Oddly missing from the many tech blogs, news sites, and aggregators, Matthew Szulik knocked one rung off my ladder to world domination. Sadly, promotion came from without, so I'll have to cancel that champagne jacuzzi I ordered on Amazon.
WTF? I'm not exactly sure what to make of this. Watching the video, I start to think that there's no other way it could possibly be understood. Of course, listening to one you actually do understand, the uninformed translation is actually better than the original text. I'm pretty sure that's true for the Indian texts, the Subcontinental Aesthetic being what it is.
I'm not one for butterheads.
Just so I won't forget it next time:
Took me some tcpdumping to figure this one out, but here's the deal: If you're missing the "Shared" sidebar in Leopard, it's probably due to some sort of fancy-pants DNS cleverness from your provider or someone else, like OpenDNS. Fix it by doing this from the terminal:
$ sudo pico /etc/smb.conf
and add the following line to the [global] section:
name resolve order = lmhosts bcast wins
Save it, then disable and reenable file-sharing from the Network panel, checking "Advanced..." to make sure that SMB is enabled. After a minute or two, your Shared should be back in the sidebar.
Why does this happen? A local name is searched for via DNS first, and instead of returning a "host not found" and thus triggering the next stage of name resolution (lmhosts or bcast), the name is resolved into the address of the provider's search machine, supposedly to make your life easier. But it doesn't make your life easier, it breaks stuff like Samba. A name shouldn't resolve if it doesn't exist. There are methods for handling things like this, like the built-in "Host not found" pages of many web browsers.
Well said, Sam. Glad to year you're enjoying the Maccy goodness. I'm sure some would be naysayers, holders-on to the old ways of Macs being the sole dominion of grandmas and graphics weenies. But then again, actions sometimes speak louder than words.
Last login: Mon Oct 22 16:54:46 on ttyp1 Welcome to Darwin! ericbook:~ eric$ uptime 19:16 up 13 days, 23:50, 4 users, load averages: 0.43 0.58 0.50 ericbook:~ eric$
'nuff said.
Since when can you watch YouTube videos directly from Google search results?
How's that agreement with Uncle Bill working out for you? Well, now you know why we didn't sign it. It looks like we've all got a few lawyer fees in front of us.
Microsoft's puppet group is probably going to ask for an injunction against Novell and Red Hat. Sadly, the entire future Linux could be decided by a judge in the next few days. Whether the suit has legs or not, an injunction would pretty much mean the end of every organization that depends on the distribution of Linux.
Sadly, the patent covers virtually any tabbed interface on computers. Software patents: They're awesome.
Freediot.com. "Idiots in love with free stuff" is their tagline. How do you turn a Wordpress Blog into a money pit? Well, you go 'round the net paying rubes to post links to you. Oddly, I wasn't able to find too much free stuff I would have been interested in, seeing as most of it is composed of free food or age creams and I am immune to Father Time's hoary touch; but there is probably the odd 400ml sample bottle of personal lubricant that you can still get past the TSA.
You might call it spamming, but I would remind you: even the great Orson Wells did commercials for wine he probably wouldn't have cleaned lug nuts with. Gotta pay the bills.
I hate it when Ikea's little bot-princess starts playing coy with me.
I was sitting outside smoking this afternoon, and a phrase hit me from out of the blue. That phrase would be “tight-rolled pants”. And whaddya know, there's a page for it on the Wikipedia.
What were we goobers thinking?
This man is out there, waiting.
Eeeeeew.
What? I dunno. I'm just kind of sitting around, waiting on things. I just spent way too much time transferring money across European borders, and reclaiming my identity. But the new passports are wonderful pieces of fortitude. Here' s a few quotes from my new passport:
And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth. - Abraham Lincoln
The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains. - Daniel Webster
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. - George Washington
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. - excerpt from the Declaration of Independence
Your concept of love may be different, but know that I love this world.
The Grand Unified Theory of Rubean Mechanics
I like reading Scott Adams' blog on occasion. Much like Balph Eubanks, he's glib, amusing, and completely lacking in morality. Take, for example, his latest strawman-laden posting regarding the visit of a certain Mr. Ahmedinejad:
I was happy to hear that NYC didn't allow Iranian President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at the WTC site. And I was happy that Columbia University is rescinding the offer to let him speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech.
...If Ahmadinejad thinks he can be our friend by honoring our heroes and opening a dialog, he underestimates our ability to misinterpret him. Fucking idiot. I hate him.
Well, there's certainly some rye wit at work here. Yes, it is quite ironic that a country led by a genocidal religious dictator, which the USA most certainly is, would object to a fellow genocidal religious madman visiting its most sensitive cultural site. I mean, Mahmoud's only trying to "open a dialog" here, isn't he? Isn't that the meaning of Ahmedinejad's visit? Isn't Ahmedinejad just exercising "Free Speech", as Adams says? Aren't we wrong in denying this poor man that right?
Aside from the obvious jackassery involved in claiming that a man who directly controls his entire country's media is having trouble getting his point of view out; or that the United Nations will let him speak before the leaders of the world to the point where they forget to blink for an hour; aside from all this, this is not a question of whether or not Mahmoud is allowed to say what he wants. The question is, in accordance with the Grand Unified Theory of Rubean Mechanics, Who's going to pay for it. It's a question of whether or not Americans should be paying for his plane fare, his security, and his accommodation while he's here, pissing on Ground Zero and generating propaganda for totalitarian lobbying groups like MoveOn.org and International ANSWER.
All of Adams' ridiculous assertions never mention the one central fact here: There is no compelling reason for American taxpayers to foot the bill, so this guy, who just held one of his popular "Death to America" parades, can come over here and lecture them on anything. I personally don't much care what Ahmedinejad thinks, I can see the general thrust of his inclinations. He's spitting on the United States and Western Culture daily, and then expects to be treated with deference in return. Fuck him.
This kind of Devil's Advocacy isn't new to Adams. At least, I hope it's just that. He's apparently one of those celebrities that have forgotten the hard work involved in their ascendency, and assume that they're rich because of some accident of nature, akin to divine providence. Humans, himself included, are all just a bunch of "moist robots" with no capacity for thought, no free will; we've apparently just been programmed by Mother Nature to do the things we've done or will do. There is no mind, there is no choice, there is only the stimuli in our environments, and the response that was determined by a chance arrangement of atoms into chemicals during the Big Bang. Or something.
It's an obscene display of thoughtlessness, a conceit of someone trying so hard to seem above all this. Adams' Dilbert is amusing, and his blog is a bit of junk food for the brain at times. But he's got the morals of a two-dollar whore.
Erm...no thanks, I just lost my appetite.
Last night we didn't make it. The two Frenchmen surrendered the evening, seeing as it was Trotzky's birthday, and therefore a time for somber reflection or something. So, we rode around big town Farnborough for a couple of hours, grabbed some grub, and then headed back to the apartment to watch a movie.
We watched Fur, which cemented my belief that Nicole Kidman is the perfect woman. Not only does she look good in her own slutty little librarian sort of way, she gives a guy a handjob in this movie while shaving his hairy back. That's my kind of girl, a real little trooper.
Anyhoo, it's back off to London now, for a second try at getting sloppy somewhere besides sitting at home in front of the boob tube. Wish us luck.
Vacation week is winding down, and I'm getting ready to leave the driving to Southwest Trains and go drinking in London. I'll try to keep it under two weeks this time, but no promises. We'll tramp it a bit through Soho, I guess, just me, the girls, and a couple of frog-eaters from the office.
I wonder why I never get to go drinking with Englishmen? It's probably for the best. There's a quote that gets bandied about, especially in the local newspapers, about England being a nation of drunks and scalawags. I can't say much about that, but it does seem that the pubs all close at 11:00 PM for a reason. At 5 o'clock, they pour out of their offices and into the public houses, seemingly on a race against the clock to get themselves 'faced before the early last call.
When they were finally permitted to stay open past 11, in the hope that the binge-drinking would abate in light of longer opening hours, they found themselves doubly-cursed in that the Englishmen were every bit as drunk at 11, but didn't have to go home. All pubs here are set up so that you have to go to the counter to get your drinks, instead of having them brought to your table. There's a built-in handbrake there: a system where you can't get any more drink once you lose the ability to walk is founded upon sound principle and good advices.
Hugs,
Rube
I've done nothing today; nothing but clean out the cluttered closets of my preferred newsfeed reader. There were some connections in there that were sorely neglected. I could use a bit more time to wade through the degenerate filth that is my blogroll, but sadly, I work. The Company is tolerant in their control over my time, fair since they do not pay hourly; but tolerance has its limits, and I doubt they would look kindly upon my spending the business day in a fugue state, reading entry after entry of dialectics about Jessica Simpson's tits, or Brittney Spears' overplayed poonanny.
Nevertheless, it saddens me that my everyday is not blessed with the nuggets of wisdom from skippystalin:
Being the only person with an out-of-control substance abuse problem in a relationship is tough. Most romantic couplings are based on common interests and most of my interests culminate in my waking up in a pool of what I think is my own urine and not being quite sure what time zone I'm in. I'm much like a cat in that I have a tendancy of marking my territory with my vomit, blood and gallons of my semen...My ability to smoke, drink and masturbate furiously at the same time might not be much, it's all that I have.
Ahh, skippystalin, how I've missed you, and your nuggets.
This is how I spend my vacation: visiting Stonehenge on one day; reading the melancholy musings of skippystalin the next, picturing him composing scholarly tracts through bitter tears, a crushed Viagra dissolving in a highball of Jack Daniels next to the keyboard, as another long evening fades into a blur of poetry, madness, and vigorous bouts of hate-filled masturbation. And wondering, of the two, which is the more meaningful and fitting monument to humanity?
They should've just burned enjoyeverysandwich to CD, stuck it to the side of Voyager along with its author, and shot the whole lot into space back when they had government funding to do so, all in the name of making a good first impression for whatever aliens were out cruising for an easy meal.
skippystalin's output is prodigious, to be sure, but there was an entire blogroll to consider:
The lunatics are running the asylum over at Straight White Guy's place. Eric's testicles are mentioned, indirectly. Remind me to change my passwords regularly and start using strong encryption.
At WWTDD, the masturbation theme continues, this time involving Jessica Alba:
How stoned do you have to be to cheat on Jessica Alba? I could jack off to Jessica Alba while a big mean dog was chasing me and this idiot is cheating on her. I decided to confront him about this and I screamed at him, hey, what is your problem. And he said I should get off his lawn. And I said, no, no you get off the lawn. You get off. Then he went inside, probably because deep down, he knew I had made some pretty good points.
Remarkably, if you do a google image search of Jessica Alba, you see her ass more than her face.
Driving through Wiltshire the other day, we saw a white horse on the side of a hill.
This morning we picked up my new wheelchair. It's a sporty European marque, with an aggressive stance, low-profile tires, and a head-turning cherry-red metalflake paint job. It's not that great on the corners, but it'll take any one of y'all on the straightaways.
I've never done time on wheels. On the whole, I found it to be not all that bad. Then again, I don't figure that most wheelchair-bound men my age get to enjoy being pushed around town by a couple of sexy German bloggerettes. Thanks, ladies: the jealous looks from the other local cripples was the icing on the cake. Here's a little something extra for you, babes. (via AoSHQ)
Funny things happen when you're on wheels. I saw a lady I work with while being carted through Tesco's frozen food department. I said hello, and she just looked right through me, steering her cart so as not to make contact with the leper. She probably thought I was going to ask her for some spare change, or if she could wipe me bum for me, or whatever it is that those people want from healthy-legged people. I also noticed that the supermarkets put completely different things down on the bottom three feet of the shelves. All the cool toys are down there, for example, presumably because chil'n's is small. It's also a great altitude to find anti-bedsore medicaments, for some reason.
So, I let myself be pushed by the Weyside in Guildford, where, at one point, a husky young native was required to wheel my fat ass up a steep incline. The Sistas, for all their heart, lacked the muscle to get the job done, so he, being a true-hearted salt-of-earth kind of guy, waved them off and grunted and sweated till I crested the hill. Had the man known that I could have, at any point in time, simply stood up and hobbled up the hill under my own power, he most certainly would have picked me up and broken me over his knee.
Tomorrow morning, we'll be visiting Stonehenge, or Stone'enge, as the locals quaintly call it. We'll also visit the haunted city, Salisbury, to watch the homosexuals. Ta!
I like reading OSNews for some reason. I think I like to catch the geeky news about SkyOS, or the occasional retro curmudgeonry that rolls by about Lotus 1-2-3 or OS/2. Being the old-timer that I am, it's hard to resist a paean from my youth about 10-finger productivity.
Unfortunately, they've become the epicenter of stupid for the tech press. Check out this article, which explodes the myths about competition being good: "Competition is not Good"
'It gives consumers more choice'
Choice is good when there's one agreed base standard, and a number of compatible approaches. For example, there are many Linux distributions, but they are all Linux, and they can all run the same software. They are 'flavours' of the same thing, that is a good choice. People like different flavours.
Competition does not produce easier choices for consumers. All they get is added un-interoperability and complexity with competitive choices.
Now, if you go read that article, which I do not recommend, you'll slowly come to the realization that this moron is just annoyed that he has to make the effort to choose between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. He's willing to surrender his entire free will to some (hopefully) benevolent dictator, abolish brand names, and forsake the free market economy because choosing which format to buy the Firefly special edition box set in is hard. What a hopeless, whiny-assed sissy.
Of course, things don't get better when they start tossing political analysis at you. "Net Neutrality" is one monikers that has overshadowed the thing named. The discussion is often framed in a way that an uninformed listener would assume there was lobbying going on to abolish some sort of laws that are now protecting consumers from big, bad tiered-Internet ninjas.
But: There is no net neutrality legislation, there never was, and hopefully, there never will be. The argument over "Net Neutrality" is about whether or not the U.S. government should introduce legislation forbidding bandwidth throttling by ISPs. It's the "have you stopped beating your wife?" straw man for the Slashdot crowd. You'll notice that this article calls the Supreme Court's decision that the U.S. government shouldn't step in and configure the ISPs' Cisco routers for them, "Backing for Two-Tier Internet":
The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic. The agency said it was opposed to 'network neutrality', the idea that all data on the net is treated equally. The comments put the agency at odds with companies such as Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to guarantee equal access to the net.
Of course, this would also mean that an enforcement infrastructure would also have to be put in place, making sure that everyone got their "fair share" of said bandwidth, as if backbone routers and POPs just fell off a tree somewhere. God forbid ISPs be allowed to tune the services that they developed and paid for as they wish. Let's let the government decides who gets bandwidth, and how much is enough! That will make it all fair and neutral-like. Whenever a politician uses the word "fair", hang on to your wallet.
Well, my trackbacks are now working, it seems. There's some ugly Python spaghetti-code going on behind the scenes that translates back and forth between absolute urls, non-absolute relative urls, and upper-lower-camel case; but it works.
Trackbacks are only good for Movable Type, though. Which I can't stand anymore. MT used to be the only thing out there, but there's something that really, really, really galls me about the way it rebuilds your entire site into static HTML pages everytime you update a post. I'm sure it's awesomeness if you've got your server running on an old TV remote, but nowadays we're all running our web servers on 100-core 64-bit terahertz moonshot computers that can simultaneously compute π, encode MPEG video, and mix the best goddam margaritas you've ever tasted, all without breaking a sweat.
So yeah, I figured out how to implement trackbacks in Django, to a point where they more or less work. Now why is Wordpress fucking with me? It seems to be thrown off by the fact that Wordpress sends a HEAD request before it downloads and parses the page, in the vain hope that the X-Pingback header will be set. I can't figure out how to do that in Django's generic views, so I just use the secondary method, that being a link element in the XHTML code. But now, whenever a Worpdress blog pings me, I get this kind of crap:
[09/Sep/2007 15:04:23] "GET /blog/2007/sep/08/vacation/ HTTP/1.1" 200 27367
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/rubeon/lib/python2.4/django/core/servers/basehttp.py", line 273, in run
self.finish_response()
File "/home/rubeon/lib/python2.4/django/core/servers/basehttp.py", line 312, in finish_response
self.write(data)
File "/home/rubeon/lib/python2.4/django/core/servers/basehttp.py", line 396, in write
self._write(data)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/socket.py", line 248, in write
self.flush()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/socket.py", line 235, in flush
self._sock.sendall(buffer)
error: (104, 'Connection reset by peer')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/rubeon/lib/python2.4/django/core/servers/basehttp.py", line 273, in run
self.finish_response()
File "/home/rubeon/lib/python2.4/django/core/servers/basehttp.py", line 312, in finish_response
self.write(data)
File "/home/rubeon/lib/python2.4/django/core/servers/basehttp.py", line 396, in write
self._write(data)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/socket.py", line 248, in write
self.flush()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/socket.py", line 235, in flush
self._sock.sendall(buffer)
error: (32, 'Broken pipe')
Being the half-assed programmer that I am, I am at a total loss. I can't even do a Lazyweb request here, seeing as my 4 visits a day are unlikely to bring the Django HTTP gurus by. I won't be able to sleep at night, thinking of all the enlightened Wordpress Users who are probably out there try to "Keep the discussion going" with me.
Ever since June, when the iPhone went live, I've heard about nothing else in the tech press, nerd podcasts, and the Apple Fanboisphere. Is it really that way over in the States (the only place you can get them), or does the iPhone actually seem to be doing well?
I think the word "fiasco" might be a little strong for this particular event. When I think of fiascos, I usually think of Newtons, Zunes, and Battlefield Earth.
Leave it to Apple: The only company in the world whose customers form a lynch mob when they lower the price.
Ahh, my first vacation since joining The Company. My queue is cleaned up, my email is forwarded, and an elaborate Sieve session has accomplished in a mere two hours what less civilized mail systems can do with a key combination: The Corporate Vacation Email.
It's been five months now since I came 'cross the channel and started meeting the natives, learning the lingo, and getting used to the fact that everyone here talks like Pinky. Now, I'll be letting my hair down for the next 10 days or so. As well as putting my poor, broken foot up on the coffee table.
As soon as I get my x-rays back from the socialist medical system (they still copy them with coal rubbings on wax paper over here, apparently), I'll post pictures of the metatarsalar breakage here for your morbid enjoyment. Don't thank me yet.
The other half of Sistaweb will be joining us for the week. We'll allow her to sleep here rent-free for an entire week, even though she refused to bring a carton of cigarettes as payment. Damned non-smokers and their principles. It's like those non-smokers back in the World War II who didn't sign up for cigarette rations. Throwing away a gold mine, that is. Our grandfathers probably had a word for those guys, and if I knew my grandfather at all, that word was sissy-boy.
The girls have rented a wheelchair for me, seeing as I won't be too much fun doing a London pub-crawl on crutches. I've already had a forehead-slapping moment over this, as you probably are right now. Why haven't I thought of taking a wheelchair with me before? That would've come in handy on more than one occasion, the Wreckyll in Jeckyll not least among them.
Man, Apple is on a roll. Not only have they got me hooked for a new computer, a new laptop, a new office package, and a replacement for my aging MythTV box, but now I have to start thinking about a new iPod. Now, let's see what Uncle Steve is going to me be costing me 'til Christmas Time:
| Item | Damage |
|---|---|
| 20" iMac | 1199.00 |
| Macbook | 1099.00 |
| 8GB iPod Touch | 299.00 |
| AppleTV | 299.00 |
| iWork '08 | 79.00 |
| iLife '08 | 79.00 |
| Total: | $3,054.00 |
Not bad for a day's work, Mr. Jobs. And what's up for the rest of September? Maybe some irresistible bionic iFoot to replace the one I broke playing frisbee at the company picnic last week?
My first thought was, Velociman needs to see this.
My next thought was, He sees nothing else.
Although there's a remarkable lack of iPhone hype around the office, we being a big-time Linux company and all, there's an amazing amount of Mac fanboiism. Pretty much all of us have Macs at home. The explanation for this is simple: After dealing with Linux problems all day long, there's something nice about going home to something you can spend all your time using and not making up excuses for why it looks like shit and doesn't work.
I like Linux, mind you. I use it day-in, day-out for my desktop at work, for my webservers, and it brings in my daily bread. We all love it here, pretty much like a family loves and therefore tolerates the embarrassing second cousin with the Downs'. But people are walking all over the office today buzzing about the upcoming announcement from Apple.
Will it be the long-awaited iMac redesign? Will it be a new Mini? My boss is actually carrying his phone to the pub after work today so he can sit on engadget and get a realtime update. Linus would not be pleased...
Next time I'm on the road for work, do not put hookers on the company credit card.
Last login: Thu Jul 26 12:17:28 from nat-pool-fab.re
Welcome to Darwin!
ericbook:~ eric$ mutt
-bash: mutt: command not found
ericbook:~ eric$ open /Applications/Mail.app/
ericbook:~ eric$
Ahh. Like coming in after a long day of plowing the fields and sticking your aching feet into a pot of hot water. After running Linux all day at work, you feel like slipping into something more comfortable. Sam knows it. Zonker knows it, though he won't admit it. It's the right amount of just-workiness you need to let you relax, while knowing you could, at any given moment, do something like:
ericbook:~ eric$ find . -print0 |xargs -0 -J $ stat -f '%p;%i;%T;%l;%m;%b;%k' '$' >> fsout.csv
Nice.
OK, here's one with drivel. I do like it, but I have a couple of gripes.
First problem: I was hopelessly confused by the login screen. The type of journal seems to be locked on livejournal, as the drop-down menu for journal types is inexplicably disabled until you enter a username. -1 for usabilty
Second problem: Useless stripping of trailing slash, which mangled my xmlrpc URL. Error 301 was ignored, which makes sense since it's a post and all, but I couldn't log in. It mangled my URL then choked on the error :-/
Third problem: didn't want to download my recent posts. Although there might be a misunderstanding about just what "recent" means.
Fourth problem: Doesn't let me choose post status anywhere. And there's nowhere I can find to choose text filters. This is more of a feature request, really.
Fifth problem: craps out after posting, probably because it keeps mangling the trailing slashes from my URLs. Is there an RFC somewhere that says that POSTS can't end with slashes? Nobody tell the Django folks.
Well, maybe it'll at least let me post to my blog from work every now and then.
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