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March 31, 2003

Wireless Airport

I've been using an Apple Titanium PowerBook for about two years now as my primary computer. It travels pretty much everywhere I do, and has proven to be more reliable and stable than most other things in my life. Well except for the wireless access option.

I have a good old Airport card installed in this machine, and have had nothing but horrible headaches with it form day one. Many of the times, the throughput for the card is just not there. I know it's not congestion on the network because an adjoining machine can get the same page in about... 1/10 of the time. Sometimes it seems that an outgoing connection isn't really even going to be attempted, but Camino (for example) will insist that it's trying (this has been verified with a network sniffer). If I wish to use Virtual PC with my airport card I may as well forget it. Compile an application and surf the web? Not a chance. The network just disappears.

I don't believe the applications are at fault at all, but rather the card, or the antenna. Why? Recent behavior has begun to make me think this. The base station sits a mere 15 feet away from me with an unobscured line of sight. The only lead I can think of is within the paint on the walls (possibly) to block the signal. Yet I can watch the signal fluctuate from a high level to nothing depending upon the angle of the laptop.

Friends can pick up numerous other networks yet, my TiBook shows no signal or trace of them. This has to stop, as it is more annoying than a Jerry Lewis telethon. I opened up the TiBook looking for a possibly loose antenna wire, but found none. In fact the antenna has been tapped down to ensure no slippage. I tried to re-seed the Airport card, no luck there either. So I did something bad, I booted the machine without the bottom cover. Reception was flawless everywhere in the room. Even more amazingly, I discovered 3 other wireless networks near me. How nice!

So the question to any readers out there, is there a way to hack an external antenna onto a Ti PowerBook's internal Airport card? What I noticed is that since I have no need for the PCMCIA card slot I could potentially snake a new antenna out of there, or up through the air vent on the side. I'd have to find a good L shaped PigTail connector though, and would enjoy hearing any suggestions.

Seattle Wireless has a good list of links towards PigTails, but doesn't seem to have any suggestions for hacking an Airport.

Posted by Dan at 04:41 PM | Comments (1)

March 26, 2003

URLs continued

I've gotten a few emails (and one comment) about my post on Web URLs. As such I'd like to clarify this a bit with commentary back to Joshua Kaufman whom I think has too narrow a scope on the idea as a whole. Not to single Joshua out, other emails revolved around the same sentiments, but were (unfortunately) sent in a non-public forum.

Think of it more like this:

http://www.deadmime.org/~dank/archive/Web%20URLs.html

Where the archive script will pull out of the database all entries that have started with the topic of Web URLs. There is essentially no need for the date, as multiple entries (if they do exist) can be retrieved. Although the inclusion of the date can narrow one's results to a more specific entry, this will introduce another problem in realm of formating of course.

The practical benefit of the (debatable) "longer" URL though can be found in the ease of use. It's much easier for people to remember word phrases and patterns then a series of semi-random non-meaningful text. This can already be seen through the use of the Domain Name System rather than the underlying IP address method of connections found on the Internet. The reason I call a URL semi-random and non-meaningful is simple; to those who do not develop the system, each keyword means nothing. Take for example the opening page for amazon.com I just received:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/
home.html/002-3796724-4042416

While I know that exec stands for execute, and obidos is a type of database connection, there is no real way I could tell you what subst or home are for. Nor am I likely to remember these much longer than 10 minutes after finalizing this post. Why do I, as an end user, know what these stand for now? Most likely due to prior involvement with such systems, or possibly (but unlikely) due to repeated use of a web page.

The beauty of this, though, is that I really don't have to memorize it. That the web-server already takes care of all these headaches (and many others) for me. The downside to this of course is, how do I share this amazing book I've found online? It will be near impossible for me to remember that URL, let alone conveying that information to someone in passing. I could say for example:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006092988X/
qid=1048703149/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-3796724-
4042416?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

or

http://www.amazon.com/book/title/A%20Tree%20Grows%20In
%20Brooklyn

The biggest problem with this idea is the need to HTML encode bits. It won't be until such necessity is gone, that the idea of short URLs can truly take form.

The follow up to this can seen in a need for format standards. For example, take the a hardware manufacturer website like HP's. They could have a URL that looks like so:

http://www.hp.com/products/printers/deskjet3500
http://www.hp.com/printer/deskjet3500

Both are means of describing the DeskJet 3500 printer, but which one would be the proper format? Or what about this case:

http://www.hp.com/drivers/deskjet3500
http://www.hp.com/products/drivers/deskjet3500

Which format should be the suggested means for access for downloading your drivers? While it is possible for a web designer to create a means to handle most URL formats, it adds in new levels of background complexity to the site. Yet on the front end, the end user will never notice this and be provided a much easier means to help themselves and their friends. More importantly it provides a more natural flow for a user, resulting in a more pleasant experience. The easier it is for a user to find something and share this knowledge, the more likely they are to return (with friends). This is after all what most commercial web sites aim to accomplish, right?

The background complexity issue is one that I, as an end user, care little about.

Posted by Dan at 10:43 AM | Comments (3)

March 25, 2003

Internet Security

I had a chance today to listen to a discussion today on Internet security by some of the luminaries of the field. Dr. Steve Bellovin, Mr. Bill Cheswick, and Dr. Avi Rubin were presenting a talk, which was presumed to be about their recent book update and re-release Firewalls and Internet Security 2nd Edition.

Initially, I had expected this to be a propaganda bit to promote the book. In 1994 when the original version came out, I had bought a copy (hard cover too!). This book had taught me an awful lot of the details I was missing in my unix knowledge, and as such I just had to try and meet these two just once and say thanks. Book promotion or not I decided it would be worth the time.

The interesting thing to discover was that the presentation didn't revolve around the book. Instead it was a brief overview of many of the current research areas each is working on. While not heavy on the technical details, the broad overview was to bring people up-to speed in new security concern areas.

Presentation wise things worked fairly well. Each author spoke for about 20 minutes on whatever topic they found of interest (typically their research). This trade off happened, with a fairly clean transition process between speakers. The speakers themselves though were what made the material more interesting. Dr Bellovin and Mr. Cheswick are both entertaining presenters with a dynamic style and lots of good laughs in there. I've heard Dr. Rubin speak numerous times now and while it was exactly what i expected, he did slide some nice jokes in there.

Brief rundown of each speakers topics:
Dr. Bellovin discussed two forms of Internet hijacking that consist of domain name hijacking and routing hijacking. Neither bit went into great detail about the concepts, but rather provided an outline idea for how things could (and do) go wrong.

Dr. Rubin followed up with a bit about security and trust. Essentially his speech boils down to we all place inherent trust in the software we have, but why? What happens when this trust is broken without our knowledge? What about with our knowledge?

Mr Cheswick followed up with a bit about pretty much everything. He did a run through about basic security, BGP security, passwords, WEP, and just about everything else in the alloted 20 minutes.

After all of this though, I never had the chance to shake hands and say thanks to these two. Kind of bummed about that, but at least I did get to hear them present their own ideas in their own words.

Posted by Dan at 09:12 PM | Comments (1)

March 24, 2003

Trackback sucks

It seems that my initial change to the means of post archiving to a more useful and understanding labeling mechanism has resulted in the infamous... no trackbacks working. Suggestions are welcome to try and fix it.

Posted by Dan at 08:12 PM | Comments (1)

March 23, 2003

Web URLs

While listening to Rasmus Lerdorf talk this past week, he began discussing his ideas on how web URLs should work. Essentially he believes that there is no reason for URLs to be as complicated and confusing as those you can find being used today. The idea being that for example you could have a url like http://www.ibm.com/t70/processor where each sub-directory is a smart script to find the information you're requesting. This is a rather interesting idea, in that it makes the idea of the web usable again. There really isn't a reason why I should have a URL with a line like show.cgi?adlk20wljkhwso928eweohh2 for me to find information about a laptop (in this case).

I've heard him talk about this before, and never really paid attention to it for some reason. Only catch is this time I realized that I actually believe it (witness my recent blog archive file change). I'm starting to wonder why it's not really implemented in every area, considering the usefulness that this would provide not only to the common web surfing, but also to the corporate world and cutting down on costs for support.

Posted by Dan at 07:39 PM | Comments (1)

March 18, 2003

hard drives

They live, they die. Much like this one. Always at an inopportune time.

Posted by Dan at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2003

hostnames

James Cox has an interesting domain name hosting setup going on. Now http://dank.blogs.at points to me again.

Posted by Dan at 07:13 AM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2003

Archiving update

To those of you who may have at one point added a TrackBack link to my page... it no longer works. My archiving into a single directory started to annoy me, so I changed it into a multiple directory based upon topic name schema. Sorry to be a bad blogger....

Posted by Dan at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)

The countdown has begun

In less than 5 days, I will begin the trip towards Montreal for the one and only PHP Quebec conference. I'll be joined by Derick and Jan on the trip up, which should make for an interesting drive. I'm both excited and worried due to various reasons... the main of which is PHP-ODBC2 presentation. Hopefully all will go well, and I'll see some friendly people again :)

Posted by Dan at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

slow but steady

After a few hours of sleep, I wake up and check on the progress of rsync. It is still running... slowly and surely. I'm guessing that the bwlimit is being used now as the average transfer rate is at ~14 kB/s, with a low of about 10kB/s and a high of 998 kB/s.

Interesting thing of note is that one error has show up already:
mknod home/brouda/.esd/socket : Invalid argument

I'm not entirely sure what it means, but since there is no X server on this box, why .esd exists escapes me and worries my mind very little.

Posted by Dan at 05:31 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2003

Online backups

One of the really neat things about having a computer is the hidden feature better known as crashes. We pay big money for this option called stability, but truth be told, there will never be 100% stability. With this in mind, the onus is always on the user to do this thing called backups.

"There are only two types of data. Data that is backed up, and data that is yet to be lost."

A great quote that surmises any situation. In the past I've used my servers as a backup medium for my desktops and laptop. I was under the impression that this should be more than enough. Recently I began to doubt this after having a machine disappear from my online grasp. Steps were taken to prevent that, but nothing was taken to protect the data within.

First step was to install a second drive in the machine. While not providing any kind of RAID services, we have essentially faked it with a not-so-fine granularity. This was the first step to protecting data locally. Unfortunately, this also leaves us with one single point of failure. Enter the joy of two servers and a small command known as rsync.

rsync is a fairly easy to understand utility through just reading the man page. Takes a few minutes to setup, test, confirm, and then you're off running full backups. One of the more interesting (but not highly spoken about) features is the --bwlimit option. Essentially you can average your bandwidth to be limited to some selected number. Please note it's averaged and as such it's not true bandwidth limiting (it can be bursty). Our tests tonight show that setting a bwlimit to 16 gets us an average between 25kB/s (typical) with bursts as high as 50kB/s.

But how does one secure rsync? You can invoke it to use an ssh shell pretty easily, but one of the bigger questions I had was what exactly does this do? A little web searching later and I have an answer. The tunneling is pretty much standard issue tunneling and required setting up ssh keys. Bennot Todd though has found a much more interesting means of locking down the process at the ssh level. It makes sense when you think about it. I am glad he found the --server option though to rsync.

After some time trying to figure out why an ssh key wasn't working, Kevin and I ran our first test. Things went very smoothly, and tonight at about midnight the first full backup of the servers began.

Next up will be database data and log files.

Posted by Dan at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)

Symbolism

I was visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum the other day, and came across a exhibit on this history of flight. Essentially it was nothing spectacular of an exhibit. The impression I got is that this exhibit has been here for awhile, and it hasn't really changed. I seem to remember it from a few years ago as well, but my memory may be wrong. I'm more interested in the 1950's style aircraft than any of the other aircraft within.

At the very end of the exhibit though were paintings of two women of aviation. One was French and the other was English. Both were portraits of aviators from the real early pioneering days of flight. The names of these women escapes me right now, and honestly the paintings weren't extremely memorable by themselves. What was memorable was the text above the French aviator saying "... wears the symbol of luck on her right breast pocket." Looking at the painting on the right breast pocket you find a scratched out, cut, and ripped area. The symbol of luck has apparently been stolen, or so I thought initially. Someone must really be in need of some good luck to steal for the museum. I began to look at other pictures of her, and found one that (I'm guessing) was the basis for the painting. The symbol itself was a swastika.

I remember being told that the swastika, for a long time before World War II, was a "happy" symbol, and did not suggest the same intonations that the Nazi party gave it. I can also remember seeing some Native American carpets that my parents had with this very symbol on it too. I never really looked into the history of it to prove it. It wasn't something terribly high on my list of things to learn about. This little bit of text made me think it was time to change that.

What is interesting to me that this symbol was so prevalent for good luck and life, but now it's instantly recognized as a symbol of hate. Doing some quick web research, it turns out a town in Canada renamed itself to Swastika after find a gold mine. The Buddhists and Hindu's use (and supposedly continue to use) the symbol for religious purposes (although in some cases direction is important). There is an interesting article by Chirag Badlani over on the iearn.org website talking about an experience with public reaction to the symbol, and some light details on the use of the symbol.

It's surprising to see that even with all of this history, someone would still deface an exhibit painting with this symbol on it. The painting is now covered by a plastic shield, but the damage has been done. A disappointing alteration to an exhibit done by a not-so-tactful means of hacking. The exhibit did do one thing though, it taught me a lot about the swastika symbol though I'm sure it wasn't the desired goal.

Posted by Dan at 10:24 AM | Comments (1)

March 10, 2003

More comments on userland

Chuq Von Rospach has posted an interesting commentary on his interactions with end users. While the medium (appears) slightly different from my original post, it has many of the same connotations that were the inspiration to my original rant. I rather enjoyed the commentary, especially since many times I've had the same scenario.

It wasn't until I read the comment on the entry though that I became rather reflective. A BBS.... wow! I haven't thought about the days of BBS use in a while, and it seems rather funny to look behind me and see the machine I used to run a BBS from. The Quadra 700 was never a terribly fast computer, but it certainly did a lot for me during it's time. Now it collects dust and works as a rudimentary filing system.

What was more interesting is the reason why the comment poster quit running his BBS. The same reasons why Chuq made his post and I did mine. At least there is a constant turn around in this case. Eventually the service provider becomes tired, annoyed with being (ab)used, quits, and leaves the project to die. Hopefully things can be picked up by some new blood, moved along towards the old goals, and bring about some new momentum. It's worked before, after all thats how I got involved in PHP isn't it?

But what has left me to continue working on these projects? This was the question that left me thinking for a lot longer.

Is it fame or popularity? Definitely not, for the PHP project has not brought me either. At most a handful of people have come to recognize who I am and what I have done through the project. I'd even venture to say that my popularity is limited even within the PHP developers clique for having spoken my mind one too many times (the fallout of which is still being witnessed). Though on the other hand, my infamy has risen drastically, and that does look awfully close to fame. Hrm...

Is it the technology? I had to sit here and think about this one for awhile. Initially, while I was learning ODBC, I might have said yes to this. The same sentiments go towards things like IMAP and C programming though as well. Now a long time past, the glow has faded, and the code is no longer an intriguing new beast to be caught. Database technology typically doesn't change radically. This is a good thing despite what you might believe. JWZ and Miguel de Icaza (Feb 26th 2003 entry) ranted about this awhile back.

So if it's not any of these, what is it that keeps me working on a project? Well, in the case of the case of the PHP project, it has been the people. I've met some really interesting, talented, and intelligent people through the project. Some have become friends, some not. Many are spread across the world, providing varying degrees of opinions and insights on things I'd never have given a second thought. It's interesting to think that a sense of group identity does play such an important part in the motivation of one's own development cycle. Bills and monetary incentive can push you only so far before stress and exhaustion set in. But when you begin to feel you're failing your group, there always seems to be renewed interest and energy towards finishing. As cheesy as this might sound, watch and you'll see the effects of it every day. The number of people who request an @php.net address just to have one is amazing (I wish there were a log of these requests).

With this in mind, it was interesting to read a recent post by Joel On Software discussing many of the mechanisms in place to destroy this group identity. It went further on to discuss how software itself needs to be developed to further solidify these groups, rather than try to dissipate them. A very enlightening read that I would highly recommend.

Posted by Dan at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2003

Guarana Guarana Guarana!

Just an update to the previous information posted:

Type of guarana I found: Guarana Brazilia
Imported by Crystal Beverage Corp of Kearny NJ.

An old copy of the can image can be found here... or if Geocities is nice you can see it below. It kind of looks like a poorly drawn pre-op Total Knee Replacement :

Posted by Dan at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2003

Guarana

Probably the single most interesting drink I've ever had that is non-alcoholic, Guarana is also probably the hardest thing to find. My sister first introduced me to it after she had done some traveling around the world. I can remember that night well, we went to a restaurant called Brazils is Old City Philadelphia. She went completely nuts at finding this on the menu, and promptly drank about 4 bottles of it. She was wired for the rest of the night.

The bottle it came in was rather nondescript. It was a transparent green color, with a pasted on paper label. The label had a funky design on it that I can't really remember. But it tasted pretty good. In fact, I think it tasted kind of like a cheaply made vanilla cream soda, but not as sugary sweet. It looks like a ginger ale.

Turns out guarana is not only tasty, but a wonderfully high caffeinated substance! Thankfully the wonders of modern marketing have realized a need for such a drink, and as such we can now find guarana in plenty of new and interesting products (mostly drinks). The one I'd really like to try: Vodka and jelly.... weird.

Tonight though broke my guaranaless string of days. I discovered that a local mini-mart has it in a cooler, hidden in the back area. I sort of found it by mistake as I stumbled in, looking for something to eat at 11 p.m., tired, and annoyed. I passed on the usual mini-mart deal, the fudge stripped cookies and some pringles (thanks OddTodd) and continued to just sort of wonder to the back in a daze. Now realize that the isles in this place are about 2 feet wide, so wondering isn't exactly something easily accomplished for anyone, especially when the floor has boxes of stuff all over it too. I stumbled on a box and in my recovery I saw it. The green bottle I remembered from oh so long ago. I picked up two, and brought them instantly to the counter. $2.50. Not too bad. What I really don't know are, which are the better ones to jump in and get? It's not like buying a single bottle that you can force yourself to drink all of because it's only one bottle. These mail order places force you to buy a case at a time. Thats 24 bottles of potential gag-inducing flavor, and one helluva price tag to pay for gagging! You could buy a bottle of ipecac syrup for less and get the same feeling! So if you have a suggestion on which to try, I'd appreciate hearing your opinions.

Two bottles later and I'm wired... a very odd feeling given that I don't usually drink soda or caffeinated beverages.

Now I know you can buy guarana drinks in the US via mail order and what have you. Unfortunately, I haven't had a steady address that I could order the stuff and have it delivered to since I've discovered the drinks. Don't even begin to ask about the money part too... for now I'm just happy to have some guarana when I need it.

Posted by Dan at 09:20 PM | Comments (2)

Engagement batonga

I received an ominous letter in the mail yesterday from Boston. No real return address or identifying material on it. This left an initial impression of "Oh shit not another one", and a second thought of "Must be Jay... "

I was right.

Jay and Beth have officially announced the wedding date, and I've been sent a "keep this date free" message. What a nice message system it is too. A quaint little book, listing historical sites to see in the city, restaurants, and events to goto during the time. Interesting point, the Bo-Sox will be playing the Phillies over that weekend, a case of mixed allegiances maybe?

In any case, should be a good time.

Posted by Dan at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2003

Music function

Testing out the iTunes function of Kung-Log... Cavalcade by Los Straitjackets

Posted by Dan at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

Kung Log Bug

While I very much enjoy Kung-Log, it seems there is one big bug with it. All use of the return key is not reflected in the entry.

While in MT direct mode it is. Please note the difference between log entries.

Posted by Dan at 07:36 AM | Comments (1)

Job Loss

It doesn't seem to be difficult these days, nor unexpected, to hear about a friend or family member losing their job. The effects of the recent economy compression seem to be felt in all areas of employment this time around. It was because of my history of employment that a copy of the article Test of A Model of Coping With Involuntary Job Loss Following a Company Closing was recently given to me to read.

First point is that the article was published in 1999 before the end of the great Internet bubble. It makes me wonder how much (if any) of the points and concepts raised have changed. For example after hearing about company closure parties, and former employees better able to keep in touch with each other via the internet, and what not. Second major point is this doesn't cover layoffs, although I'd fathom that they aren't terribly different from those in the company closure cases. Again in this case there are stories of Pink Slip parties, and I question the idea of Social Support like "Are family and outside work friends the main support received?" If you're partying with your former coworkers, isn't it hard to talk with your non-work friends?

One of the points I'd like to argue is the "Given that education is generally associated with greater marketability, individuals with more education should have greater expectations that they will be reemployed...". I can probably argue this one based on personal experience, saying that even with my short career I've been unable to get much (if any) in the way of responses from potential employers. Now the question becomes is this actually part of the effect of the economy downturn and a huge market flood of qualified applicants, or did the idea of a bachelors degree become equivalent to a 1950's high school diploma? In any case, 50-100 resumes a day didn't get a single response.

"Symptom-focused coping refers to nonwork activities such as ... increased alcohol consumption." Amen to that! Pat and I called that phase San Francisco! Now if only it was a cheaper experience...

Anyways it's an interesting read to see that people typically deal with unemployment the same all over, especially if you've gone through the whole ordeal.

The link above to the article is just to an abstract, unfortunately I can't seem to get the Journal of Applied Psychology to share it's secret copies. If you find a link online feel free to leave it in the comments section.

Posted by Dan at 07:25 AM | Comments (1)

March 02, 2003

Rare Occurances

Something rare happened last night. While working on some slides, my OS X box crashed. It completely confused me, as this was a first time that I've ever seen my machine crash (under Darwin). The screen went a shade darker, and up popped a message saying that I needed to reboot. I had no mouse control, nothing. After rebooting (which took a LONG time) I wanted to figure out what caused the crash. Problem is finding the crash isn't as easy as one might think in Darwin. Crash reporter didn't seem to catch it.

Posted by Dan at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)