600

I have a fully working updated Dapper on my home workstation, but hey, I needs to have the latest, so I’ll likely give this a go soon.

New Shellac album, early 2007

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:13:46 -0600

, mp3 sourced, but still a very clear listen once you have it on a hifi, and not just some computer speakers. I last saw Shellac in 1995, so it’s been some time, but I listen to their cds quite a bit; they wear nicely. Let’s hear it for noise.

Shellac “The Guy Who Invented Fire”

(live from Camber Sands, UK @ All Tomorrow’s Parties - 04.20.2002)

http://www.transmission3000.com/Media/Shellac/2002-04-20/02guywhoinventedfire.mp3

Why email is addictive (and what to do about it)

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:20:51 -0600

“Email is addictive because it is a variable-interval reinforcement schedule. Checking email is a behavior that has variable interval reinforcement. Sometimes, but not every time, the behavior produces a reward. Everyone loves to get an email from a friend, or some good news, or even an amusing web link” i.e. rewards.

Better days will haunt you

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:19:56 -0600

Chavez (no, not Hugo!) was a Matador band in the 90s, and their cds have now been brought back into print, with an accompanying dvd chronicling the band’s work. “Better Days Will Haunt You” is a fully remastered (what isn’t these days?) double CD-plus-DVD, and is billed by Matador as ‘…a tribute to over-completeness and deluxitude’. While only churning out 2 albums, they had some great songs, and rocked out live. You can (should) take a listen to some Chavez studio fun on Matador’s audio page; the flowing tracks, “The Guard Attacks / Unreal is here” is a great showcase for what the band had to offer. I saw them open for Guided by Voices in ‘95 in St. Louis, and lead singer, Matt, filled in on bass for GbV in the late ‘96 era of the band when current bass player had to return to Dayton to continue his law practice. However, one thing that will always stick with me is the video of theirs to ‘Unreal is here’, where they lampoon the music biz in wonderful fashion. Either I love the song because I love the video or the other way around, no matter, both are great.

Austin musician Don Walser dead at 72

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 18:17:55 -0600

Western classics like “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and “Cherokee Maidens.” “He loved it when some kid with a ring in their nose would bring their parents and their grandparents,” Kalish told The Associated Press. “It was part of his genuineness that came across.” Walser’s career didn’t really get off the ground until the late 1980s, when he began playing small venues after spending 45 years with the National Guard. In 2000, Walser was given the National Heritage Award in Washington. He is survived by his wife Pat and their four children."

PJ Harvey - The Peel Sessions 1991 - 2004

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:54:43 -0600

I’ve been a fan of PJ Harvey since the beginning, and she continues to amaze me. Her live DVD from last year was tremendous, and shows how she’s grown as an artist even in the past few years, so it’s cool that she’s now going to release ‘The Peel Sessions 1991 - 2004’ on Island Records 23rd October 2006. Of course I already have the collections from ‘91 (first year I saw her play live) and ‘93, but having it all in one package will be give a real overview of her art. “A collection of P J Harvey’s Peel Sessions will be released for the first time, during a month of commemorative events, to mark the second anniversary of the inspirational broadcaster’s death. _ to her seventh album Uh Huh Her, released in 2004. Harvey recorded many sessions with John Peel over the years. Of the release, Lousie Kattenhorn, John’s Producer, said ‘John loved the sessions and was thrilled to have Polly record so many for his __show. He considered her a wonderful artist and they were great __friends. It’s fantastic that they’re coming out on CD’”

A file list in Ubuntu for quick system restore

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:43:19 -0600

While I’ve read this plenty of times, today via Digg I found complete docs that I wanted to save on how to restore a Ubuntu Linux install; bringing it back to the way you had it from a fresh install easily. Why would you need this? Well, hard drives die, but more often (in my case at least) it’s fun to start with a fresh system when new versions of Ubuntu come out, or when you have to try out the latest/fastest filesystem, or you can’t live without the latest/bleeding edge apps/features. So to start, you’ll first need a snapshot of your installed applications on your working system, which is easy enough to do:

I dig The Diggs

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:23:06 -0600

Been hipped to the band The Diggs of late, after extensive mp3 blog surfing led me to get to know them (being bored at work has it’s benefits). It’s what I’ve been looking for lately, and I highly recommend them. Haven’t found anything like this recently, you know, the newer/indie/shoegazey (mbv ) stuff with the blend of Broken Social Scene-age, and from a trio to boot. The live pic below is from their Northsix show, from just a scant few days ago in Brooklyn. Listen to two tracks from their second effort, named Commute, below.

Green tea reduces risk of early death

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:17:34 -0600

Meanwhile, Dr. Saverio Bettuzzi from the University of Parma in Italy reveals his study that showed that, “after a year, only 1 man among 32 in the GTC (green tea catechins) group developed prostate cancer, a rate of only 3 percent. In contrast, 9 out of 30 men treated with placebo developed prostate cancer, for the expected rate of 30 percent. The investigator performed a trial involving men with high-grade PIN, who were given an inactive placebo preparation or one containing 600 milligrams of GTCs daily, “equivalent to 12-15 cups of green tea infusion, that is about two times the average intake in Asian countries.” “To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that GTCs have potent in vivo chemoprevention activity for human prostate cancer,” Bettuzzi noted. “There are other studies strongly suggesting that similar results could be obtained for prevention of other types of cancer. As a matter of fact, breast and colon cancer are possible targets. In the near future, we are supposed to start a collaborative trial involving both Italy and USA on this matter,” Bettuzzi concluded.” And yes, I’ve already drank 2 cups of green tea this morning!

Things that I will keep

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 09:26:43 -0600

I could write a website about Guided by Voices (GbV) and how much they mean to me, but who has the time? Instead here’s a song from their later years; years fraught with releases that were far more produced, and thus not nearly as good as their mid period peak (1994, I’m looking at you) - yet this one stands out, and it was a great one live. Bob, a salty salute to you, always! Things that I will keep indeed.

Please Listen Closely, Menu Options Have Changed

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 15:17:19 -0600

, which provides a nearly encyclopedic list of companies’ phone numbers and the string of menu choices you must press to bypass the phone tree and get to a human. Example: “SUNOCO … 800‑278‑6626 … Press 0 five times, then mumble when prompted for an account number.” _I’ve always hit 00000000000, but perhaps some have caught on to that. This is a nice service, I’ll give it a go next time I need to call up one of these places. And why do all of them spout on about, “Please Listen Closely, As Our Menu Options Have Changed”, sorry, but I’m not buying that.

Andrew Bird

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:29:46 -0600

I’m a big fan of Andrew Bird, his songs seem to grow organically while they progress, and this holds true live when you realize how he makes his music. Starting with a gentle plucking of his violin played into a sampler, he’ll loop that in real time, perhaps bow the violin for a bit, sample, loop that, then on to the guitar and proceed to sing and whistle the rest of the song. It’s just him and Martin Dosh on drums, and that’s all that he needs to realize his art. If you haven’t heard anything by him, give him a listen below, or listen to his last cd, streamed by Righteous Babe. He’s going back on tour soon, so catch him if you can.

HOWTO: slick fonts in Firefox under XP

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:47:23 -0600

Finding fonts that looked right in Mozilla on Linux used to be a pain, whereas today that seemingly little issue is far behind us. Now I want the fonts on my work machine running XP to look as nice. With a little help from Microsoft’s ClearType Tuner and this font combination, I’ve found the sweet spot! I’ve been involved with Mozilla since almost the very beginning. I first developed an update script during the M20 milestone days of Mozilla in 2000, but one of the ongoing challenges was finding a font combination that looked good in Linux. Back before the availability of the Bitstream fonts and other open source fonts as options, and if you had some fonts that would look good, the secondary ones wouldn’t. It was a pain, but with Linux fonts nowadays, this is no longer an issue, they look fantastic. While running XP at work (it’s one of those I have to deals) it never looked quite as nice as at home under Linux. Today I found out that I actually like this current setting over any that I’ve previously tried under Window, so I thought I’d share it in case it helps others, or simply to remind myself. Here are the settings on the panel ‘Options’ > ‘Tools’ > ‘Content’

Anti-telemarketing script

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 14:23:40 -0600

to turn the tables on the telemarketers. Now all I have to do is get rude enough to run through this with one of them. Sometimes I just pretend I can’t hear very well, other times I ask questions while they’re talking, etc, but with all the blacklists and auto do-not-call lists, we don’t get them anymore. The few we do we tell them that they’re not allowed to call, and put us on the do-not-call list, they comply. Still, this is fun, would be nice to make it into a real script, one that would query known spam email servers with all sorts of junk without ever accepting the junk email!

HOWTO: Passwordless ssh logins

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:07:51 -0600

UPDATE2: Recently, while building a proof of concept computer cluster, I came across a much simpler way to do this. If you have ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id installed, it’s a two step process

First, create a password-less ssh rsa key:

ssh-keygen -b 2048 -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -P ''

Second, copy the key to your remote host:

ssh-copy-id user@remote.host

Note, if you’re using a different port, or want to call out any other ssh features, put it in single quotes like this:

Dale Chihuly expose

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:23:33 -0600

PBS and philanthropic partnerships. They will protect their assets as a business would and do what it takes to keep the money coming in and their products at high value_."

Ultimate Ubuntu eye-candy with Xgl and Compiz

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:54:45 -0600

Back a few months I installed Compwiz/Xgl, (developed by Novell) on Ubuntu. While it was still really new, I liked using it and was looking forward to seeing how it progressed. Well, it’s progressed quite well, and now I’ve found a simple (and easy to back) way to install and run Compwiz on Ubuntu 6.06. If you haven’t heard about it, Compwiz is, “An OpenGL powered desktop, Composite, OS X-rivalling effects”, which just means it makes using your desktop a blast, and more productive, which I agree with. For an illistration checkout this video and these screenshots for the fun, but wait until you use it. While it looks like fluf, this is far more useful than any ’eye-candy’ I’ve ever seen. Mark this on my ’todo’ list for tonight, we’ll see if it runs on the iBook smoothly.

Former Smith Johnny Marr joins Modest Mouse

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:49:34 -0600

and wait.

HOWTO: Elevator hack

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 13:09:45 -0600

Here’s something for me to try out on my trip to Vegas this weekend, could come in handy at those hotels. “The designers of some elevators include a hidden feature that is very handy if you’re in a hurry or it’s a busy time in the building (like check-out time in a hotel). While some elevators require a key, others can be put into “Express” mode by pressing the “Door Close” and “Floor” buttons at the same time. This sweeps the car to the floor of your choice and avoids stops at any other floor. This seems to work on Most elevators that I have tried! Most elevators have the option for this to work, but on some of them the option is turned off by whoever runs them. This is a rather fun hack, so the next time you are on an elevator, give it a try, you have nothing to lose, And this concludes Hacking Elevators 101! Elevators that have been tested and worked on: Otis Elevators (All But The Ones Made In 1992), Dover (Model Numbers: EL546 And ELOD862), most Desert Elevators (All, But Model Numbers ELD5433 And ELF3655)” My report is forthcoming…

DEFCON 14? That's approved

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 11:23:31 -0600

; and attending plenty of talks/presentations on all things hack/security/geek/etc. Looking forward to learning some in-depth security from people in the know; stuff outside of what is generally available to the general public as it were. Also on the agenda, reminiscing, drinking, eating, not sleeping much and laughing. I’ll have a report on relevant events and topics along with a censored Flickr slide-show for all those Web 2.0 kids to link to soon after the fun.

Debian to run on AMD64

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:07:24 -0600

it’ll be quite tempting to build on that instead of FreeBSD for the server. Debian’s focus on stability and security has always been a plus for them, making it a perfect server option. From the announcement, “The next release of the Debian Project’s Linux distribution will run on AMD’s AMD64 processors for the first time, according to the organisation’s Web site. The GNU/Linux 4.0 operating system, also known as “Etch,” is planned for release in December, the group said. It will also have new security features, including encryption and digital signatures to ensure that downloaded packages are validated, Debian said. The AMD64 platform includes AMD’s Opteron server processor, Athlon 64 desktop and notebook processor, and Turion 64 notebook processor. GNU/Linux 4.0 will support 11 chip architectures altogether, the group said. The new release will use the Linux 2.6.17 version as the default kernel and for the installer, although a later version may be picked after a review in October. It will use the GNU Compiler Collection 4.1 as default compiler. Debian will host several “bug quashing” parties in Europe to work out problems with the new release.”

Girl Talk

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:51:51 -0600

’ if you’re so inclined, fun stuff.

[audio:http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/%7Efiles/Girl%20Talk%20-%20Smash%20Your%20Head.mp3]

[audio:http://illegalart.net/girltalk/03%20Hold%20Up.mp3]

[audio:http://illegalart.net/girltalk/12%20Bounce%20That.mp3]

Band of Horses Funeral

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:28:25 -0600

Here’s a band that is definitely worth a listen; Band of Horses. I’d heard about them, but hadn’t heard them until my wife hipped me to this track last week. Check out the lead track below, and then hear more here.

[audio:http://www.bandofhorses.com/mp3/Funeral.mp3]

CBGBs to reopen in Las Vegas

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:29:09 -0600

U.S. gov't mandates laptop security

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:02:14 -0600

Finally, after all of the crazy data theft, the Bush Administration is giving federal civilian agencies 45 days to comply with new recommendations for laptop encryption and two-factor authentication. I can’t believe this wasn’t a standard before, but oh well, from now on out this has to be. Next up, private industries, while not under any direct order, it’s going to be something they have to do to give their customers the assurance that they’re doing something about the problem. See Breaches since Choicepoint or my other Choicepoint story for more background on the extent of this issue.

See the ISS and Shuttle Discovery over your city

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 15:34:15 -0600

above. They will will be a steady white pinpoint of light moving slowly across the sky. Too fast for telescopes, but a good pair of field binoculars may reveal some detail of the structural shape of the spacecrafts.

PayPerPost: Bribing Bloggers to Promote Products

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:56:57 -0600

“Ted Murphy, CEO of advertising firm Mindcomet, has launched a new service called PayPerPost.com. You guessed it, it’s a marketplace for companies to connect with bloggers who are willing to blog about a product - for a price. The companies can set guidelines for their requests such as whether a picture must be included and whether they will only pay for positive blog coverage. There does not appear to be any requirement that the payment for coverage be disclosed. There is a requirement that PayPerPost.com must approve your post before you are paid. Wow.” Great, now blogs will be about as helpful as those “reviews” on Amazon.com, completely biased, and likely fak3d. Does this remind anyone else of payola? read more | digg story

Good Mornin'

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:16:18 -0600

This is my first post with the Audio Player Wordpress plugin by 1 Pixel Out. It looks pretty fly, let’s give it a go, with a classic You Am I toon, eh?

[audio:http://www.youamiserver.com/mp3/you_am_i_-good_mornin(live_on_rove).mp3]

Sleater-Kinney to hang it up

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 13:35:12 -0600

, they put on a heck of a show too. Here’s hoping for the best for each of them, they took a long road and accomplished what most bands only dream of.

Birdy Nam Nam - Absesses

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:08:20 -0600

Birdy Nam Nam (4 DJs from Paris), combine their talents to make one song, for this they won the DMC World Team Championship. Holy hell…

[kml_flashembed movie=“http://youtube.com/v/qMYMC6atRoE” width=“425” height=“350”/]

UPDATE: Found an mp3 of another song of theirs : Kind of Laid Back. Hearing a lot of jazz in there that I really, really like. They have some more vids on their site (flash warning)

Anthony White - The Money Series

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:25:28 -0600

Choicepoint: lessons learned

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:31:41 -0600

, “A Chronology of data breaches since the Choicepoint incident”, an ongoing tally of loss of data. So much for not writing down your password…

Futurama is coming back!

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:38:17 -0600

, Futurama really is coming back, with the same cast to boot! “Futurama” star Katey Sagal confirmed the return of the show on Comedy Central Tuesday night during an appearance on Craig Ferguson’s “Late L__ate Show. … The quirky animated show from “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening was canceled by Fox about two years ago, but will return with at least 13 new episodes on Comedy Central by 2008. This is only the second time in television history that a show sent to TV’s trash heap has been resurrected. Curiously, the first was “Family Guy,” also an animated Fox show. The tale of “Futurama’s” dramatic revival roughly follows that same path that “Family Guy” did. In both cases, the shows have been successfully airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim late-night programming block. They both also turned into hot-selling DVD box sets. “Family Guy” returned to Fox earlier this year, while last fall, Comedy Central outbid Adult Swim for the license to air all 52 episodes of “Futurama” and whatever new episodes might one day be produced. This week, deals were inked to secure all of the original voice talent and the production staff of “Futurama,” paving the way for the series’ return to TV.” Hmmm…but it’s not until 2008, to quote Fry, “That’s not soon enough.” Or, as Professor Fansworth would say, “Sweet Zombie Jesus!”

Why I love Speakeasy

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 13:16:07 -0600

to go to Speakeasy.

You can check for availability to see if you can get Speakeasy where you live, take a look at their nationwide network, see near realtime (updated every 15 minutes) pings that give the latency between each of their POPs or test the speed of your current connection. Recently we’ve cut over to their VoIP service for our home phones, and at the same time switched to their ‘one link’ service which cuts SBC/ATT out of the loop completely. My signal goes from my house to Speakeasy hardware, so to be able to bypass the monopoly that I had to put up with for so many years feels great.

PPI more likely stolen by the Gov than hacked

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:43:06 -0600

More Private Data Is Burgled From Government Than Hacked While the news aims to spread fear that ‘hackers’ are going to steal your identity, numbers show that they really should be fearful of our government. “America’s universities admit that, in the first half of 2006, they let a million Social Security numbers slip through their fingers. Accountants, banks and brokerages have proven themselves to be half as competent at protecting your critical data, conceding to more than 1.9 million lost SSNs. And the health care industry fares even worse: 2.4 million. But the King of Data Giveaways, with over 40 million Social Security numbers stolen in just six months, is your government… local, state and federal. The raw data from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s latest report bears me out.” I remember seeing that list sometime last year, but that it’s still out there, and being added to regularly, is proof that this is going to continue to get worse before it gets any better. Time for the government to take things a bit more seriously in terms of security.

Hello (again) world

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:37:14 -0600

, save the feed.xml file and then import it via WP’s RSS importer. All of the articles, along with the categories, came right over. The only thing is the comments, importing the comments RSS feed from Typo just puts them all in as other articles, not good. So, for now, no comments were transfered, but I’ll keep working on it. I could tell you more but hey, let’s just move on; I’m happy enough to be able to post again!

HOWTO get Typo themes to work with Trunk

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 18:33:00 -0600

I wrote to the mailing list last week to inquire about what themes work with Typo trunk. After a response I found that a fix had already been posted out there in the Internetland. So, mad props and shout outs go to Piers Cawley for posting the solution to getting all the great themes from the Typo themes contest to work with Typo Trunk (most themes are br0k3d due to some basic changes in Typo’s API). Piers writes, ”If you’ve still got problems porting an old theme, it’s probably because your theme renders sidebars ‘wrong’. Check in your themes//layouts/default.rhtml and look for the line that looks like:”

Boards of Canada

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:44:00 -0600

Nice, there’s a new Boards of Canada cd coming out “The Campfire Headphase”. Also, put them up as my favorite music to chill out to at work just after Mogwai. Click below for video to the Boards’ latest single, Dayvan Cowboy.

Cell customers want simple phones: survey

Wed, 31 May 2006 19:12:00 -0600

; make simple phones that are easy to use, drop the idea of making some all-in-one camera, instantmessanger, emailchecker, websurfer, gamesystem and just give me a phone to call home with. ”Most cell phone customers don’t use the camera, email, or gaming options offered by their wireless providers. According a survey by JD Power and Associates, most are satisfied when they can simply place a call efficiently. The organization surveyed 18,740 wireless users who’ve had their current cell phone for less than two years. While overall satisfaction was up four per cent from 2005, most people said that the physical design of their phones and the ease-of-use are the most important factors for positive user experiences. “As more services are added to mobile phones, the ability to navigate the handset in an easy and straightforward manner becomes paramount,” says Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates. Despite the endless ads pushing us to use our phones for everything from playing games to snapping photos, only 19 per cent of people say they use the camera on their mobile and a mere 16 per cent opt to play.” I can currently play games, check the web, download a ton of crap, AIM with friends and more on my two year old handset, but the UI sucks for dialing, and it’s too small to use for any length of time. I’m ready for something better and simplier; enough of these “Where you at?” ads.

Roundcube Webmail update script

Wed, 31 May 2006 17:19:00 -0600

The Roundcube Webmail Project is moving along, and my Roundcube HOWTO install is one of the more popular ones on my site. Today I updated to the latest SVN version, since they’ve recently moved from CVS to SVN for version control, and wrote a script to automate this so I can just run it nightly via cron. Click on ‘Read more…’ to see the script; you should be able to just cut/paste it, set the perms to 755, edit the variables at the beginning to suit your system and run. Of course you’ll need Subversion installed to checkout the code with this script. Feedback is appreciated if you have any suggestions, or come across something that doesn’t work for you.

Stop aktion

Thu, 25 May 2006 18:29:00 -0600

I love that people have so much more creative options these days, what with things like digital cameras, and easy apps like iPhoto and iMovie to exploit for artistic reasons. Here’s a great short film about nothing in particular, but it’s a stop action film built out of 580 digital images, all glued together and audio-fied with iMovie. It’s obviously a DIY project, and it’s really fun, she calls it et cetera. Damn, makes me wish I had more time to do my art; I’ve always thought of things to do with a digital camera to later blow up and interate into a painting, but I’ve never thought of anything like this. Ah, to be young and have time. From the comments we learn that she used to live in Austin, and then find link to a similar project by someone else; a larger, more professional project, made from 2000 digital images. That one makes me want to live in NYC, nicely done.

My music at work

Thu, 25 May 2006 16:08:00 -0600

Study: video games good for kids

Mon, 22 May 2006 19:25:00 -0600

, along with snow boarding and other adventure games. Nintendo knows what it’s doing; you don’t need violence to have a fun game.

Linus interviewed on CNN

Fri, 19 May 2006 20:49:00 -0600

out there to puruse.

Anheuser-Busch buys Rolling Rock

Fri, 19 May 2006 18:34:00 -0600

, solidifying their stand as the biggest brewer in the world. ”Anheuser-Busch, the largest U.S. brewer, said Friday that it has purchased the Rolling Rock beer brand from Belgium’s InBev for $82 million to expand its portfolio of products. Anheuser-Busch acquired Rolling Rock’s global brand rights and recipes and will begin brewing Rolling Rock and Rock Green Light in August. … Anheuser-Busch’s press release says: “Introduced in 1939 by Latrobe Brewing Co. and acquired by InBev’s Labatt U.S.A. in 1987, Rolling Rock is an historic American lager that is well-known for its distinctive, full-bodied taste and painted green bottle. Rolling Rock has established itself as an authentic, iconic American lager with a loyal following.” … “We have an ideal opportunity to grow this historic brand,” said August Busch IV, president of Anheuser-Busch. “This beer is not like others, and its consumer following is equally distinctive. We live in a diverse world where consumers are hungry for variety. Acquiring Rolling Rock enables us to reach a new audience.” Uh huh, whatever you say. As for this diverse world, know that the major choices are pointing more and more to the Saint Louis brewer, ”Anheuser-Busch’s main brands are Budweiser and Bud Light. The company also owns owns a 50% share in Grupo Modelo, Mexico’s leading brewer and a 27% share in Tsingtao, the No. 1 brewer in China.” When I was younger I liked Rolling Rock, used to think the green bottle was pretty cool with the ‘painted on’ label, but it’s actually pretty bad when compared to micro-brews and good European beers.

MySQL Cheat Sheet

Thu, 18 May 2006 19:15:00 -0600

Here’s a page that’s just too useful not to mirror, some cat named Neal Parikh has a page he calls a MySQL Cheat Sheet; click that link for the latest revision, or read more for my mirrored copy for reference. When I have to do DB work outside of what I usually do day-to-day I hit Google for some tutorials, so having this as a reference will be helpful in the future.

Sun to support Ubuntu Linux

Wed, 17 May 2006 20:28:00 -0600

. While Ubuntu has been many people’s desktop Linux choice for a few years now, with its Debian heritage, you can see what kind of server it could be. Slap that on the new Sun 1Us with the new Niagra T1’s CPU, the one that will have four, six or eight cores each, and go to town_.” Strange that the editors changed the URL I gave with one to ZDNet, but hey. Also, sharp readers caught on to my misspelling, which was kinda funny really. I wrote Niagra versus the ‘real’ name of the new Sun CPU: the UltraSparc T1 Niagara. Opps. Can you tell I’m currently rebuilding a mail server with all sorts of anti-spam features?

Quake II Universal Binary released

Fri, 12 May 2006 20:39:00 -0600

, so now it plays on OS X under the Intel Macs. We know the Mac Mini’s graphics card is far superior to whatever Voodoo3 we used to play online with, so what fun it’ll be to drop this on a new Mini, configure the WOD mod, pop open a beer and head out looking for servers online…

Speed up Ruby-on-Rails with memcached

Thu, 11 May 2006 18:46:00 -0600

I wanted Memcached to speed up my CMS Typo, by allowing Ruby to take advantage of it for higher performance. Below are steps compiled from both sites, and used on my FreeBSD 6.0 server, but most of the steps should work as well in Linux. Read more for the steps.

Linux speeds past OS X (again)

Wed, 10 May 2006 15:51:00 -0600

showed only more grief for OS X, ”Running Yellow Dog Linux, the Dual G5 simply wipes the floor with Mac OS X: 411 versus 113 queries per second. It gets worse at 10 concurrent users: 443 queries per second on Linux versus 62 on Mac Os X. Around 20 connections, performance declines only very slowly just like all the x86/Linux machines.” With Apache results predictably poor as well, showing, ”Apachebench on Mac OS X gets in trouble again. Version 2.0 is slightly faster on OS X, but it still trails by a significant margin. On the other hand, YDL and the Xeon platform are roughly 3X as fast with version 2.0.” And concluding with, ”Even if we ignore the Apache results, our MySQL tests - and the queries used in these tests - are based on a real world usage pattern of a real world database. The G5 is partially crippled by a chipset that takes a long time to access the memory, and it’s not the fastest integer CPU; still, it performs like a 3 GHz Xeon on Linux. The problem clearly lies in Mac OS X, and is worth further investigation. …if you plan to run MySQL on Apple hardware, it is better to install YDL Linux than to use OS X. If you need excellent read performance, the maximum performance of your server will be up to 8 times better.” Ouch, so for a server OS X falls flat on its face, regardless of what tests it gets put in next to Linux, but how about on the Desktop? Surely the Intel Duo Core chips can keep up with basic low level operations needed to push desktop windows around…or does it? Well now we have answers on that front as well.

A Picasso sells for $95M

Thu, 04 May 2006 14:45:00 -0600

has long been a favorite piece by Picasso, so it’s always interesting to hear more background of its creation. That Ms Maar had a hand it in only makes this purchase more interesting…to me at least.

OS X: 6 new zero-day exploits

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:14:00 -0600

Logic dictates that as Apple gets more popular it will increasingly become a more popular target for nefarious types, thus more vulnerabilities will be discovered, but this one is huge; OS X hit by 6 new zero-day bugs. ”At least six zero-day vulnerabilities in Apple Computer Inc.’s Mac OS X were disclosed earlier this week by an independent researcher, who noted that all can crash applications or the operating system, and some may let attackers hijack systems. Four of the bugs relate to how the Mac’s OS parses various image file formats – including BMP, TIFF, and GIF, one to how OS X decompresses malformed ZIP archives, and “several” affect Apple’s Safari browser, said researcher Tom Ferris in numerous advisories posted Wednesday to his Security Protocols site. All impact OS X 10.4.6 – the most-current edition – as well as earlier editions, said Ferris, who added that they can result in localized denial-of-service (DoS), in other words “crashes,” and may be further exploitable by attackers installing their own malicious code on compromised Macs.” As is usually the case, the researcher revealed these bugs only to the company at first, but after no action he’s now effectively forcing the issue with Apple. ”Apple was notified of some of the vulnerabilities in January, others in February, but has not yet patched any of them, claimed Ferris.”

Mac Mini doing fast OS switching

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:02:00 -0600

UPDATE: it looks like it would only cost an additional about 78$ for a 512Meg RAM chip to bring this puppy up to 1G total. OS X seems to ‘need’ at least 1G RAM in my experience, plus this would be way more than enough to run a few OSs at once, or at least the ones I need; OS X and Linux. Looking around it seems that replacing the RAM is quite the adventure! Time to find my tweezers.

New features in Windows Vista!

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 01:14:00 -0600

Here’s a nicely done overview of the great new features you can expect from Windows Vista, whenever it’s released that is. A really nicely done comparison of what is new, and what is borrowed.

Daydream Nation in the National Library

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:10:00 -0600

Sonic Youth’s 1998 epic, “Daydream Nation” is now part of the National Library of Contgress. Here’s the link for Daydream Nation, so very cool that it’s now in the Library of Congress.

Neko Case goes off on auto tune and pitch-shifting

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 17:22:00 -0600

about “singers” that need software to make their voice listenable, it’s a good read. ”Case: When I think about Jackie Wilson or the Platters and then I think about modern, Top 40 music that’s really horrible, it makes me mad. Singing isn’t important anymore. I’m not a genius– if I had been around during the time of Jackie Wilson or Rosemary Clooney or Patsy Cline, I would be shit. I would be singing in some bar somewhere for $5 a week and that’s as far as I would ever go. But I’m living now and I write songs, it’s different. There’s some part about the craft of singing– craft is too important of a word, I hate that word but I just used it anyway– in a lot of places, it hasn’t really made it. It’s not to do with the people who are doing it as much as the people who are producing it. There’s technology like auto tune and pitch shifting so you don’t have to know how to sing. That shit sounds like shit! It’s like that taste in diet soda, I can taste it– and it makes me sick. When I hear auto tune on somebody’s voice, I don’t take them seriously. Or you hear somebody like Alicia Keys, who I know is pretty good, and you’ll hear a little bit of auto tune and you’re like, “You’re too fucking good for that. Why would you let them do that to you? Don’t you know what that means?” It’s not an effect like people try to say, it’s for people like Shania Twain who can’t sing”

Prayer doesn't help heart patients

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 16:50:00 -0600

Looks like the merits of prayer on under fire again, “A recent study conducted by the Duke University Medical Center on 700 patients, found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. Researchers emphasized their work does not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another’s behalf. This result seems to contradict a previous study by the same authors that reported “cardiac patients who received intercessory prayer in addition to coronary stenting appeared to have better clinical outcomes than those treated with standard stenting therapy alone.” We’ll see how this plays out, for now if I get sick I’d like everyone to curse for me, I suspect that might be more helpful.

The (BSO) death of an iMac

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:39:00 -0600

Run Windows on Intel Macs with Apple's blessing

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:38:00 -0600

apps do now. Strange times? Yes, but hey, Apple stock holders will be happy, many more people will consider and buy Macs now; but long term what will it mean for the Apple experience? That indescribable feeling of being outside of the mainstream? I know the Mac faithful will say this is another, “Brilliant move!” by Steve Jobs, and I truly hope it is, but I don’t know right now. I want it to be, but my gut says it’s not. Please quote me on this, as I so much want to be wrong.

HOWTO: Fix login issue on Typo

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:58:00 -0600

NOTICE: Before you try this, see the update below - this could mess things up if you have more than one user, and you’re not trying to fix the Admin login

fak3r.com runs the latest (greatest?) Typo code, but sometimes this leads to problems. After an update a few days ago I could no longer login to the site, thus I couldn’t add stories, admin the site or anything. The folks on the Typo-dev list had plenty of suggestions on how to fix it, but led me in the right direction when they just said to delete the user and then recreate it with a new password. This worked, and I’m posting it here in case someone else can’t login to their Typo instance in the future. Go into your database (mine is mySQL 4.x), switch to your Typo database and enter the following:

Live Yeah, Yeah, Yeah stream

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 02:50:00 -0600

UPDATE: As before, NPR did release it as one big mp3 after the show! Grab it here: Yeah Yeah Yeahs live at the 9:30 club in DC - April 3, 2006, because your iPod needs to be fed.

NPR has been sponsoring a bunch of great indie concerts and archieving them on their site for all to hear later. Sure most are Real Audio, but they used to have a mp3 version of an entire Bloc Party show. Anyway tonight (well 9PM EST) they’re streaming a show by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs at the 930 Club in DC. The page with the show is here, and they should have a link up to just stream it after the fact. Nice stuff, I really dug their first disc, “Fever to Tell”, as I said in my ‘Best of 2003’ review, “Yeah, While this may not be the album that saves rock and roll, it’s still a damn fun release. Their minimalistic punk sound is a refreshing look forward and back at the same time. Plus, put their song “Maps” up for single of the year.” I’m still on the fence (but leaning) about getting tickets for their upcoming St. Louis appearance.

Drum machine

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 21:43:00 -0600

Web advertising crosses the line

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:26:00 -0600

What the hell is happening to us? ”Web Hosting Provider to Sponsor Child Birth - Website hosting company, Globat.com, will be sponsoring the birth of a baby girl to be named Samiah Wynn Francis. The expectant mother, Asia Francis, is a 21-year-old resident of St. Louis, Missouri. According to Globat.com, Ms. Francis, along with medical staff and other people present at the birth, will be wearing Globat.com T-shirts and hats throughout the delivery. The delivering mother will also have a temporary Globat.com tattoo. The birth will be videotaped and choice segments will be available online at: www.defyinggravity.com within two weeks of the birth. Ms. Francis commented on the news, ”Who says being pregnant can’t be fun? We are looking forward to our big event, the birth of our first child, and what better way is there to let her know how happy we are to welcome her into the world than by sharing it with Globat.com, her birth sponsor. We look forward to adding them to her baby book.” Ben R. Neumann, President and CEO of Globat.com added, ”The opportunity to sponsor the birth of a child was simply too exciting to pass up and all of us at Globat are truly thrilled to be a part of this awesome journey. This is certainly a rare event, and mom has informed us that the sponsorship money will be put to good use with the added financial strain of raising little Samiah.” Globat.com is launching a wave of similarly unique sponsorships and events under the banner of ‘Defying Gravity’ in pursuit of its goal to place at least one edgy event in every state of the U.S.”

Replicate backup copy or move a mySQL database

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:25:00 -0600

Sure, this is pretty basic, but I never had to do it before, and since I just had a request from a user (that’s a good thing) to bring their blog up to the latest Typo/svn version, I knew it was time to learn. Since you have to do a ’rake migrate on the database to update Typo there’s a chance (usually a good one with bleeding edge Typo) that the database may be worse for wear on the other end of the migration. So, better to do it on a backup/copy of the database. So no big, but I had never done it and had to do some research to learn how. Hopefully this HOWTO will help others figure it out quicker than I did.

Flaming Lips take on Bohemian Rhapsody

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:41:00 -0600

Update: there is video of this available here and here

Wow, here’s a track of The Flaming Lips covering Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody at SXSW 2006 [when the mp3 link goes dead, look for it via Google. With lyrics like, “…Is this the real life / Is this just fantasy / Caught in a landslide / No escape from reality / Open your eyes / Look up to the skies and see / I’m just a poor boy,i need no sympathy…” it’s a perfect selection for them. I was stuck on The Soft Bulletin for a long time, probably because we saw them four times on that tour in Austin, but fell out on the last release. Here’s hoping for a return to form on the new one, but regardless, I’d love to see their live circus again anytime they come to town, just so fun. Did I mention lately that I’m sick over missing SXSW again? Need more songs!

Money changes everything

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 18:19:00 -0600

[ or even Tulsa last week, as he knows I’d love to see him, but it’s been some time. The most recent miss was years ago in Austin, when I was left heartbroken the night before his scheduled gig, ”The last time that Morrissey was scheduled to play Austin, in 2004, the gig was cancelled due to illness.” Still, all looks bright for the future, Mozwise, as he continues to dust off old hits like “Stop Me…”, “Girlfriend in a Coma” and the like for new shows. ”This year his fans were treated to a 17-song set that mixed material from his new album with four Smiths classics. Explaining his decision include Smiths songs in his recent sets the singer said: “I didn’t play Smiths songs for a long time. But then I realised that those songs don’t belong to somebody else - nobody will sing them as with as much feeling as me and no-one will make them more meaningful than I will.” Here, here, now come and play Saint Louis Steven, it’s been since 1991 for hell’s sake! See you in far off places indeed.

'''Do not email'' registries for children'

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 19:52:00 -0600

In July, two states will open up an ‘opt-out’ list to prohibit sending commercial email to children’s email addresses which are registered. ”New state laws in Michigan and Utah will prohibit sending commercial email to children’s email addresses which are registered with the states’ new ‘Do not email’ lists. Officials in both states have confirmed that their new registry web pages for parents — websites where parents and guardians can soon make their kids’ email addresses off limits to email marketers — will be activated this month. Michigan’s registry is scheduled to be available July 1 at Michigan.gov, and Utah’s website will debut its registry a few weeks later. These are the first states to start their own ‘Do not email’ registries. Nationally, the option of starting a national “Do not email” list was explored following the signing of the federal Can-Spam act in 2003, but such a list was deemed impractical and never materialized. … Michigan’s Darnoi is confident that his state’s child registry will survive initial criticism. The registry even has the endorsement of the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.” It’s certainly a new reality for parents these days, how to control access to the unregulated internet. While this kind of protection is a good start, teaching them to be cautious by default is the long term solution. Time to create some more email aliases..

HOWTO: Install Ubuntu Linux in 2 steps

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:33:00 -0600

With full credit going to The Central West End Linux Users Group (CWE-LUG), here’s a TWO STEP way to install a base Ubuntu Linux on a computer.

For a minimal install using the CD and a kickstart file on the net

insert the Ubuntu 5.10 CD into the CD-ROM, then choose either step 2 or 3
For a minimal/server install, at the boot prompt, type:

<code>server ks=http://cwelug.org/~rwcitek/ubuntu/ks.cfg</code>

Or, for a full/desktop install, replace “server” with “linux”:

<code>linux ks=http://cwelug.org/~rwcitek/ubuntu/ks.cfg</code>

Morrissey questioned by the FBI

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 18:33:00 -0600

he still has his problems with it, and doesn’t feel like he shouldn’t bring those up since this is a democracy. I don’t expect to be the last we hear of this, Morrissey rarely backs down, alas a track from his forthcoming release contains the lyrics, ”If your god bestows protection upon you / And if the USA doesn’t bomb you / I believe I will see you Somewhere safe”

Banana thefts increasing

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:02:00 -0600

??????

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 18:51:00 -0600

This has been entered on Typo’s bugtrack as Bug 784.

Running Typo trunk with today’s latest Revision: 993 Using Markdown with Smartypants text filter (still fails when changed to ‘none’)

I created an article with the name ‘??????’ and saved it.
Everything within Admin works fine, you can modify things, edit it, etc.
When you click on ‘View page on your blog’ from the Admin pages, or just navigate to the article directly with a link it doesn’t make it to the article page. For demo: [http://fak3r.com/articles/2006/02/23/??????]

HOWTO: usable xterm configuration

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:09:00 -0600

UPDATE: if you’re using xterm in place of gnome-terminal due to speed, you aren’t any longer. The 2.14 version of Gnome sports a much faster gnome-terminal; it beats xterm for display by allot, and log startup is 20x faster than before! Wow, they did some work on tuning there!

Ok, this is a cheap HOWTO seeing as how I just found it, cut/pasted it and restarted X - but hey, it rocks. I’ve always used Gnome-terminal when in Gnome, but I also tend to when I’m in Openbox or Xfce I use it since I can control the fonts to make it usable, unlike xterm. Last night after installing Xfce4 (recommended) on my iBook I hit their FAQ to do some tweaking where I came across this, and now I can use xterm! It’s right in time to since Gnome-terminal loads very slowly when you’re not in Gnome, and that’s especially annoying when you’re playing in a ‘lighter’ window manager/desktop environment. Xterm, on the other hand, just pops up like it was waiting for you. So, to try out this config yourself, hit this page on their documentaion page, or read more on this post for the quick HOWTO and code.

Flame Wars sparked by misread emails

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:28:00 -0600

Over at The Inquirer.net, they have a great article about the fact that flame wars are often sparked by misread emails, or if not misread, misinterpreted! Hmmm…this hits home since I know some disagreements have started over similar circumstances. ”According to a new study published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people only have a 50-50 chance of detecting the tone of an email. However they actually think they have guessed it right 90 per cent of the time. Psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago said that this of course leads to flame wars when people misread an e-mail’s content or see a post on a message board. Part of the problem is that people think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they ‘hear’ the tone they intend in their head as they write. Those reading messages interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations.” Ok, start the “I hate it when you get defensive like this” replies! ;) * <-j/k

Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 18:14:00 -0600

UPDATE: eek! That page has gone away, but never fear, the Shockwave file is still out there to enjoy, just do a Google search for smb_super_synth.swf. I found it here, here and here.

Someone has made a Flash page where you can replay all the audio from the NES (Nintendo 8-bit console) game, Super Mario Brothers! So fun, those sounds, especially the background music, is just burned into my brain. Funny, just this week I converted a Super Mario sound theme from Adium (available for download here) to work with Gaim! It’s a ton of fun. Here’s hoping that the Nintendo Revolution will allow us to download and play the original classics like this, as others are claiming that it will do just that.

Rating the risks

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:46:00 -0600

An interesting survey of 332 IT “executives” and managers by Forrester Research shows their concerns with outgoing email and IM data. Their take:

25% of outbound E-mails contain content that poses a legal, financial, or regulatory risk36% of companies employ staff to read or analyze outbound E-mail

47% intend to deploy technology for monitoring Web mail or IM traffic

70% are concerned about the use of Web-based E-mail to expose confidential data

IE 7 Beta 2 (and matching DoS attack) released

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 20:47:00 -0600

Amazing, so today Microsoft releases Beta 2 of IE 7, and almost simultaneously comes a tailor made DoS attack! ”Overview: A denial of service vulnerability exists within Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 which allows for an attacker to cause the browser to crash, and or to execute arbitrary code on the targeted host. Technical Details: When running a specially crafted .html file, urlmon.dll inproperly parsers the ‘BGSOUND xsrc=file://—’ (approx. 344 dashes) and causes the crash. … Vendor Status: Microsoft was notified. Workaround: Mozilla Firefox.” If you are running IE 7 Beta 2 and want to give it a go, go to that link and construct the code, or simply click here for the proof of concept. I like how this comes up just after the zero day WMF flaw, and how it nicely dovetails into their “Trustworthy Computing” effort (emphasis on effort). ”Trustworthy Computing is a long-term, collaborative effort to provide more secure, private, and reliable computing experiences for everyone. This is a core company tenet at Microsoft and guides virtually everything we do. Trustworthy Computing is built on four pillars: Security, Privacy, and Reliability in our software, services, and products; and integrity in our Business Practices.” Sure, sounds like a game plan.

HOWTO: Mezzo desktop on Ubuntu

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:10:00 -0600

UPDATED (10/27/2006): Old debs are no longer available, newer ones coming soon, I will update the doc once we can get to them. From Mezzo’s developer Ryan, “Currently there are not. I am working to get a new repo online soon. The debs that were there were out of date. The new repo will have up to date packages. The next release 2006-12 will be released at the end of November.”

An uncompromising insistence on excellence

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:54:00 -0600

I came across an interested quote in relation to quality and safety in relation to projects. Ignoring human instincts like the “gut reaction” of some to just get the job done. His ideas dovetail nicely into software engineering where due dates often compromise quality. ”…the words of Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy and founder of a safety culture with a remarkable record. “Quality must be considered as embracing all factors which contribute to reliable and safe operation,” he wrote. “What is needed is an atmosphere, a subtle attitude, an uncompromising insistence on excellence, as well as a healthy pessimism in technical matters, a pessimism which offsets the normal human tendency to expect that everything will come out right and that no accident can be foreseen – and forestalled – before it happens.”

Apache versus Lighttpd

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:04:00 -0600

Since I’ve been running Typo for this blog I’ve been having Apache do a mod_proxy to pass anything bound for fak3r.com to a port that Typo is running on with LightTPD spitting up the pages. I’ve read about how much faster Lighttpd is, but today I wanted to test it out on my own enviroment in the hopes that it would convince me to migrate over, if for nothing else that to learn a new webserver. Well, you can draw your own conclusions from the results, and I’ll update things later. First we run the ApacheBench (packaged with Apache, or available via CPAN - HTTPD::Bench::ApacheBench) benchmarking tool set for 10 concurrent users, each making 1000 requests (so a total of 10,000 requests) with Apache 2.0.55 running. Note that is simply pulling whatever it finds in /:

How to Be a Curmudgeon on the Internet

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:22:00 -0600

David Pogue of the New York Times has written a great piece titled How to Be a Curmudgeon on the Internet which covers how rude and arrogant people are in their criticisms when sent via email. It’s so true, the autonomy gives authors a “right to speed” as it were. People think they’re entitled to say what they want, without thought of reprisal, since they’re behind a veil of ones and zeros. Hopefully someone will post about how wrong I am for re-posting this article. ”Last week in my Times column, I referred to the five-note “Intel Inside” jingle often heard in TV ads. At least a dozen readers e-mailed me to inform me that the jingle is actually four notes, not five. As I’ve come to expect, some of these readers expressed, ahem, somewhat more anger than the circumstances might have seemed to require. “If you have that much trouble counting on one hand,” one wrote, “you shouldn’t be reviewing technology. Maybe a four-year-old can help you out next time.”

Soul legend Wilson Pickett dies

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:24:00 -0600

Another clasic soul legend gone; Wilson Pickett dies at 64. ”Wilson Pickett, the soul pioneer best known for hard-driving hits Mustang Sally and In The Midnight Hour, has died of a heart attack in Virginia, his management company said last night. He was 64, and had been in declining health for the past year. “We’ve lost a giant, we’ve lost a legend, we’ve lost a man who created his own charisma and made it work around the world,” soul singer Solomon Burke, a close friend of Pickett’s, told Reuters. “It’s just hard for me to really grasp that Wilson is already travelling towards the greater place.”

In memory of Martin Luther King Jr.

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:43:00 -0600

“…I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

Panic on the streets of Uniontown!

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 18:17:00 -0600

Here’s another example of people being afraid of what they don’t know about; Student accused of trying to crash school’s computer system. ”A Stark County high school senior has been arrested and charged for allegedly trying to crash his school’s computer system. Police say the student, created a website which connected to the school’s system. When enough users logged on and hit the F5 button, it overloaded the school’s system. But, Lake High School caught-on before the system crashed. Its computers started slowing down. “It’s a crime and it is important we take this seriously … especially for school officials … it could have done a tremendous amount of damage,” said Canton City Prosecutor Frank Fronchione. Stone is charged with a felony and could face jail time. But prosecutors say community service is more likely and disciplinary action from the school.” While this is mischief, I can’t believe they’re going to change him with a felony? Define ‘tremendous amount of damage’, what’s the worst thing that could have happened? Some server would lockup and need to be rebooted? Goddamn, remind me to teach my kids how to hide their tracks when they’re learning how computers and networking works. Here’s the video of the ‘news’ story, including some great ‘the sky is falling’ comments from school administrators. In doing my own investigative journalism, I hit the schools’ site [Google cache] (NO I DIDN’T RELOAD THE PAGE! DON’T PANIC!) where I saw a bunch of MySQL (database) connect errors, and an ‘About’ page that contained ‘Edit Content Here’ - so it’s not the most robust or thought out site. Entering a dummy URL gave up that the website runs Apache on a OS X server box. I don’t know who’s running the shop there, but if they can’t control server load because of some kid and his friends are pressing F5 too many times, they’re the ones who should be charged (although with that lack of skillz displayed I’d imagine their site getting owned is more likely). I’m just surprised someone didn’t throw in the ‘terrorist’ designation for more knee jerk fun.

Sending 10,000 spam emails a minute

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 19:50:00 -0600

Earlier in the week I talked about the biggest security worry home users should have is that their systems can be hijacked, taken over, and used as a zombie to blindly send out spam emails. I had no idea how many a standard home DSL setup could handle, but learned from this article that it’s huge. ”Today, the biggest problem is “zombie” computers that have been hijacked by trojans, viruses, or other badness to do various nefarious tasks without the owners’ knowledge. A very popular nefarious task is–surprise!–spamming. On a regular DSL connection, a regular PC can attempt to deliver up to 10,000 messages per minute.[source] The zombie machine goes down its list of addresses, tries to connect to the mailserver associated with the next address, and if connects, it delivers the message. If it doesn’t connect, it just goes down the list.”

Blackberry handhelds/servers vulnerable to attack

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 20:06:00 -0600

While I’ve never had a Blackberry, but have played around with them and understand their appeal. Still, until today I didn’t have any idea of how the backend process is setup, and wow, it’s pretty invasive. Now we learn that Blackberry’s are also vulerable to graphics highjacking. If a bad graphic is emailed to a user and they click on it, things can go bad. ”[…] a vulnerability in the way Blackberry servers handle portal network graphics (PNG) images, was not disclosed by either RIM or the US-CERT advisory. Lindner said he suspects that’s because this PNG flaw is present not in the newest version of Blackberry server but in all versions from 4.0 to 4.0.1.9 (the latter was released roughly a month ago, and no doubt many companies still run that version). … Lindner found that by convincing a Blackberry user to click on a special image attachment, that handheld device could be made to pass on malicious code to the Blackberry server, which could then be taken over and used to intercept e-mails or as a staging point for other attacks within the network.” This is especially alarming when you read about the access the Blackberry server has in the network. ”Lindner said he started looking into Blackberry’s proprietary communications protocols because the Blackberry server requires an unusual level of access inside of a corporate network: the server must be run inside a company’s network firewall and on a Windows machine that is granted full and direct administrative access to the customer’s internal e-mail server. “We started looking at all of the privileges this server needs while sitting right in the middle of the network and realized we didn’t know anything about it,” Lindner said. “In a lot of companies, corporate managers want to install it because they want their Blackberrys, but we wanted to find out what risks are there connected to running this thing.” Lindner’s slides from his presentation – which he agreed not to release until RIM has fully fixed this problem – show that the Blackberry server which manages all of the encryption keys needed to unscramble e-mail traffic to and from all Blackberry devices registered on the network stores them on a Micorosft SQL database server in plain, unencrypted text.” Ah, so it stores encryption keys in plain text in a database, and the Windows server the database runs on is inside the corporate firewall and has a direct connection to the mailserver? What could go wrong!

Best of 2005

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 04:59:00 -0600

Each year I compile my favorite releases of the past 12 months, and dammit if this wasn’t a great year. Of course I have gift cards to use now to buy new music, so I’m already working on next years’ list. Agree or disagree, this is the music I like hearing nowadays.

Ben Folds Songs for Silverman

Bloc Party ”Silent Alarm”

Danger Doom ”The Mouse And The Mask”

DJ Shadow ”Endtroducing… [Deluxe Edition]”

This is a picture

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 18:41:00 -0600

I don’t like Microsoft, everyone knows that, but I don’t needlessly bash them if people using Windows are comfortable with it, but here’s just another reason to reconsider options. ”Microsoft acknowledged late Wednesday the existence of a zero-day exploit for Windows Metafile images, and said it was looking into ways to better protect its customers. Even worse, by the end of the day nearly 50 variants of the exploit had already appeared. One security company said the possibilities were endless on how the flaw could be exploited. ‘This vulnerability can be used to install any type of malicious code, not just Trojans and spyware, but also worms, bots or viruses that can cause irreparable damage to computers,’ said Luis Corrons of Panda Software. […] Attempting to allay fears, Microsoft said there would be no way for an attacker to force a user to visit a malicious Web site. However, Sunbelt vice president of Research and Development Eric Sites said there were ways to easily get around that issue. “For example, take the latest craze of posting spam in blog talkbacks,” Sites said. “How would you like to be reading your favorite blog, click the talkback link and get infected so badly your only option is to reinstall your operating system.” A zero-day exploit is one that takes advantage of a security vulnerability on the same day that the vulnerability becomes generally known; so it’s out there, and there is no fix for it. It just shows the lack of security when ONE OS is so dominant. What should I tell my relatives that are running XP at home (that I tweaked with Firefox, ClamAV and the like, but still…) if they should keep surfing the web? Funny timing since I was just having a discussion with a friend about why images shouldn’t be allowed in instant messaging since they can cause havok…now it’s just on web pages? Hmm…really kids, there are viable alternatives that will allow more layers of protection. Security through obscurity, not to mention a better set of security ideals and acls that have been thought out over 30 years…but I digress.

Dark chocolate is good for you

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 17:40:00 -0600

In more good eating news, a recent finding has determined that dark chocolate is good for the heart. Again, like beer and coffee, moderation is the key, but again, it’s that ‘daily’ mention that I like! ”Only a small daily treat of dark chocolate may substantially increase the amount of antioxidant intake and beneficially affect vascular health,” the report’s authors said. … The group, who were asked to abstain from eating foods rich in antioxidants for 24 hours, were given 40 grams of chocolate to eat. … After two hours, ultrasound scans revealed that dark chocolate - made up of 74 per cent cocoa solids - significantly improved the smoothness of arterial flow, an effect which lasted eight hours. When the experiment was repeated with white chocolate - with only four-per-cent cocoa - there was no effect, the study published in Heart medical journal said. The researchers, who said further studies were needed, suggested that the possible benefits arose from the antioxidants in dark chocolate. Dark chocolate contains more antioxidants per gram than other food and drink with the same properties, such as red wine, tea and berry fruits.”

Futurama to return?

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:52:00 -0600

[ anyone?

John Vanderslice show posted for download

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:20:00 -0600

Yesterday the venerable Pitchfork noted that John Vanderslice had released a recent live show for gratis on his website. Since seeing him at Sxsw during the Time Travel is Lonely tour, I’ve been hooked, and his recording output just continues to improve and impress. So today, from his mailing list, I got the word straight from the (pale) horse’s mouth as John writes, “22 songs from our last show of the “I’ve been living in a K-Hole” US tour, encoded in glorious hi-res mp3. Single downloads or one .zip file. One of the reasons I posted the show was to give love to mp3 blogs, who have been incredibly supportive of me, and who remain the best place to learn about new music.” Amen to that. If you’ve heard JV you need this, but if you haven’t, this is a great place to start. John Vanderslice: Live at the Independent November 5, 2005, San Francisco, California. I’ve got it playing on the iPod now, thanks John, and look for your recent release, Pixel Revolt, on my annual best of list.

Imagine

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:59:00 -0600

Today marks 25 years since the death of John Lennon, he would have been 65. Here’s hoping that his message of peace will continue to ring true for all time.

Firefox buffer overflow

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:05:00 -0600

There’s a Firefox buffer overflow script listed on Packet Storm. The Javascript can be embedded into HTML and make Firefox log a very long topic line into its history.dat file. Any ensuing Firefox starts will cause a crash due to a buffer overflow. The fix would be to delete the history.dat file, which would be recreated automatically during the next start, but that’s not something most users would know. I’m sure this will be patched quickly, but this has to be the first type of bug I’ve seen targeting Firefox.

Yes, I will have another

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 20:23:00 -0600

I’m always seeing reports that basically state the same thing; moderate drinking is good for you, but now we also learn that it can may lower risk of becoming obese! So while past reports have touted decreased chance of heart disease and high blood pressure, today’s report states that, “…new research suggests it may also help you stay svelte. Regular drinkers who consume one or two drinks a few times a week are less likely to be obese compared with people who do not drink” with the obvious disclaimer, “However, having four or more drinks per day increases the risk of being obese by 46 percent, researchers report.” So there’s another reason that it’s not only OK, but perhaps benificial in many ways for you to have a few beers at night after a (boring) day at work. So in the words of James Rohrer, from the department of family medicine at the Mayo Clinic, “Moderation is the best policy,” he says. “Moderate drinking is probably a reasonably healthy behavior. We cannot show any benefits from the complete abstention from alcohol.” Bottoms up.

Still I long for your kiss

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 21:15:00 -0600

“go find a jukebox, and see what a quarter will do…” Even though I spent most of my time listening to indie/punk bands while there, since leaving Austin (almost a year ago now, damn) my warmest memories of living there are brought back by the music of Lucinda Williams. Recently I’ve been listening not only to her recent double-live cd release but her last 4 cds, and it all ages so gracefully. Now Austin City Limits has released one of her appearances from the 2001/Car Wheels on Gravel Road era. You can watch her do Still I Long for Your Kiss (mislabeled as Greenville, but…) in QuickTime. She’s great, and from pictures from her appearance at ACL 2005 I noticed her new tattoo, which looks awesome…makes me wonder why my right arm looks so blank… And for the record, I have the cd single for “Passionate Kisses” that I bought after seeing the video on 120 Minutes (yes, it used to be a great show), and this was back in 88 or 89! So while I haven’t been the most consistent Lu fan over the years, call me a recent fan at your peril.

Pocket server

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 21:11:00 -0600

Ok, picture this; a 400MHz PowerPC, 64MB RAM, fingerprint scanner, SD/MMC slot, and either 256MB or 512MB storage, powered by host USB 2.0 interface, the size and weight (a 3.5" x 1.75", 1.6 ounce) of a pack of playing cards, yes smaller than an iPod Nano! Yes, it’s the world’s smallest Linux server, BlackDog, and it can be had for ~$200. It runs a flash-based Debian Linux distribution with a 2.6.10 kernel, and comes with Firefox (web browser), Abiword (word processing), an email client, and a toolchain and development libraries. In researching it, I came across this blog that presented the question, “Is there a technical need for BlackDog that I’m missing or is it just a cool geek tchochky?”, and he hit the nail on the head for me; would it really be useful after the novelty wore off? Sure, coming to work, plugging it into my XP (blah) laptop and being able to pull up top would be fly, surfing/emailing/chatting only from that would be more secure than leaving traces of incriminating logs on my work box would be cool, but long term…would I keep using it? So, I’m not sure I would be able to justify teh purchase. I’ll have to think a bit more about what it’s actually good for. For now it feels like a cool answer in search of a problem. “The BlackDog team is apparently looking for ideas as well. They’re starting a developer contest in September when the product is shipped, with a $50,000 prize. A lot of money for a product that appears to be in the “interesting-linux-hacker-widget” category. Turns out they’re part of Realm Systems, which received $8.5 million in funding last January, which is why they can afford a huge booth that doesn’t tell anyone what they’re doing, and offer $50K for a developer contest.” So since they have money to burn it seems like they’ll be around for awhile, and maybe a really cool use would be thought of. I could transfer documents to and fro via a Wiki running on the webserver of the Blackdog, but I could also just post things on a password protected/encrypted section of my main webserver. So you see my problem here, I’d love to have one of these, but would I use it? Hmm…let me sleep on it, stay tuned.

More bad language

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:42:00 -0600

We’re big on phone meetings at the big company I work for; I guess when there’s over 10,000 folks in the company they think it’s a good idea. Anyway I had some more bizspeak spouted out yesterday on a call that just made my jaw drop. The speaker used the phrase tribal knowledge while referring to our groups’ ability to administrate. WTF? I have never heard that one, and wished we were in a face to face meeting so I could see if any others had the same look on their face as I did when I heard that one…and it was used AT LEAST FOUR TIMES! Of course the standard let’s take this offline was probably used more than 10 times; while it’s an oldie it’s popularity is still on the rise. It makes me want to have a conversation with Lawrence, you know, the neighbor from Office Space. Peter: Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday, and you’re not feelin’ real well, does anyone ever say to you, ‘Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays’?

Please verify your account

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 14:06:00 -0600

Got another PayPay phishing email today, my filters caught it no problem, so now let’s pollute their database of username and passwords. Here’s the direct link to the Phishfighting page that will flood the phisher’s site with bogus usernames and passwords. If you’re using Firefox I recommend center clicking on the link 5 times (or more) and leave those tabs open for a day (or more). Have fun.

UPDATE: yep, after leaving it there all day while I was out I return to see the link throwing a 503 - server unavailable. Sweet. Don’t let that stop you, there are plenty more: here’s a fake eBay one, and a fake PayPay one. Also, I’m flattered that PhishFighting has a quote of mine “After a good defense we need a good offense - fak3r.com” in the left column on the front page.

The death of the power chord

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:42:00 -0600

Link Wray has died at 76 in Copenhagen. “… the rock guitar pioneer who gave birth to the aggressively primal sound known as the power chord on his 1958 instrumental hit “Rumble” and influenced two generations of rock guitarists, has died. He was 76. Mr. Wray moved to Denmark in 1978 into a house on an island where Hans Christian Andersen once lived.” More on his life from The State: “Wray, who played in a trademark leather jacket, developed a style considered the blueprint for heavy metal and punk music. He is best known for his 1958 instrumental “Rumble,” 1959 “Rawhide” and 1963 “Jack the Ripper.” His music has been featured in movies including “Pulp Fiction,” “Independence Day” and “Desperado. The power chord — a thundering sound created by playing fifths (two notes five notes apart, often with the lower note doubled an octave above) — became a favorite among rock players. Wray claimed because he was too slow to be a whiz on the guitar, he had to invent sounds.” Rolling Stone adds a bit more to the Link mystique. “Rumble,” the guitarist’s 1958 signature song, had the unique distinction of being widely banned by radio stations across America despite the fact that it had no words. As legend has it, Wray poked a pencil through the cone of his amplifier to achieve the song’s groundbreaking fuzz tone. Its ragged, ominous chords, overdriven and dragged to a crawl, sounded like an invitation to a knife fight. At a time of national hysteria over juvenile delinquency, many cultural scolds took the song’s implied threat literally.” There are now a ton of tributes out there, but the most interesting quotes I’ve seen are the following. “He is the King; if it hadn’t been for Rumble, I would have never picked up a guitar.” (Pete Townsend) “If I could go back in time and see one concert it would be Link Wray and His Raymen” (Neil Young) “Rumble is the best instrumental ever.” (Bob Dylan). And you’ve heard the song Rumble [mirror] if you know it or not.

Will the Crash-box 360 lead to a Revolution?

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 15:20:00 -0600

While the Xbox 360 and Playstation3 (PS3) are going to ‘redefine’ game consoles from something that can play games to something that you can also watch movies on, chat, view pictures, etc, I’ll be sticking with the company that has always focused on making games that are fun to play; Nintendo and their upcoming console Revolution. From the wiki, the talk about the backwards compatibility sounds very promising. Think about it, Nintendo has some of the best games ever, and that goes back 20+ years; why not make them all available instead of locking them out? The fact that GameCube controlers, memory sticks, etc. will work too is very cool. “Nintendo has announced that Revolution will have the ability to play all the Nintendo-produced Nintendo 64, SNES/Super Famicom, and Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom games; the software may be recompiled or emulated but will be offered via the Nintendo online download service. Satoru Iwata refers to this feature as the “Virtual Console”. According to a Japanese press release, “all downloaded games will be stored on the 512 Meg flash memory built into the system.” … Nintendo announced that the downloadable games may be redesigned. It was also said that although the gameplay would stay the same, it would be possible “that with Revolution, we may be able to see the old games with new looks.” Some 3D games may “look sharper when played on Revolution.” (this may be compared to the 1993 SNES release Super Mario All-Stars, a single cartridge containing several classic Super Mario Bros games with updated graphics). If the technical aspects of Revolution also go well, “Nintendo is discussing the possibility of having older games like Mario Party playable online.” With Meanwhile the Xbox 360 is starting to look like it was rushed out, as it has only been out a day, there are already plenty of screenshots and video of the console crashing! Again, trying to make something do everything takes time, perhaps more than they gave it. I’m willing to wait for fun games from Nintendo, vs the latest graphics and Grand Theft Auto style ‘kill everything’ games. I mean hell, I love playing Mario Kart Double Dash on the Gamecube as much as my kids, and if you throw the red turtle shell at the other player, he’ll get knocked down for a second losing all of his speed. It’s not focusing on gore, it’s focused on fun gameplay, which lots of Nintendo games have in spades.

Install RoundcubeWebmail from SVN on FreeBSD

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:59:00 -0600

UPDATE3: The FreeBSD port is keeping up with this project very well, the current one is only 5 days old! I highly recommend going this route unless you’re a developer or someone who likes to get the bugs before anyone else! :) Thanks to Bernard for bringing this up.

UPDATE2: Roundcube now uses SVN (Subversion) for version control instead of CVS, I’ve updated all effected instructions.

UPDATE: Looking at the download page for Roundcube, I see that There’s also a Spanish version of Phil’s guide written by Daniel A. Rodriguez. ¡se ha traducido eso es lejano hacia fuera, yo! You can find the link here , I hope that helps. I would like to see more translations of HOWTOs in general, I wish there was a good Firefox plugin to translate pages (well) on the fly.

A dead language

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:01:00 -0600

I hate bizspeak, always have. Be it Thinking outside of the box, A paradigm shift, Getting ramped up or Step up to the plate, they all offend. The idea that people use common phrases to make themselves sound like they know what they’re talking about drives me nuts. Today’s example heard by the watercooler: They can put that idea out there to change the mindset, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Fantastic. Sometimes during meetings I jot down ridiculous sayings after I hear them mentioned more than once. Recently I listed How can we align ourselves, Let’s define the groups’ ownership, and Drive down that path (over and over and over…). Of course it seems that anytime someone asks a question of an exec, the exec will start his reply with That’s a very good point. Can we start expressing ourselves as individuals again please, or is that something we’ve pushed off for Q2?

A nursing home with a pub

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 01:07:00 -0600

A nursing home in Ireland has hit on a cheering way to keep up the spirits of its elderly patients – by providing its own pub. St Mary’s Hospital in County Monaghan, near the Irish border with Northern Ireland, believes ready access to a good pint may help its patients – average age 85 – actually live longer. “We would say the whole social aspect of life does extend the years – it means the patients aren’t bored to death,” Rose Mooney, assistant director of nursing told Reuters. The pub, which opens at 11 a.m. and closes at 9 p.m. and charges normal bar prices, had also led to an increase in the number of visitors, she said. Having its own bar made the hospital, which has around 140 patients, unique in Ireland, she added. The benefits are twofold; moderate beer consumption is good for you (“beer drinking has equal or perhaps more benefit than wine or spirits”), as is socializing (“Social engagement was as strong as anything we found in determining longevity. “It was stronger than things like blood pressure, cholesterol, or other measures of health”) So, either having pubs in nursing homes is going to catch on here, or I’m going to retire to Ireland.

I know what cd I'm buying next...

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:10:00 -0600

[

Sigur Rōs Takk…](http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/)

Glōsōli video

The video for the track Glosoli, is (still) available, here.

Moving boxes

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:04:00 -0600

So over the weekend I moved my servers with the idea to gain a bunch of floors space that we need since we’re planning to build a room down there. I didn’t have much time to play with them, as I had a sick boy to take care of, but once he was down for a nap I headed down to the basement to move and reorganize my NOC (aka- a nice metal shelf with 4 computers on it) from the open area to a carved out nook under the stairs. I had to take the shelf apart to wedge it in there, and lower some of the shelf heights, but it fits well. Then I go to shut down the servers, move over the DSL line, DSL modem, the wireless router, the wireless print server and get them all up and running. Then I move the main server (FreeBSD) and boot it up, then go to work on the old Linux server. A few minutes later I see the old server with a prompt half way through boot; not good. I take a look, superblock issue on one of the partitions; even worse. So to debug some of the errors I jumped on #freebsd on irc.freenode.net on the iBook so I could better figure out how to fix this. I remember one response, “Your box is toast” to which I replied, “The hell it is, I don’t have time to rebuild a server today!” After some manual monkeying around with fsck I was able to determine that /var wasn’t mounting, and it was the one with the superblock issue. Of all the partitions to go South, /var isn’t really that bad. I knew I wanted to take it out of my fstab so the server wouldn’t try to mount it during boot, but I had no text editor that I knew of (nano, vi, etc were not there, or didn’t have the libs loaded to run), so on to IRC I asked. Finally dho walked me through some crazy command and I got ed to modify my fstab. Reboot, it doesn’t mount the bad drive, bitches allot about missing files since there is no /var, but who can blame it? I got in, created a new /var on /, then symlinked it to the backup drive that also lives on that server under /mnt. Then since I have nightly rsyncs of all computers on the network, I just copied the backup of the server’s /var from the previous night on the symlinked dir, rebooted, and what do ya know it all “just worked”. I was pretty proud of myself; I need to get a job doing this…

Mars and Venus viewable on Halloween

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:16:00 -0600

It looks like I’ll need to break out my telescope for the kids on Halloween, as both Mars and Venus will

glow brightly on Halloween, with Mars not been this close in 60,000 years. “In the late-day glow of the western sky, starting about 30 minutes after sunset and extending thereafter, you can find the planet Venus. It is perhaps the easiest planet to identify, especially this Halloween, because, with the absence of the moon, Venus will shine in a brilliant yellow and should be pretty much by itself in the sky at twilight. … You can watch Venus until about 8 to 8:30 p.m., depending on whether you have a clear view of your western horizon. If you’re looking at Venus about that time, simply turn around and face the opposite direction to find a second stellar treat: the planet Mars.”

I'd rather be phishing...

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 18:38:00 -0600

It seems that the phishing site I referred to earlier is now dead (request timed out!) Yah, very cool, now how about another one to keep the ball rolling? Go ahead and try out this one: this one, YAPPS (yet another pay-pal scam). Feel free to open a bunch of tabs on that URL; I’ll throw up a new one once it goes down. This would be a good application for that ‘flash mod’ type of ideal; get a phish-fighting email list, send out a URL like this and have 100s of folks hit it at once. It’d be more like a (more coordinated) 419 attack.

Rock and roll icons

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:43:00 -0600

Typo has yet another really cool feature (no big surprise there) that allows you to upload things directly within the admin site. Surfing around a while back I found this picture from Australia’s Big Day Out in 1993, and it’s a great one.

So you have Tex Perkins (Beasts of Bourbon, The Cruel Sea and sometime Bad Seed), Mark Arm (Mudhoney), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Iggy Pop (Iggy Pop and the Stooges) and Nick Cave (Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). Some incredible garage, punk, noise artists all in one picture. I was just listening to Beasts of Bourbon on my way in today. All together now, “I buy a leather jacket so I look real tough / All the little girls will think I’m tough / I spend my time playing pool / That’s how I’m gonna be so cool / Because / I’m a drop out”

New phisher site to fight!

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 14:58:00 -0600

I just got another PayPal phishing email, as always they include a link to ’login’ to ‘PayPal’ to verify something or another in an effort to learn your username and password. Of course MailScanner tagged the bogus URL within the HTML, and SpamAssasin (this time Razor2) found that it was spam from content and a DCC (distributed checksum clearinghouse) list, so I really couldn’t accidentally fall for the scam, but after a good defense we need a good offense; it’s time to fight back. I currently have 6 Firefox tabs open on PhishFighting.com to pollute the phishers database with phony usernames and passwords. The goal, as I’ve stated before is to flood the phishers database making it unusable, and possibly saving some who have fallen for it by putting so much noise around legit data that they’re not used. Want to help? Open a new browser window, and center click on this PhishFighting.com link that already has the bogus URL link that already has the bogus URL information listed. Looking at the totals on my other window I’m over 300 phony usernames and passwords, and I plan to leave it running all day.

Bruce Perens comments (on my comment)

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 17:51:00 -0600

In the flurry of discussion after one of my recent posts to Slashdot, none other than Bruce Perens (the author, creator of the Open Source Definition, founder or co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, The Linux Standard Base, Software in the Public Interest and No-Code International, and general open source guru) commented on my post! “Heavyweights taking on Rails - I visit Fortune 100 companies in my work for Sourcelabs. The managers comment that their engineers are clamoring to use Rails and the managers are holding back until the product is more mature. They continue to watch the trend. There are some interesting sites. Note Epson Developers. You might find this note about a large medical application interesting. I also noted a Rails project being developed in a department of the New York City government. Bruce”

Hula progress on FreeBSD

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:11:00 -0600

I’ve been pretty quiet about Hula since I’ve been unable to successfully build and run it since r370 (currently Hula is at r609). While I’ve solved and committed all the autogen build issues on FreeBSD, it still won’t run; the controlling hulamanager process just hangs, with no errors or output to help out. On the mailing list this behavior is reportedly due to the (hardlinked) renaming of ‘server messaging server’ to ‘hula messaging’ server, which bombs if you use the filesystem based mdb. Alex sent me this patch:

Sleater-Kinney show review

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:18:00 -0600

It’s always cool when you find a review of a show you’ve been to, but add a picture, and then you’re really feelin’ it. The venerable Pitchfork has a review of Sleater-Kinney’s October 8th show at Mississippi Nights, and I would call it spot on. What a great band, more solid and confident than I’ve ever seen them, with a packed crowd that just went nuts for everything they did. That kind of response makes me happy to be seeing shows in St. Louis, and is what a rock and roll show is supposed to be like. And yeah, I came there to be entertained Carrie, and I was, so don’t fret.

95,899 hits in one day

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:32:00 -0600

I’m still posting on my Slashdot thread about Friday’s slashdotting of fak3r.com as well as learning what worked, and where the bottleneck occurred. First of all the all important numbers; visits, pages, hits and transferred data for 2005-10-15, as reported by Awstats:

<code>Date		Pages		Hits		Bandwidth
10-14-2005	18092 		95899 		644.47 MB</code>

Holy smokes, 95,899 hits for the day while transferring almost a cd’s worth of data. Again, not a huge number for a colo’d webserver with a big audience, but for a home built rig behind a 384/1.5 ADSL line, pretty cool. Other interesting data gathered was:

A minor Slashdoting!

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 20:21:00 -0600

This morning on Slashdot there was a story about Ruby on Rails and my comment turned out to the the second post. I took the opportunity to plug this site…err…I mean used this site as an example of Ruby on Rails via Typo and suggested people take a look and try out the ’live search’ to give the database a workout, and did they ever. Logfiles were just scrolling along, httpd was throwing up pages, Ruby was driving all database queries via fastcgi. Top showed Ruby pushing upwards of 18%, so I killed Hulaweb, which was eating more, and watched Ruby take over, running at 34% at one point:

Spell with flickr

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:15:00 -0600

Go try it yourself, it’s a good time.

Sonic Youth get stolen/vintage gear back

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:42:00 -0600

Back in 1999 I saw Sonic Youth play two nights at Liberty Lunch, mere weeks before it was torn down. Being one of my favorite live bands at my all time favorite live venue, those two night were a highlight of so many rocking shows I’ve seen. After the last encore on the second night, Thurston Moore proclaimed, “Goodbye Liberty” before leaving the stage. Amazingly I actually found a review of one of the shows that makes reference to the big story of the day; the theft of their equipment a few days prior while they played Coachilla. This was gear that was marred, deconstructed and configured by them to make sounds only they could, equipment used to record some of their masterworks, and one afternoon someone just drove off with a van containing it all. Fast forward to today, and apparently they’re getting it all back! Turned in by a family member of the thief who delivered the goods, they’re now ready to drop (d) back into recording with their beloved equipment. It will be really interesting and cool to see what they come up with using the classic guitars and amps they detuned so well. And while we’re on topic, if you’re a fan you need to checkout this years’ release Sonic Nurse, which sees a return to form and stands as one of their best releases in years.

Zimbra build script released

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 16:08:00 -0600

Here’s my first swing at a hacked together build script to download, build, compile and install the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. If you haven’t been hip to it, Zimbra just kinda appeared out of nowhere, with a pretty nice email/cal webapp that has all the AJAX goodness you could hope for, with true drag and drop, pop up balloons, live searching and more. They have a demo you can play with here, and it’s worth checking out, just to see what’s up. For now my focus for day to day is still on the Hula Project, but to play with Zimbra I needed to hack a script together just so I could get this built on a ’normal’ Linux distro (in this case my old server, jorge running Gentoo), and not Red Hat Enterprise and Fedora as they had released. I’ve already sent the script to a Zimbra dev, as well as a Ubuntu hacker for testing, so we’ll go from there. First impressions are that it’s a really nice, all in one email/cal server/app presentation. Unlike Hula controling everything, Zimbra is more of a LAMP application, so it will be interesting to see where they place this in terms of how well it could scale in an enterprise environment.

We Versus the Shark

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 19:21:00 -0600

I crave music, I’m almost always listening to something, and am regularly hunting for new stuff as well. Between our home stereo to my car cd player to my iPod; I have plenty of outlets to plug into. For all the things I dig, the old DIY ethic holds a precious place in my heart. Sure, even though I’m open to hip-hop, americana, jazz, or whatever tag you need to put on things, there’s something about the raw energy (think the Stooges “Raw Power” or the Velvets “Loaded”) that can only be transmitted before a band gets too big and get’s a big name producer to commercialize their message (yeah Guided by Voices, I’m looking at you during the “Do the Collapse” era). So anyway, a band I stumbled across a few weeks back, the Athens, GA band, We Versus the Shark, provide a fantastic example of the DIY feel I love. Their 2004 debut full length release Ruin Everything! is a very good and steady listen. Anyone who knows me knows I love abrupt rhythm changes in my music, something about running full speed to drop back to a trot or crawl, and then to run again just makes it happen. WVTS plays this to a T, with songs that start slow migrating in to true, riff-heavy, rockers. Their sharp, angular rhythms have been compared to other favorite bands of mine from yore like Shellac and aMinurature by my wife, and I hear plenty of Babe The Blue Ox in there, although without the sweetness (which I prefer) along with the unpredictiblity of Brainiac. I can’t think of another band, other than Indiana’s late Pencil, that the ‘math rock’ label could be applied to so smoothly, so you should really check them out. Oh, and you know how most albums start off strong, and then settle down during the last 2/3s? Not WVTS, the second to last song No Flint No Spark is perhaps the most heavy track on there, such a nice surprise…when do you ever fwd to a ’later’ track when you wanna rock out? I’m all about sharing links to free downloads, so now is the time to sample This Graceless Planet and I Am Destined for Greatness. If your local cd store doesn’t carry the cd, order it for a mere 10$ from Hello Sir Records. Also, while on the music tip, I’ll take this opportunity to link to the ‘Beta’ (named in honor of Google putting out everything as a Beta) page that I’m creating, Now Hear This which I want to create in order to share free, legal mp3, ogg, flac, shn or whatever audio recordings that are available for download out on that world wide thingy.

Giving back to the phishers

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 18:39:00 -0600

This past week I got another phishing email, and while they’re annoying, I was especially annoyed that this one got through my spam and virus filters. Generally the server stops them, with ClamAV catching and blocking them before they squirm to my Inbox, but this one made it through. It was another ‘Activate your PayPal account!’ style emails, with a link to a URL that started with mail.american.hu - so they didn’t even add PayPal to the sub domian to at least try to make it look legit (ie- paypal.american.hu). Still, the page looked real, and I’m sure people like my mom would feel she needed to login and find out what was up. So, I hit Google to look for a way to report, or fight back, and was happy to find the tremendous site; PhishFighting. Created by a frustrated web designer, all you do is cut/paste the URL of the offending phisher, and then PhishFighting takes over and posts, over and over, every 20 seconds with a randomly assigned bogus email/password combination. Then it’s easy enough to bookmark that page, and cut/paste it into new Firefox tabs so you can hit it multiple times. I’ve emailed the admin of the page to find out if there’s an acceptable usage (I don’t want to slam his server) but so far I’ve sub’d a few thousand bogus entries just by opening a few new tabs in Firefox and leaving the computer running overnight. I emailed him about seeing some of the source code, as I’d like to create a C or shell script to act as a client and do this automatically, outside of a browser. Then I could create and host a web site to collect and verify phishing URLs, and have the client talk to the site to make sure it’s list is fresh. Hmmm…it could even update like ClamAV does, with a little script set to go off via cron to check for updates, that would be fly! Want to try it out? Why not use my current Phishers URL (pasted into PhishFighting of course) by clicking here. Do the center click on the link in Firefox and leave a few tabs humming away for awhile, it’s a good feeling.

Windows shows its BSD heritage

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:03:00 -0600

It’s well known that MS utilized BSD code (which is allowed under the BSD License) in various places in Windows, but it’s still fun to see it in there. Unhappily I’m using XP at my current consulting gig, but I’ll fix that soon. If you are as well, drop to the cmd.exe window and do the following:

<code>c:> strings.exe c:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\ftp.exe | grep Copyright</code>

You’ll get back the following:

<code>@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.</code>

Incidentally, on my FreeBSD server at home it shows a bit more up to date code:

Fake gates chases fake park down the river

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:45:00 -0600

Last week (September 17 to 25, from 8 am to 8 pm every day) there was a Floating Island on a tugboat circling Manhattan for all to see. The original concept was dreamt up by Robert Smithson, best know for another of his ‘Earthworks’; Spiral Jetty from 1970. This exhibit was put on by a New York-based arts organization that puts on public art projects, since Smithson died in 1973.

The Floating Island is a project that involves a 30-x-90-foot barge, landscaped with earth, rocks, and native trees and shrubs that will circumnavigate Manhattan. The fabricated “island,” towed by a small tugboat, will be on view two weekends in September, visible to millions of residents, commuters, and visitors along the Hudson and East Rivers.

Password deficiency in the workplace

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 15:55:00 -0600

So we’re implementing some new sort of change and bug tracking software where I work, no it’s not replacing the old one, it’s just wrapping the old one in yet more lovely red tape. So we have a meeting to discuss how this is going to work with an overly complicated Visio flowchart showing every single step a change and bug will take as it moves along (including where we would manually need to list what bug # it translates to devs on their own) So in the meeting the QA lady in charge of setting up the software as well as the rules about how it’s to be used mentions; “Well, there’s a password, it’s not a really good password, and it’s the same for everybody (hehe)” Yeah, she said that…and then laughed. So they’re deploying some big assed proprietary software to do stuff that could be done with free/open souced software with someone in charge that could actually use software and be able to support it themselves, and then they’re not even going to the trouble of setting up passwords right? Nice. But hey, the time tracking software to record work hours is set up in a similar manner (same password for everyone), whereas the current bug tracking system is a bit better; the passwords are always the users’ last name. Ah yes, working in the big corporate world, plenty of cash for software, plenty of time for meetings (to plan other meetings). It’s not the 53 person crew of my last gig, that’s for sure.

Deprecated proc and C debugging

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 15:13:00 -0600

While trying to debug Hula on FreeBSD I found that the normal GNU C debugging tools (gdb, truss, ktrace) fail since /proc is no longer on the filesystem, in FreeBSD 6.0, for them to write to. It was deprecated as a security concern and functionality moved to sysctl for 5.x, but for 6.x it’s just gone. I’m looking for a long term solution, but short term was just to recreate /proc on the server and mount it. One liner coming up:

One two, one two, this is just a test

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 22:02:00 -0600

Here’s a post from BloGTK, basically a client app for Linux that allows me to post directly to my blog. It’s crazy simple to setup, but someone has posted a walkthrough with screenies. I really dig Typo, very different from Drupal that powers LTC, but of course with different goals. That live search is it, go ahead and search, bam there it is. Then after if finds something, delete the search, and poof the results disappear too!

f1rst p0st

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 19:10:00 -0600

Ok, so after having my ‘original’ blog online for four years I start this one, with the idea of staying truer to the blog ideal. I still love my main site, and will continue to write it, but it has taken a far greater swing towards politics than I had planned. These things needed to be discussed by me, and I like the way it naturally turned that way, but now it doesn’t feel like the right place for me to blab about beer, music, art or geeks stuff; so here we are. Props to Seb Payne for the inspriation.

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