October 2006 Archives

Whilst downloading the SLES 10 DVD ISO for our Altix box Just In Case (we want to upgrade to PP5 for the cpuset support) I noticed that Novell also have a VMWare image of SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, aka SLED.

Good deal, it's huge but the tubes here are pretty big so it came down in almost no time. I didn't have time to fire it up til today.

Boo SuSE, the default NIC in the image is bridged, and the default root password is "root". Hiss boo.

The gecko is pretty cute in a set of samurai armour though.

I think more OS vendors should do things like this. If nothing else, I'm sure the vmware image is a boon to their helpdesk - I'm wondering if that's who developed it originally anyway.

I don't know if they're worthwhile, but just so I don't lose the reference: Flash-formatted free network security courses.

One of my co-workers gave a short presentation regarding VPNs. Pretty softball stuff - the audience (us) was technical, and mostly knew what a VPN was, but institutionally we haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing. Largely, that's because our campus network is mostly unfirewalled, and we've not had much need for it. However, the firewalls, they be coming, and about half of CS is currently firewalled.

The built-in OS X VPN works well enough with the solution we're currently using, but something that's been pulling at me has been Hamachi.

Hamachi has an OS X client, and Lifehacker has an article about Hamachi itself.

I don't know if this particular technology is really the solution for us - it appears to be aimed at our individual clients, since we're currently without a "corporate" VPN. I don't know if it's meant to really *be* that corporate VPN, but it's worth looking at anyway - several of our clients have their own private networks, and perhaps this would be useful to them.

Something else from LifeClever: the wiki matrix.

Since I started one of the more visible wikis on campus (well, I think it is anyway; certainly I've received queries from off-campus due to my name being attached to it) I also occasionally get questions from other staff members regarding what wiki is best. I chose twiki because at the time, the only other wiki on campus I knew of also ran that, and it was an easy install from the FreeBSD ports tree. I've since given up trying to maintain it using that - in fact, our twiki moved off a BSD box managed by me onto www.cs.uwaterloo.ca, a Solaris box mostly managed by a couple of other people in my working group. However, I don't feel at all pretentious when I say that I feel that the presence of a wiki in the Math Faculty will be one of my legacies.

I just wish I'd known about this site when I was considering different technologies.

One of the things that occasionally interests me is typefaces. I'm not your typical face and kerning geek, like a lot of sysadmins and CS types are, but Doing Things Right always interests me. LifeClever linked to the following guide to choosing typefaces.

I watched most of the game last night. I'd kind of like those couple hours of my life back. What a crap game. The Oilers did ok, but Roloson was miserable - I honestly expected him to get pulled after the 5-2 goal, and doubly so after the 6-2 goal - and the other players couldn't do anything to bail him out. I guess it's about time, he was due for a stinker, and we saw what happens to the team when their goalie sucks. They can't win. Ever? Likely. The poor power play hurt them last night - they had a couple of golden opportunities and couldn't convert. 1-5 isn't necessarily terrible, but they've been sucking out loud and *they* were due.

If they smoke Phoenix like they're capable of doing, we'll know the team is all right. If they come out and play another crap game, there's something wrong. We'll see.

Mind mapping has fascinated me for years. I almost hate to admit it, but after reading Hannibal (Thomas Harris) I became enamoured of the idea of a mind palace. I even went out and found a bunch of promising links, bookmarked them, and never really took it up, mostly because I'm lazy.

Nevertheless, the idea is in my head and won't go away, so I expect I will eventually try both out. Merlin Mann asked about Mac mind mappers, and as before, I bookmarked a few of these ones and never really got back to them.

Some day, after I invent the perfect mousetrap...

Like all the other ones I've seen so far, the Oilers looked a bit lost in the first period. The second period wasn't so hot either, despite Staios's seeing-eye goal. My wife was looking at the TV after the goal, she said, "He looks *pissed*" (talking about Hasek). I think he always looks pissed.

It's really nice, though, to see the Oilers actually score on a breakaway. Twice, even, two different guys. The aching days of the mid to late 90s with endless Marchant breakaways that wind up in the goalie's crest are gone, and good riddance. (I still remember Weight sending Marchant in against Ledyard and then Moog when the former worthy stumbled; I turned to my friend and said "crap, he *never* scores" and, of course, he did.)

Despite Torres's much-ballyhooed (and anticipated) demotion to the fourth line, he pulled a couple of shifts with them, and looked good; so did Thoresen, so I expect the T's will get moved around during games from now on, depending what MacTavish wants.

The ice looked pretty bad last night, especially in the first period; Smid fell behind the Oilers net, Hemsky fell near the offensive blueline on the power play and sent in Maltby (or was it Draper?) alone, one of the Wings fell, and the puck was jumping like crazy. Probably didn't help the first period much; it seemed better later.

A couple of good hits too. Stoll got creamed by Markov and hopped right back up, although the Wings scored on that play. Winchester caught Chelios a good one too, and Moreau clipped a Wing in the corner, then hammered him the next time they went in together.

Nobody's saying what happened to Moreau at the end, when he dropped the gloves with Markov and seemed to hurt himself - hyperextended his shoulder or something? It was a very weird play. I'm not sure why Staios drew a misconduct on the play either, is that an automatic for being third man in? I don't really agree with the call either - he was the third man in, true, but Moreau had already started skating away, and actually so had Markov. Staios could have smoked him, but didn't - I think he realized at the last second that something was really weird, and Markov hadn't done anything. Oh well.

All in all, not a bad game, unless you're Dom Hasek.

No Centre Ice again this year means I'm not catching many Oilers games (I've missed both Canucks and the Sharks games so far), and the ones that have been on have all been west of me so by the time they end, I'm pretty bagged. By the time I feel up to writing about them, those damn Albertans like Grabia and Lowetide have already gone and written everything I was going to, and more besides.

Nevertheless, here is my attempt at the season so far.

Steve Simmons is feeling the pinch.

It strikes me that Maple Leafs nonsense is at an all-time high. What with blogs, internet sites, radio hysteria, chat groups and 24/7 focus on everything that is and isn't Leafs, much gets overblown. Every time a player is available -- be it Brian Leetch or Anson Carter -- the Leafs are smack in the middle of it. Even if not a word of it happens to be true.

ORLY, Steve? Seems to me that Leafs Central occupies an office at the Toronto Sun too. Get off your high horse and go read some of your colleague Al Strachan's columns. The fact that Strachan is noted for idiocy doesn't excuse the hypocrisy.

Steve's email is at the bottom of his column. I guess that's so the Sun can pretend that their writers are approachable.

You know why webloggers hate the mainstream media? It's because good webloggers respond to comments, even (and especially) critical ones. Poor ones don't, and that's the level that most mainstream journalists seem to be at. They, occasionally, respond to one another, but I have only once received a response of any kind from a beat writer. No, I don't expect them to respond each and every time, but from where I sit, responses are few and far between.

So webloggers and other forms of alternative media are stealing your territory, Mr. Newspaper Man? Why don't you figure out why they're so popular and either emulate them, or else state flat out why you think they're wrong, instead of just whining about it? Sure, the latter form of action means you'll piss them off and lose readers - guess what, Steve, too late. There's a reason why guys like Guy Flaming are getting so popular, and it isn't because of their rugged handsomeness.

I used to run a small business, selling and repairing PCs. I had Those Customers every once in a while: everything's a bargain, "is that your best price? are you sure? I can get it cheaper at/from (some big box store / some shop in Halifax / one of my competitors / my brother in law / mail-order from Toronto) you know." Or, "Is that your best computer?" (What kind of a question is that? Best for what?)

Seth Godin talks about something similar. His post made me think of one of my favourite stories from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer.
"Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer.
"Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best."
At these words Banzan became enlightened.

(No, not really related to Seth's post; as I said, it just reminded me of it.)

I didn't reserve my best computers for my best customers, or my best work either; now I work equally hard for every faculty member and grad student, regardless of how I feel about them personally. You will find no work that is not my best.

Linda's mother was asking about antivirus software for her Windows machine after I cleaned her machine up from spyware. She had NAV 2005 that "came with" her PC, but it was one of those trial thingies and the trial expired. I told her I'd look, and honestly, basically forgot about it because, well, it's not my PC.

I saw this the other day as it went through my RSS reader, and figured I'd have a look. Kind of a lightweight review, but it's a start. I may see if ClamAV has been ported to WIndows as well - I know it had been to the Mac.

(My huge bookmarks file contains mostly bookmarks of things like this that I'd note and then forget about, and it's annoying me. I've been culling the bookmarks, and figured I'd adopt a more Richard Bejtlich approach: no bookmarks, just a weblog posting and a note about why the thing was of any note at all. I'll see how it works out. I expect that will make me a fair bit more chatty.)

(Mostly for my own info, if it happens again, although finding this in the first place was easy: google ipod reboot cycle.)

Firmware is just like software, except worse. And it sucks. I crashed my iPod (I sinned, apparently, I asked it to play a podcast) and it went into a reboot cycle.

Putting iPod into Disk Mode was useful, I did that and then told iTunes to reset it. Sucks, because I got a 60gb ipod for a reason, but better than reboot/crash.

I'm assuming / hoping this will fix it.

My wife and I were just listening to Ryan Smyth's post-game interview against the Sharks, and I said "Ryan spells his last name with a Y because there's no 'I' in Smyth."

...

*crickets*

OK, *I* laughed at my clever wit.

In other news... Roloson, after being asked if he looked for tendencies in guys like Joe Thornton, said "well, you look for tendencies, but you don't want to rely on them because 9 times out of 10, they're not there." Er, yeah. To be fair, he meant that they have tendencies, but half the time in a game situation there's broken plays and such. Still, a Smyth-esque comment.

Looks like Maynor was prevented from presenting at ToorCon, and Johnny Cache refused to present without him.

If I made this stuff up, you wouldn't believe me. Truth is stranger than fiction, my friends; that's why I like Coen Brothers movies so much. They seem contrived, but really... they're just reality.

Do I believe them entirely? No, of course not. Do I believe Apple entirely? Hell no. Is the truth somewhere in the middle? Who the hell knows. What I do know is guys like the PaulDotCom crew are going to be all over Apple and "the Mac bloggers" (whoever the hell they are; I write about Apple sometimes, does that make me one?), and "the Mac bloggers" are going to be all over... well, anybody who speaks ill of Apple.