My favorite music, running on decades now, has been instrumental music — electric guitar by Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc., — or at least vocal music in non-English like hippy hare krishna music by Rasa, or new age music by Kevin Wood. I’d prefer to listen to the music without being distracted by the words. However, I have an eMusic subscription and decided to check out the alternative world, with real live English lyrics. Continue reading »
Jan 182008
Jan 182008
I spend a good deal of time now working on effective, efficient communication. It is a sin to waste someone’s time. If you have to produce documentation, investigate sparklines (“Intense, Simple, Word-Sized Graphics”). Edward Tufte‘s writing should be required reading for almost any profession I can think of.
Jan 182008
Sun: 4137237 patchadd 106300-01 results in rm -rf / as root (That’s bad)
Microsoft: Computer Hangs While Booting with HP 6L Printer out of Paper (paper-powered pc’s ??? FEED ME!!!)
And I can’t find it now, but back around 12 years ago or so, uninstalling Norton Antivirus resulted in deleting all files not in use. That amuses me.
Visual Basic implementation of Double Metaphone. I posted it to Planet Source Code several years back, but I want a local copy…..
Here’s the free (it doesn’t cost money) Windows software I use. Continue reading »
taiclockd Solaris 10 SMF manifest
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Jan 112008
figgerips.pl
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Jan 092008
Here’s a quick script to figger out [sub]totals of a list of IP ranges. Easy, but handy.
Continue reading »
Leaving Las Vegas
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Nov 182007
Leaving Las Vegas is a movie about what would happen if someone hired Nicolas Cage to pretend to be a drunk. Elisabeth Shue half redeems the movie.
This is a strange Subtitle Goof — it’s not a goof. The goof is with the caption, an English translation from the Latvian pimp patrol. The subtitle actually corrects the caption.
The Lives of Others
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Nov 182007
Sometimes you’ll see a movie or read a book, and you’ll think, “Man! I wish I had written that!” This is one of ‘em. The key to a good movie is to be able to empathize with the protagonist. Have you seen “Basic Instinct 2?” What a spiteful piece of crap. You don’t care if Sharon Stone’s character kills them, or if she gets killed, or if everyone dies. JUST EVERYONE DIE AND GET THE MOVIE OVER WITH!
Now, really good movies let you empathize with more than the protagonist. Like A Simple Plan. You don’t have to like the character, but you have to care about what happens to them.
All of the major characters in The Lives of Others are sympathetic. Even the scummiest of them I could understand. This is the best movie I’ve seen this year.
Should be “Looks like a 50th.”
Self Checkout Lane
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Nov 132007
Dear Home Depot,
If I wanted to check out items at your store, here’s what would happen. Continue reading »
The Dead Zone
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Sep 082007
He’s actually saying [from "The Raven"]: “And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming….”
Fracture
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Sep 022007
Jul 212007
OpenBSD 4.1′s spamd(8) now includes default support for trapping SMTP clients using an envelope to: not listed in /etc/mail/spamd.alloweddomains. If you only accept mail for example.com and example.org, put them in spamd.alloweddomains, and mail to: all other domains (relay attempts) are rejected and the host trapped. Clean and effective. Good job, Bob!
Parsing my logs, though, shows a lot of spam attempts using the envelope from: of my domains. Email clients should use other acceptable means of submission/SMTP injection, including connecting with internal servers via VPN, where they’d never hit spamd. If someone were using SMTP-after-POP, for example, they’d presumably get whitelisted and bypass spamd.
This patch against 4.1-STABLE is a quick copy-and-paste job (I’m not a C programmer), but it works for me.
So, if someone tries to send mail via my external spamd firewall, claiming to have an envelope from: of one of my domains, then I’m not going to accept the message and will trap the host. It’s a virtual certainty you’re a spammer — if it’s from an actual user, then s/he needs to use another connectivity method.
The Upside of Anger
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Jul 032007
Apr 272007
Just noticed today that Certification Magazine is a free subscription.
Apr 272007
Internet Appliances haven’t hit the mainstream yet, and I don’t know why. The constraints are simple: I want a web browser that has no moving parts and makes no noise, so it can go in the bedroom and not annoy me. Back in the day, I had great hopes for the BeOS-based Sony eVilla and was the only person, I think, who liked Be’s focus shift to BeIA. The wife and I recently experimented with an MSN tv 2, which lasted all of one day — it was difficult to read and cumbersome to navigate.
The present setup pleases me. I picked up an NCD nc900 X terminal on eBay for $50, and I picked up a 17″ flatscreen at CompUSA for $130 after rebate. It just runs X sessions off an OpenBSD box in the basement. In theory, I could have just run a KVM extender cable down to a Windows PC, but there is the geek factor…. NCD is out of business, by the way.
The OpenBSD box runs a tftp server that serves up the nc900 boot file (p4v4013.tar.gz is the latest — os.900 is the operating system file, and you’ll want the newest boot_mon.900 you can find to update the flash). It also runs X with xdmcp, xfce, and FireFox (only because IE7 isn’t available). It took a little bit to get running. For instance, it took a while to figure out to set root_depth to 24 in ../config/xp.cnf to get 24-bit video. And it really took a long time to figure out how to change the resolution on the terminal (“BOOT> selftest monset” –> for instance, mine is monset 121 [1024x768 at 70Hz at 17"]). Here’s a somewhat related FAQ.
Works splendidly.
Apr 242007
When you get bored talking to tech support and have to read off serial numbers….
A again
B back
C champagne
D double
E eye
F finally
G gnaw
H heiress
I ink
J Jose
K knife
L line
M mnemonic
N number
O over
P phantom
Q quiche
R repeat
S skip
T triple
U unreadable
V verbose
W wrong
X Xerox
Y yes
Z zed
“F” was “five,” but I reconsidered that cheating and changed it. The basic guide is that the initial letter shouldn’t sound like familiar sounds for that letter (“P” = “phantom”), no foreign words (“Jose” is acceptable, though, by fiat), and if those aren’t possible, then just make it as confusing as possible as though you were reading a serial number (“T” = “triple”).
So MIDYE5I2USS becomes: mnemonic ink double yes eye FIVE ink 2 unreadable skip skip.
Apr 242007
As stated in Choco’s User Guide, “Constraint programming represents one of the closest approaches computer science has yet made to the Holy Grail of programming: the user states the problem, the computer solves it. (E. Freuder)” Constraints are limits on something: you must be at least 48 inches tall to ride the roller coaster; you have to deposit the check before the bank closes at 5:00; only five adults will fit in the car; and so on. The most that people are consciously aware of solving constraint problems are when budgeting money or planning errands. Or doing laundry: after doing a load of socks, do towels, because they’re quicker to fold, and matching socks takes a long time.
Choco is a Java implementation of constraint satisfaction programming. In my opinion, it’s one of the world’s most underrated software packages. I’m surprised it doesn’t get more attention, and I’m surprised that there isn’t at least a C# port. It’s BSD-licensed, so it’s business-friendly.
If you’re charged with time, materials, and resource planning, give Choco a look.
See: Roman Bart
Self-Sufficiency and Optimization
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Apr 222007
See the Rocky Mountain Institute’s “Home Energy Briefs” (nine PDF’s) for information on making your home more energy efficient. No tree-hugging, weak-minded, stark-raving-mad, nonsense.