+++ Update to the Slerm Phlogging Engine +++ | |
Monday, August 29, 2016 at 09:05 | |
This is a small update fixing selector line endings so they are RFC | |
1436 compliant. Someone left a comment on my phlog noting that I was | |
outputting \n, instead of \r\n as per the RFC. Now, in today's day | |
and age, this probably makes no difference, but it is possible that | |
an older client could make assumptions about line endings. So, | |
fixed! Read on for details on how to download slerm v1.7. | |
Continued... | |
+++ The Days of Dialup are Ending +++ | |
Sunday, July 03, 2016 at 09:12 | |
July 1st came and went and with it my annual dues notices. I donate | |
to support a wide variety of SDF's services, MetaARPA of course, but | |
also VPN, VOIP and dialup. I've been a dialup member for a while, I | |
joined SDF in 2007 so it was 2008 or so. For all of those years | |
through this one, I lived in a house in New England with copper | |
phone lines, so dialup made sense as a backup internet for power | |
outages. I also used it while traveling, for example in Vermont | |
where cell service was spotty and the internet unrelaible. But I"ve | |
recently relocated to Quebec - no copper phone lines where I am, | |
power is reliable, internet is also quite reliable (but expensive, | |
at least moreso than I was used to in the US). Anyway, I was sad to | |
do so, but I finally cancelled my dialup membership, I just don't | |
see a need for it anymore. During any extended power outage (a | |
couple of days or more), I would not have a phone line anyway, since | |
it is provided via the cable line. I also don't travel as much, but | |
even when I do, most everywhere has decent wireless internet now. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Moved to Canada +++ | |
Saturday, July 02, 2016 at 11:20 | |
I noted before that I was planning to move my family to Canada | |
[0]. Well, we finally did it in June of this year, and are settling | |
in to the new home in southern Quebec. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Slerm is Back! +++ | |
Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 16:45 | |
This is a first post under my newly-revamped phlogging engine slerm | |
(now v1.6), you can read about slerm and even comment below: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Low Tech +++ | |
Tuesday, December 08, 2015 | |
I enjoy reading the weekly posts over at The Archdruid Report [0]. | |
Very thought-provoking. Last week's post [1] was on the aggression | |
and anger many face by admitting to eschewing a "modern" way of life | |
in favor of simpler, older technologies. The comments to this post | |
are full of interesting anecdotes. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Dumb Phones +++ | |
Monday, November 16, 2015 | |
I've noticed lately more and more people buried in their mobile | |
devices in public or even while they are in supposedly social | |
situations. While the former is understandable (the phone has taken | |
the place of books or magazines in waiting rooms and airport | |
terminals), the latter is downright rude. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Journaling +++ | |
Thursday, September 03, 2015 | |
I've kept a hand-written journal twice before for short periods. | |
Once when I was 20 and on a NOLS excursion in the North Cascades, | |
that was for 31 days. More recently, I had a written journal for | |
four months in 2013, but never kept up with it. Reading through both | |
recently made me realize the value such a journal can hold, not only | |
for selfish reasons, but for future generations of family members, | |
who might be interested in the personal details of their great- | |
grandfather's life, say. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Moving to Canada +++ | |
Friday, June 05, 2015 | |
Last year I discovered I was a Canadian citizen under their 'new' | |
(2009) citizenship act. Although I was born in the US, my father was | |
born and raised in Quebec. The new law allows citizenship by descent | |
for the first generation born abroad to a Canadian parent. So my | |
kids are not Canadian citizens, but I (and my siblings) are, retro- | |
active to birth. I received my Canadian citizenship certificate in | |
March of this year, and my passport in May. | |
Continued... | |
+++ RIP +++ | |
Saturday, February 28, 2015 | |
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not | |
preserved, except in memory. LLAP -Leonard Nimoy | |
Continued... | |
+++ Slerm - it's Alive +++ | |
Friday, January 16, 2015 | |
With the switch to Gophernicus as the SDF gopher server, gopher | |
moles became possible again. I talked about this before [0], but | |
recently found the time to update my old dynamic phlogging software, | |
slerm, so that it worked with Gophernicus. I am testing it and will | |
release another tarball hopefully very soon. Here is the list of | |
features from the original README [1]: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Everyman's Library +++ | |
Friday, December 19, 2014 | |
I've recently discovered "Everyman's Library" - a publishing house | |
that specializes in high-quality hardcovers of classic authors. I'm | |
not a book collector by any stretch of the imagination, but I do | |
love to read and like the feel of a nice hardcover. You can get | |
these in the usual brick & mortar bookstores, or online - they are | |
reasonably priced and have sewn cloth bindings, acid-free paper, and | |
a built-in bookmark. I put some pictures of 'The Stories of Ray | |
Bradbury' in my SDF gallery [0]. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Higher Order Perl and Free Books +++ | |
Wednesday, December 03, 2014 | |
I wish more authors would come to their senses, particularly with | |
technical books. I purchased the dead-tree version of Higher Order | |
Perl years ago, it is an amazing book and recommended reading for | |
any programmer. Luckily, it is free to download [0]. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Time to Re-visit Dynamic Phlogging +++ | |
Wednesday, September 17, 2014 | |
For a few years SDF used the Bucktooth gopher server, which works | |
fine but had some security issues that were very hard to fix given | |
that server's design and the difficulty of testing. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Ending the Old-School D&D Campaign +++ | |
Monday, September 15, 2014 | |
So I ended the old-school D&D campaign today that I had been running | |
on the bboard (board CAMPAIGN) for the past year or so. Posting | |
frequency of the participants was at about once every few weeks, so | |
clearly the interest had waned. It was fun while it lasted, though! | |
Continued... | |
+++ Back to Slackware +++ | |
Sunday, September 14, 2014 | |
It's been a while since I updated the phlog/blog. Funny how things | |
like this tend to go in spurts, at least for me. I can write | |
regularly for a while, then lose interest but always come back at | |
some point. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey +++ | |
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 | |
As a long-time fan of Carl Sagan's works, I am happily gobbling up | |
the recent Cosmos remake on Fox with Neil deGrasse Tyson (NdT). It | |
is very well done and NdT was definitely the right person to host | |
the show. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Adventures of a Sysadmin, Fun With cPanel Edition +++ | |
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 | |
Oh, how I loathe cPanel. It completely takes over your linux | |
servers. Once installed, there is no uninstalling it, it has hooks | |
into every part of the OS. Once infected by the cPanel virus, you | |
must make all changes to the server configuration through cPanel, or | |
cPanel's highly intuitive collection of command line utilities. | |
Everything. | |
Continued... | |
+++ 2600 Magazine's Ebooks +++ | |
Saturday, January 18, 2014 | |
I've been a subscriber to 2600 magazine for about four years, and | |
while the technical content is of varying quality, I enjoy reading | |
the opinions, letters, 'hacker perspectives' columns and fiction. I | |
also like reading the older 2600 magazines - from the 80s. This is | |
when I got my start in computing, so there is definitely a bit of | |
nostalgia there, but I also enjoy reading about the computing | |
history of that time. | |
Continued... | |
+++ SDF Dialup +++ | |
Friday, January 03, 2014 | |
I'm typing this over a dialup connection into SDF. I've had an SDF | |
dialup account since I've joined, but seldom use it anymore. I do | |
like to keep it around as a last-ditch internet access method, so I | |
test it from time-to-time. It *has* come in useful before during | |
extended power outages. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Trisquel GNU/Linux 6.0 Meets an Old Laptop +++ | |
Friday, November 29, 2013 | |
I recently acquired an old laptop (A Dell Latitude) from a friend | |
that was throwing it out. I love old laptops, they tend to be built | |
more solidly and have much nicer-feeling keyboards than 'modern' | |
ones. The lack of horsepower doesn't bother me, as my mostly non-GUI | |
needs don't require lots of memory, disk or CPU. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Cool Gopher Phlog to Blog Converter +++ | |
Wednesday, November 27, 2013 | |
Our very own Echosa has made a very nice gopher phlog-to-blog | |
converter, complete with disqus comments. I like it - simple, clean | |
and has the advantage of only having to update your phlog/blog in | |
one place. | |
Continued... | |
+++ NYC Scary +++ | |
Friday, November 22, 2013 | |
Last month I was in NY city for a few days on business. Since I live | |
in Connecticut, I am able to take the train into Penn Station. On | |
the way home, my train was delayed and I stayed in Penn Station for | |
a bit longer than I wanted to. It was...interesting, to say the | |
least. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Learning Morse Code +++ | |
Tuesday, October 08, 2013 | |
I've had my ham license for about 5 years, but never done much with | |
it until recently, when I bought an Icom IC-718, put an antenna up | |
over my garage and started learning morse code. Why morse code? | |
Local 2M repeaters don't really interest me, and I have little | |
desire to actually chat via phone/SSB/AM with anyone. CW seems so | |
much _cooler_ somehow, despite it still being just another form of | |
communication. It may be the minimalist nature of CW that appeals to | |
me - a low-power battery operated transceiver, wire antenna and key | |
are all you need. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Homeschooling Update +++ | |
Friday, September 20, 2013 | |
I noted back in April that my wife and I were considering home | |
schooling our kids, ages 9 and 12. We did end up doing this, and it | |
has been generally a positive experience during the first | |
month. We're learning the best ways to do things as we go along, | |
using whatever free or low-cost resources we can find. For example, | |
we make regular trips to the town library for textbooks or fiction, | |
use the Khan Academy website, and various online sources of | |
documentaries and educational shows (Netflix, Discovery, Youtube). | |
Continued... | |
+++ Role Playing Games by Bboard and Gopher +++ | |
Saturday, August 17, 2013 | |
I and some old-school D&D enthusiasts started a bboard/gopher Swords | |
& Wizardry campaign [0]. Coming from some recent play-by-post or | |
forum-based games, I had some reservations, but I must say it's been | |
working quite well. | |
Continued... | |
+++ TV's Everywhere +++ | |
Friday, July 26, 2013 | |
I've noticed lately that more and more public and private venues are | |
installing large, flat-screen TVs. They are always on, tuned to CNN | |
or Fox News, or some sports channel. I'm not sure if this is the | |
same in other parts of the world, but it seems most Americans | |
tolerate or perhaps even want this, or why else would businesses | |
install them? | |
Continued... | |
+++ Comments on Textfiles +++ | |
Wednesday, June 05, 2013 | |
Over at jstg's phlog [0] he laments the lack of plain text files on | |
the internet. He is not alone in that sentiment, the 'modern' web is | |
more about looks than actual content. There are ways to cope, | |
however. | |
Continued | |
+++ Jefferson Quote +++ | |
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 | |
Here's a quote from a founding father you don't see very often. I think we | |
can all agree on his sentiments towards banks: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Micro-managers +++ | |
Monday, April 29th, 2013 | |
I had just started troubleshooting an issue on a production server the other | |
day, when one of the managers got wind of the problem and wanted to hop on a | |
IM session with me so we could both figure out the problem as it was | |
'critical'. Please, no. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Consumerism +++ | |
Saturday, April 13th, 2013 | |
I was at a local Staples today grabbing some office supplies. While there, I | |
took a look at the laptops they had on display. Universally overpriced with | |
loads of crapware/adware and all with a highly visible 'Windows 8 installed' | |
sticker. The usual bait-and-switch with a sticker price in a large font and | |
the admission in a tiny font at the bottom edge of the tag that the actual | |
price is higher, unless you send in for a mail-in rebate. Rather than tout | |
how worthless it all was and how a decent text editor was nowhere to be | |
found, stickers touting the latest version of Office for just $50 more, and | |
some sort of kiosk display with prominent Facebook and Netflix icons. No | |
mention of the required anti-virus software, I guess that's just assumed | |
nowadays. How can people use these to do anything useful, I thought to | |
myself? The answer is they can't, and they are not intended to be useful, | |
merely to enable consumption. | |
Continued... | |
+++ The Problem With Public Schools +++ | |
Wednesday, April 03th, 2013 | |
My wife and I have been discussing homeschooling our two children (ages 9 | |
and 12). Public school in the US seems to be completely concerned with | |
teaching kids how to do well on state standardized tests, and less about | |
learning. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Expensive Cloud +++ | |
Tuesday, April 02nd, 2013 | |
I was recently surprised to learn that large disk arrays can be much cheaper | |
if you self-host them versus, well versus pretty much any "cloud" storage | |
provider. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Killing Caps Lock +++ | |
Friday, March 29th, 2013 | |
The dreaded caps lock key. Never has a key been so useless yet so | |
ever-present. As a heavy emacs user, I keep myself sane by turning it into | |
an extra control key. Various linux distros and desktops have their GUI apps | |
for changing keyboard layout, but I found some simple commands that work | |
pretty much everywhere. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Ebooks are Still too Expensive +++ | |
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 | |
Sigh. It seems the publishing industry has not learned from the | |
mistakes of other, dying industries and is still clinging to quaint | |
business models. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Gopher Automation +++ | |
Tuesday, March 26th, 2013 | |
I used to have a few gopher CGI (aka gopher mole) scripts on my SDF gopher | |
site. One displayed the latest weather for my area, one was my phlogging | |
script slerm, and one generated a random Firefly quote every time it was | |
loaded. | |
Continued... | |
+++ THE WEBSITE IS DOWN +++ | |
Monday, March 25th, 2013 | |
Ugh. Why is it that people still feel the need to WRITE IN ALL CAPS in | |
email? What, is this 1996 (of course, I am posting this on a gopher | |
server...)? | |
Continued... | |
+++ Public School is Boring +++ | |
Friday, March 22nd, 2013 | |
I went to a parent-teacher conference at the local elementary school with my | |
9-year old daughter yesterday. She does fairly well, but tends to be | |
inconsistent, probably due to the ebb and flow in her interest level. This | |
was evident while discussing reading. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Prophetic Carl Sagan Quote +++ | |
Tuesday, March 19th, 2013 | |
Carl Sagan is one of my favorite authors. His book, 'The Demon-Haunted | |
World" is a classic, and is essential reading for the budding skeptic. A | |
quote from that book is eerily prophetic: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Phlogit - The goPHerLOG helper-- | |
Monday, March 18th, 2013 | |
I recently converted the 'mkgopherentry' shell script that many here at SDF | |
use for their phlogs to perl. | |
Continued... | |
+++ What Router? Adventures of A Freelance Sysadmin-- | |
Sunday, March 17th, 2013 | |
The ringing phone interrupted Nalo's concentration, his eyes glued to the | |
terminal window, his fingers tapping at the keyboard. He glanced at the | |
caller-ID. Minicorp. Crap, not again. He paused his nethack game with a | |
control-z. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Musings on Network Security +++ | |
Monday, September 10, 2012 | |
As a sysadmin, I have always thought simplicity should be a key | |
guideline when securing Linux or Unix servers. That sounds rather | |
meaningless by itself, so an example is in order. Anyone who spends | |
time looking at the log files on an internet-facing server or | |
firewall will notice the almost constant barrage of SSH brute-force | |
attacks. SSH is indispensable as a remote administration tool, so it | |
is likely to be installed on every such Linux or Unix system. Some | |
admins like to install automatic analysis and blocking tools (e.g., | |
fail2ban), but I dislike such tools because they are just another | |
way of "enumerating badness" [1]. So I secure SSH with a set of | |
simple changes: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Unsubscribe Me Madness +++ | |
Tuesday, June 12, 2012 | |
For some reason I was getting marketing email from Barnes & Noble, | |
several times per day. I must have inadvertently missed a checkbox | |
labeled 'spam me' during my last online purchase. Anyway, I finally | |
followed the 'unsubscribe' link and dutifully selected that I no | |
longer wished to receive ANY email. This is the response I got after | |
submission: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Ebooks Cost Too Much +++ | |
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 | |
Some time ago I read the dead-tree version of the book Daemon, by | |
Daniel Suarez. A very good book, and one I was glad to see now had a | |
sequel. I was less pleased when I went to the Barnes & Noble website | |
to see how much the ebook would cost (I have a 1st gen nook) - | |
$9.99. Just out of curiosity, I checked the kindle price, and it was | |
the same. I'm sorry, $9.99 is way too much for an ebook. I'm willing | |
to pay more for physical books, but not an ephemeral digital | |
version, even if it's in an open format like epub. I can't be alone | |
seems to me publishers are losing money by jacking up ebook prices | |
(I've noticed authors selling direct through Amazon or B&N to | |
tend to charge less, it's just the publishers trying to hang on to | |
an obsolete business model). In the end, I picked up an almost-new | |
hardcover for $1.93 on half.com (just under $6.00 with shipping), | |
and I have the physical book. | |
Continued... | |
+++ WTF is Tracker and Why is it Using All of My Memory? +++ | |
Sunday, March 18, 2012 | |
Recently, I updated by Debian testing XFCE desktop. Nothing unusual | |
there, I've been using Debian for many years and after the gnome3 | |
disaster, have pretty much settled on XFCE. This update brought in a | |
surprise, however. My desktop with 3GB of RAM was sluggish, and | |
'top' showed I was using all my RAM *and* 500MB of swap. Hmmm... | |
Continued... | |
+++ Argh, No Snow +++ | |
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 | |
This time last year we had two feet of snow on the ground, now | |
none. In fact it hasn't snowed appreciably in the northeastern US | |
since mid-December, not at all normal for a New England winter. | |
Most people are pleased by this turn of events, but my wife and I | |
enjoy cross-country skiing. We have only been able to go out twice | |
this winter, and then only by traveling north to Vermont during a | |
lucky week in January where they had six whole inches of snow. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Alt.sysadmin.recovery Manpages +++ | |
Sunday, February 19, 2012 | |
More sysadmin humor, the alt.sysadmin.recovery [0] manpages. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Don't Mess With the Sysadmin +++ | |
Sunday, February 19, 2012 | |
A funny reminder not to mess with your sysadmin [0]. Reminds me of | |
the BOFH stories [1]. | |
Continued... | |
+++ WTF: Ubuntu, Debian and Gnome +++ | |
Friday, February 17, 2012 | |
After my rant on Ubuntu a few years ago it actually improved quite a | |
bit. You still had loads of mysterious processes running, but at | |
least they advanced things to the point of not slowing the desktop | |
down (or maybe hardware just caught up), all the while keeping the | |
same basic interface. I suppose they had gone just too long without | |
messing things up, so in comes Unity (or Gnome3 if you are running | |
the current Debian testing default desktop), and things are back to | |
slow, clunky and unusable. At least for me - I tried it and | |
abandoned it after a few days. Worse, the interface is radically | |
changed, with no fallback. But hey, it looks good! | |
Continued... | |
+++ Perl CGI Programming, the Right Way (redux) +++ | |
Thursday, February 16, 2012 | |
Argh! The excellent Perl CGI course I first mentioned here is | |
offline. Archive.org to the rescue. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Hurricane Irene +++ | |
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 | |
We've had an interesting few days since hurricane (really tropical | |
storm) Irene hit Connecticut. We lost power Sunday morning, and | |
finally got it back Tuesday. This wasn't really an inconvenience for | |
us, as we had a generator and 20 gallons of fuel. That would last | |
almost two weeks - the trick is to realize that you don't need 24x7 | |
power to be comfortable, assuming you are prepared (more about that | |
below). We ran the generator about six hours a day - two hours each | |
morning. afternoon and night. That was enough in 80-degree weather | |
to keep the fridge and freezer cold enough so there was no food | |
spoilage. While the generator was off, we relied on stored water | |
(both potable and rainwater for flushing toilets), a propane stove, | |
various solar lights, battery-powered flashlights and oil | |
lanterns. Since it was late August in New England, we did not have | |
to worry about heating the house, although we have a wood stove if | |
it had been necessary. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Slerm Phlogging Script - Updates +++ | |
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 | |
I've updated slerm to fix an issue where embedded gopher links of | |
type 1-9 were not recognized. I've also added 'bookshelf.txt', meant | |
to be a list of what you are currently reading, displayed just below | |
the site header. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Ideas for Improving Slerm +++ | |
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 | |
There are some ideas I've had for improving the slerm phlogging | |
engine [], the main one being adding full-text search. In fact, this | |
seems to be a drawback to gopher itself - although the Veronica and | |
VISHNU searches [1] are useful, they index only selectors - not | |
full-text [2]. For a lightweight, text-based protocol, this seems a | |
big weakness. It means you have to hunt around gopherspace for | |
interesting tidbits, since selector names aren't always that | |
descriptive. It appears WAIS was meant to address this limitation, | |
although only for locally connected gopher servers via a special | |
client (think pre-internet). | |
Continued... | |
+++ Remote Access +++ | |
Sunday, May 22, 2011 | |
I setup VNC access to a desktop for a client recently, which they | |
promptly b0rked by replacing their router and with it all the | |
firewall/port forwarding settings - without telling me. In trying to | |
get access to try and fix it, I explained how I would first need the | |
IP address for the new router. I received this helpful email in | |
response: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Mail Clients and Editors +++ | |
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 | |
My favorite mail client is mutt, and my editor-of-choice is GNU | |
Emacs. The two play quite nicely together, and I still use them for | |
personal mail, via a console SSH connection. This line in .muttrc | |
does the trick: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Using Old OSes On Servers +++ | |
Wednesday, April 06, 2011 | |
Of all the linux distros or BSD's to choose from, I would say Fedora | |
ranks at the bottom for me as far as production server use. It's | |
really meant as a testing OS, to test new ideas before they get | |
incorporated into RHEL. While there are issues with any old | |
operating system as far as community or vendor support, Fedora | |
releases in particular have a very short lifespan (Fedora Legacy, | |
which had been providing support for old Fedora releases, was shut | |
down in 2007). I mention this because I have a client that contacts | |
me every few months for help with some intractable server | |
issue. From just a security perspective, this is scary, FC5 was | |
released in 2006: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Hacker Wanted +++ | |
Wednesday, January 19, 2011 | |
Like most in the tech industry, I get emails from recruiters from | |
time-to-time. Most I file in the bit-bucket pretty quickly. But one | |
I received the other day was interesting for the wording used in the | |
job description: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Slerm Phlogging Script - Updates +++ | |
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 | |
I've updated slerm to fix an issue where users could leave 'orphan' | |
comments (comments not attached to any post) by forgetting to type | |
the name of the post before the comment text. Now an error page is | |
displayed, with instructions on what to do. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Slerm Phlogging Script +++ | |
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 | |
I've added some more updates to my version of the excellent 'germ' | |
phlogging script as created by wt@sdf, and renamed it 'slerm' to | |
differentiate it. The main change from the previous version is the | |
ability to receive email alerts on post comments. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Highly Annoying Habits of Non-Geeks +++ | |
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 | |
Posted without comment, annoying habits of the non-geek: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Slide Rules +++ | |
Thursday, August 19, 2010 | |
[This post disappeared from the SDF bboard for some reason, so I'm | |
posting it here] | |
Continued... | |
+++ This Server is a Tad Overloaded... +++ | |
Monday, August 02, 2010 | |
A server I do development work on...yikes: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Project Work and Crazy Expectations +++ | |
Friday, May 14, 2010 | |
I've never been a fan of detailed or formal requirements docs for | |
software or other projects, as I've found the customer's needs | |
always change and sticking to a pre-made list is impossible. But | |
there has to be *something* to start with, something reasonably | |
detailed enough to make an estimate (and I recommend doubling that | |
before telling the customer). I got an email from a potential client | |
recently: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Partitioning Woes +++ | |
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 | |
Who partitions servers like this? A braindead hosting provider, | |
that's who. | |
Continued... | |
+++ HTML Tag Removal Utility - unhtml +++ | |
Friday, April 16, 2010 | |
I updated 'unhtml' [0] today and copied it into /sys/sdf/bin so | |
others could use it. Unhtml is a command-line utility to strip tags | |
from HTML source. I'm using it to convert pyblosxom posts to gopher- | |
suitable text. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Some More Light Reading... +++ | |
Thursday, April 15, 2010 | |
I like the Forgotten Realms novels so much, I've been reading all of | |
them. Right now I'm reading the Paths of Darkness Collector's | |
Edition [0]. So far all of RA Salvatore's books in this series have | |
been great, although I'm guessing you'll like them better if you | |
were or are into D&D. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Some Light Reading... +++ | |
Thursday, January 07, 2010 | |
I'm taking the family on a long-overdue vacation up to Vermont next | |
week. In anticipation of doing lots of reading, I picked up two of | |
R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms trilogies, 'The Dark Elf' [0] and | |
'Icewind Dale' [1]. If the reviews on Amazon and bn.com are any | |
indication, they should be quite entertaining. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Kickin' it Old School #tags Palm,Ebooks,Ereader,Plucker +++ | |
Saturday, January 02, 2010 | |
Continued... | |
+++ Text Adventures and Get Lamp +++ | |
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 | |
I still remember playing Zork happily for hours in my youth. For | |
those that played them, text adventures encouraged logical, | |
deliberate thinking that rarely exists in modern games. Poking | |
through Jason Scott's blog ASCII [0] last night, I saw a note about | |
Get Lamp [1] and put in a pre-order. If it's anything like BBS [2] | |
it will be great. It's set to ship in March of 2010. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Viewing the Top-Ten Worst SSH Attackers +++ | |
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 | |
If you must maintain an 'open' SSH server, this might come in handy. | |
This is a quick way to view the top ten worst offending SSH | |
attackers in your secure log. It works on Red Hat-based Linux boxen | |
(e.g., CentOS, Fedora), but it can easily be modified for other OS's | |
by just changing the pattern or logfile. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Make Great Money Now as a Freelance Developer... +++ | |
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 | |
Well, I'm so glad the person posting this job [0] put a plus sign | |
after the number '10' for an hourly rate, because as a 'Senior | |
mod_perl programmer' with 'lots of application development | |
background' who is used to dealing with 'Difficult code with poor | |
documentation' in 'Very large applications developed over many | |
iterations', I would never even consider applying for this at just | |
$10/hour - the plus sign makes all the difference! | |
Continued... | |
+++ Squirrelmail Error +++ | |
Saturday, October 03, 2009 | |
I came across an obscure error using Squirrelmail recently. The | |
error was just the text "ERROR : Connection dropped by imap server" | |
after attempting to login with a newly-created user - less than | |
helpful, and the server logs were no help (I'm using the Dovecot | |
IMAP server). I was thrown off by the fact that I had recently | |
migrated this client's installation to a new server, and thought | |
everything should have worked as it had before. The key turned out | |
to be that this was a brand-new user account, and that user's | |
Maildir folders were missing. The easy fix is to create the maildir | |
folders: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Observations on Teaching Newbies to Use a Shell +++ | |
Saturday, September 26, 2009 | |
I've been teaching Linux/Unix Fundamentals courses recently, and | |
thought I'd share some observations about students - some that | |
surprised me. The course I teach is very command line intensive; | |
while the individual student workstations are setup with graphical | |
environments (KDE), the course can be taught and the concepts | |
learned from a console. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Using Rlwrap to Keep Your Commandline Sanity +++ | |
Sunday, September 13, 2009 | |
After many years of commandline use, I've gotten spoiled by the | |
pervasiveness of GNU readline in shells and other shell-like apps, | |
like the MySQL shell. When I do sit down and try to use an app | |
without such support, the result is a fairly painful mix of cursing | |
and visible control characters (Oracle's sqlplus interface is | |
probably the poster child for miserable CLI experiences, with no | |
convenience facilities whatsoever). | |
Continued... | |
+++ Perl CGI Programming, the Right Way +++ | |
Tuesday, September 08, 2009 | |
One of the best resources for learning Perl CGI programming online | |
used to be Ovid's CGI Course. I was disappointed to find it no | |
longer online, but glad to see it in updated form, now maintained by | |
the Perlmonks community [0]. It always distinguished itself from | |
other CGI tutorials with its early attention to security and taint | |
mode [1]. Well worth the read. | |
Continued... | |
+++ No Kidding...Really? +++ | |
Friday, September 04, 2009 | |
This [0] falls under the Master of the Obvious department. Glad my | |
taxes didn't pay for this study. | |
Continued... | |
+++ RCS Misery +++ | |
Friday, August 14, 2009 | |
While I am definitely old-school, and still use RCS for things like | |
personal config files and documents, I would never consider using it | |
on a development project where lots of developers are working on a | |
shared codebase. I had to do just that recently for a contract I'm | |
working on with several other developers. Absolute misery. Even | |
worse, this version of RCS is hacked so that the VC metadata is not | |
local, meaning I can't use Emacs' VC-mode to make life easier. | |
Imagine locks that someone always forgets to release ("You done with | |
that file?"), no merging, branching or private repos - so no way to | |
test your changes without possibly breaking stuff other devs are | |
doing. Sheesh. | |
Continued... | |
+++ When Mutt Thinks Mailboxes Always Have New Mail +++ | |
Tuesday, August 04, 2009 | |
On SDF the non-inbox user mail files are accessed via an NFS mount. | |
Mutt [0]has a hard time figuring out when an NFS mbox file has been | |
modified in some circumstances. So when you press 'c' in the index | |
view, your mailboxes always appear to have new mail. Highly | |
irritating. The fix is to add "set check_mbox_size=yes" to your | |
'.muttrc' (apparently this works only in more recent versions of | |
mutt, the one on SDF is 1.5.19. Older versions [pre 1.5.15] can use | |
a compile- time option "+BUFFY_SIZE"). | |
Continued... | |
+++ No, It's Not the Onion +++ | |
Monday, August 03, 2009 | |
Via the Linux Gazette [0] - a series of command line tutorials in | |
video format [1]. Yes, that's right, video format. I hesitate to | |
even link to them. I can only imagine that this is some vain attempt | |
to grab new subscribers to a dying format by appealing to the | |
Youtube generation. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Happy Sysadmin Day! +++ | |
Friday, July 31, 2009 | |
Happy Sysadmin Day [0], and thanks, smj! That is all. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Oh My +++ | |
Friday, July 31, 2009 | |
Posted without comment [0]. | |
Continued... | |
+++ One More Nail in IE6's Coffin +++ | |
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 | |
So YouTube and some other sites are phasing out support for IE6 []. | |
It's about frakking time. Developing web apps assuming IE6 support | |
would be comical if it weren't so painful. No built-in PNG support? | |
Are you kidding me? One very large company I contracted for still | |
used IE6 as its standard corporate browser. Yup, that's right, in | |
2009. Die, IE6, die. | |
Continued... | |
+++ How Not to Send a Marketing Email +++ | |
Monday, July 06, 2009 | |
Sigh. I got a marketing email from a vendor today, along with 1538 | |
other people whose email addresses were plunked right into the 'To:' | |
header. Microsoft needs to put an idiot dialog in Outlook that pops | |
up when you click 'Send' with more than five 'To:' addresses [0]. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Contract Programmer WTF +++ | |
Friday, July 03, 2009 | |
I've done contract work through Guru.com in the past, and I still | |
take a look around there from time to time. While looking through | |
open projects, I'll sometimes visit a contractor's profile that was | |
given bad reviews. This customer review was priceless: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Random Cool Emacs Hack +++ | |
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 | |
If you spend a lot of time in Emacs, you'll invariably end up with | |
multiple buffers of the same name hanging around. It's sometimes | |
irritating to discern between them while switching. Check out the | |
very useful elisp function that will kill all other Emacs buffers of | |
the same name, courtesy of Trey Jackson at "Life Is Too Short For | |
Bad Code" [0]. | |
Continued... | |
+++ WTF, Ubuntu +++ | |
Thursday, June 18, 2009 | |
Um, seriously WTF, Ubuntu? I must be getting old and intolerant, or | |
something. Ubuntu (and the current crop of Linux distros) all seem | |
to be trying to out-Windoze one another. The bloat and propensity to | |
hide everything from supposedly clueless users has gotten really | |
irritating. | |
Continued... | |
+++ A Sysadmin's Lament, or why cPanel Sucks +++ | |
Saturday, May 23, 2009 | |
I've been wrestling with cPanel [0] on and off for years - more | |
lately, and it always reminds me just how much it sucks. It can be | |
convenient if you don't know how to maintain Linux servers and the | |
various associated Internet services (Apache, BIND, etc.), but there | |
really is no playing nicely with it from a command line sense. Once | |
installed, it takes over your system, rendering it impervious to | |
standard sysadmin tricks. What's more, its convenience is really | |
it's downfall, because when something goes wrong with it, two things | |
are true: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Cool Emacs Hacks +++ | |
Thursday, May 21, 2009 | |
I'm an Emacs-guy, have been for a long time. As much as I use vi | |
from time-to-time, I never could get into modal editing. Despite | |
having used GNU Emacs as a programmer for years, I still learn cool | |
Emacs-fu all the time. Here are a few recent findings: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Google is the Internet +++ | |
Thursday, May 14, 2009 | |
Apparently, Google has become synonymous with the Internet. Everyone | |
panicked today because Google search and apps were down [0]. I got | |
an email from a client during the outage asking what could be the | |
cause of the "slow internet". Google really has become the Internet | |
for most people. | |
Continued... | |
+++ Clueless Admins +++ | |
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | |
Some people have no business maintaining Linux servers. I recently | |
had someone ask me to fix his non-working LAMP web app. He gave me | |
the contact details of the web host admin. So you can be spared the | |
pain I went through, here are six warning signs you might be dealing | |
with a novice Linux admin: | |
Continued... | |
+++ Where Did My Content Go? +++ | |
Saturday, May 09, 2009 | |
I realize businesses need to make money and advertise, but why must | |
I be bombarded with advertising 24x7? Tell me why I should pay good | |
money to watch commercials on cable TV? Shouldn't I get commercial- | |
free TV if I pay for it? | |
Continued... | |
+++ Scary Code Department +++ | |
Thursday, May 07, 2009 | |
What could possibly go wrong with this snippet of PHP code from a | |
web-based CMS? Ignore the lack of error checking... | |
Continued... | |
+++ Linux is Boring, or Saved by the Slack +++ | |
Wednesday, May 06, 2009 | |
I've always thought that Linux would be less popular with hard-core | |
geeks once it became mainstream - that the initial attraction was | |
Linux's unpolished installation and configuration, how it let you | |
get your "hands dirty". I started with Red Hat Linux back in 1995, | |
and spent many long nights configuring and tweaking to get a usable | |
system. The thrill was in the learning. I've recently found myself | |
bored with Linux, I think mainly for the reason that there is no | |
challenge anymore, no sense of accomplishment. Much of the user | |
experience is now hidden beneath layers of graphical abstraction. I | |
certainly do appreciate this, and use Ubuntu myself on my work | |
boxen, as there are times you just have to get stuff done. But I | |
still like to tweak and fiddle. There are also times when things go | |
wrong, and simplicity rules. | |
Continued... | |