I finally made it into Brazil today. I have to say, the customs here was awesome. The guy looked at my passport, said "Yup, that's a work visa", stamped my passport and let me in without any other comments. Canadian customs is more annoying that that. My guess is that no one has authority in Brazil, so when something is actually accomplished there isn't any second guesses.

The flights over here were pretty good, I got a flight to Miami instead of NYC, then to Rio, then an early flight to Belo which landed 5 hours earlier than the flight I was expecting to take.

For my first night here, I am classing it up with a bottle of beer, a razor and a can of pringles. I think the beard has gotten way too scruffy, so I need to clean it up before I try to party with any Brazillians.

After searching for new gallery and investigating lazygal, I finally decided it's time to give it some real world usage. My current album from Japan is being processed by this damn fast tool. It needed a bit of hacking, but as the core was already there and Alexandre Rossi is quite cooperative upstream. I managed to implement almost everything I requested in original post. The only thing I'm still not completely happy with is the theme, but I hope I will improve it over time. From original requirements, I completely dropped links to full size images. There is simply no reason to put here crappy pictures which my only camera I currently have here (built in camera in Nokia 6234) produces. Also once I'll buy new camera (what will be most likely Pentax K10D), I probably won't upload huge 10Mpix images on web server as I don't think it would be good for anything else than wasting my bandwidth.

Maintenant j'ouvre la fen tre et une mouche la chambre entre
Ni la moche ni l'italienne ne peut  tre trouv e plus   son centre
This place with its wood and its shingles, this place
with birdshit splattered down the bricks
This place with drunken girls screaming Meat Loaf lyrics
and behaving like abject pricks
Maintenant je suis bien loin
But yet oh so close
Cerca de la criatura del lago
Not Iago as has been previously claimed
Humming, screeching, gurgling, squeaking
Not unlike Barbie's mom on a Thursday night
It goes through the motions of accomplishing something
When really it is advancing its own sinister agenda
An agenda so sinister that you'd name it Dexter if you could.
You can't.
Then, as the disruptive forces destabilize reality, like
they destabilize the rhyme and scansion and hyperlinklessness
of
This Poem
Then, like
Mike Stone
expressing
gratitude,
like something demanding its $3.50 (but oh, oh, it does not want its $3.50; it wants
something far more visceral and ephemeral), it makes a simple statement.
F01.
Natuurlijk.

After dealing with Optus phone support [1] in regard to a routine request for a password change I have been thinking about better ways of managing password changes for a large ISP. The first criteria is that the user must have a password that is difficult to brute-force attack at all times. Changing a password to a supposedly temporary value that can be easily guessed (such as “changeme“) is never acceptable. The next criteria is that the help-desk operator should be trusted as little as possible and it would be ideal if they never knew the password. One possibility that occurred to me is that each bill could have a six-digit pseudo-random number printed on it. This number could be used as an alternate password. When a customer calls up because they lost their password they almost always have their last bill (this is why they print the number for phone support on each bill). The help-desk operator could then push a button on a web based form that makes this pseudo-random number be their new password, thus the help-desk operator would not know the new password and the user would also have it printed out clearly which avoids the confusion from having a password read out in a foreign accent. Another possibility is to have the password change infrastructure integrated with the CTI [2] system, then the help-desk operator could push a button and have the computer dictate the password without the help-desk operator being able to listen in. There will always be corner cases where a help-desk operator has to change the password, but if these are rare because the automated system handles most cases then the potential for damage would be limited. Of course it would also be a really good idea to do some statistical tracking of the number of password change requests performed by each operator and investigate those who do significantly more than average. In the past AOL has experienced a variety of security problems related to trojans [3] which probably would have been discovered by such analysis. Another possible option is that customers with mobile phones could have their new password sent to them by SMS. It’s quick, easy, cheap when done in bulk, and is much harder to intercept than most methods that might be used for transferring passwords. References:

1. http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/09/03/optus-password-changeme/


2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_telephony_integration


3. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2003/02/57753

Share This

Hey! virtualbox 1.5.0 is now available in the debian archive. Several bugs, which were reported during the first week in which virtualbox was in the repro, are fixed now with this upload. But the main reason I wrote this blog entry: I would like to thank everybody who helped to find quickly a working solution to the issue concerning team maintanance... see debian-devel@l.d.o for details. This was one of the very rare situtations were a starting flamewar on -devel was stopped by discussion between the two parties in order to find a working compromise. This should happen more often

Recently, after switching to open source drivers for my Nvidia card in notebook, I get possibility to have working suspend to disk (well suspend was always working, but the resume of screen was the problem). In same time, I enabled suspend to disk, when battery is getting really low in Gnome power management preferences. This night it saved me file system troubles - I let the notebook to do some calculations and forgot to connect it to power. So it ran few hours till the battery was down and then it just hibernated. When I noticed this on morning, I could just plug the power and the calculation can continue. Thanks to everybody who made this work.

Tonight I mostly installed Centos 5 upon dedicated servers in America, for a guy based in Germany. Sometimes people do pay me for work which is nice - this job paid for a small stirling engine :) Yesterday I mostly implemented a web interface for controlling spam via a proxy server. Several people seemed interested, so I'll explain what I've done:

• Coded several qpsmtpd plugins for different anti-spam mechanisms on a per-domain basis.
  • Because the stock server only supports global plugins.
• Coded a web interface for users to manage the settings on their domain:
  • Virus scanning.
  • Greylisting.
  • DNSBL.
  • Resolvable from hosts.
  • Reverse DNS

The only part that is missing is the final plugin integration, and some glue to propogate some of the GUI settings to the mail server - since adding a new domain is currently 50% GUI and 50% manual. Each of the plugins supports whitelisting of addresses or domains, and there is a fair amount of logging detail - some is missing which I need to resolve. Once that is done and the code is running upon my live server I'm happy to let people use it if they have a spare/non-critical domain they can expirement with... The next thing to do would be to hook in spam assassin, spambayes, etc, on a per-domain basis with "training" addresses..

A significant problem with the old-fashioned media is that as a general rule they don’t cite references for anything. Some of the better TV documentaries and non-fiction books cite references, but this is the exception not the norm. Often documentaries only cite references in DVD extras which are good for the people who like the documentary enough to buy it but not for people who want to rebut it (few people will pay for a resource if they doubt the truth and accuracy of it’s claims). I can understand newspapers not wanting to publish much in the way of background information in the paper version as every extra line of text in an article is a line of advertising that they can’t sell. So they have financial pressure to produce less content, and the number of people like me who want to check the facts and figures used in articles is probably a small portion of the readership. Another issue with newspapers is that they are often considered as primary authoritative sources (by themselves and by the readers). It is often the case that journalists will interview people who have first-hand knowledge of an issue and the resulting article will be authoritative and a primary source in which case all they need to do is to note that they interviewed the subject. However the majority of articles published will be sourced from elsewhere (news agencies [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_agency ] such as Reuters are commonly used). Also articles will often be written based on press releases - it is very interesting to read press releases and see how little work is done by some media outlets to convert them to articles, through a well written press release a corporation or interest group can almost write it’s own articles for publication in the old media. One way of partially addressing the problem of citing references in old media would be to create a web site of references, then every article could have a URL that is a permanent link to the references and calculations to support the claims and numbers used. Such a URL could be produced by any blogging software, and a blog would be an ideal way of doing this. For bloggers however it’s much easier to cite references and readers have much higher expectations of links to other sites to support claims and of mathematical calculations shown to indicate how numbers are determined. But there is still room for improvement. Here are some of the most common mistakes that I see in posts by people who are trying to do the right thing:

1. Indirect links. When you refer to a site you want to refer to it directly. In email (which is generally considered a transient medium) a service such as TinyURL [ www.TinyURL.com ] can be used to create short URLs to refer to pages that have long URLs. This is really good for email as there are occasions when people will want to write the address down and type it in to another computer. For blogging you should assume that your reader has access to browse the web (which is the case most of the time). Another possibility is to have the textual description of a link include a reference to the TinyURL service but to have the HREF refer to the real address. Any service on the net may potentially go away at some future time. Any service on the net may have transient outages, and any reader of your blog may have routing problems that make parts of the net unavailable to them. If accessing a reference requires using TinyURL (or a similar service) as well as the target site then there are two potential things that might break and prevent your readers from accessing it.
   One situation where indirect links are acceptable is for the printed version. So you could have a link in the HTML code for readers to click on to get to the reference page directly and a TinuURL link for people who have a printed version and need to type it in.
   Also when linking to a blog it’s worth considering the fact that a track-back won’t work via TinyURL and track-backs may help you get more readers…


2. Links that expire. For example never say “there’s a good article on the front page of X” (where X is a blog or news site). Instead say “here’s a link to a good article which happens to be on the front page now” so that someone who reads your post in a couple of years time can see the article that you reference.
   Another problem is links to transient data. For example if you want to comment on the features of a 2007 model car you should try to avoid linking to the car manufacturer page, next year they will release a new car and delete the old data from their site.
   A potential problem related to this is the Google cache pages which translate PDF to HTML and high-light relevant terms and can make it much easier to extract certain information from web pages. It can provide value to readers to use such links but AFAIK there is no guarantee that they will remain forever. I suggest that if you use them you should also provide the authoritative link so that if the Google link breaks at some future time then the reader will still be able to access the data.


3. Not giving the URLs of links in human readable form. Print-outs of blog pages will lose links and blog reading by email will also generally lose links (although it would be possible to preserve them). This counts for a small part of your readership but there’s no reason not to support their needs by also including links as text (either in the body or at the end of the post). I suggest including the URL in brackets, the most important thing is that no non-URL text touch the ends of the URL (don’t have it in quotes and have the brackets spaced from it). Email clients can generally launch a web browser if the URL is clear. Note that prior to writing this post I have done badly in this regard, while thinking about the best advice for others I realised that my own blogging needed some improvement.
   I am not certain that the practice I am testing in this post of citing URLs inline will work. Let me know what you think via comments, I may change to numbering the citations and providing a list of links in the footer.


4. Non-specific links. For example saying “Russell Coker wrote a good post about the SE Linux” and referring to my main blog URL is not very helpful to your readers as I have written many posts on that topic and plan to write many more (and there is a chance that some of my future posts on that topic may not meet your criteria of being “good”). Saying “here is a link to a good post by Russell Coker, his main blog URL is here” is more useful, it gives both the specific link (indicating which post you were referring to) and the general information (for people who aren’t able to find it themselves, for the case of deleted/renamed posts, and for Google). The ideal form would be “<A HREF=”http://etbe.coker.com.au/whatever”>here is a link to a good post by Russell Coker [ http://etbe.coker.com.au/whatever ]</A>, his main blog URL is <A HREF=”http://etbe.coker.com.au/”> [ http://etbe.coker.com.au ]</A>” (note that this is an example of HTML code as a guide for people who are writing their own HTML, people who use so-called WYSIWYG editors will need to do something different).


5. Links that are likely to expire. As a rule of thumb if a link is not human readable then the chance of it remaining long-term is low. Companies with content management systems are notorious for breaking links.


6. Referencing data that you can’t find. If you use data sourced from a web site and the site owner takes it down then you may be left with no evidence to support your assertions. If data is likely to be removed then you should keep a private copy off-line (online might be an infringement of copyright) for future reference. It won’t let you publish the original data but will at least let you discuss it with readers.


7. Referencing non-public data. The Open Access movement [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access ] aims to make scholarly material free for unrestricted access. If you cite papers that are not open access then you deny your readers the ability to verify your claims and also encourage the companies that deny access to research papers.
   An insidious problem is with web sites such as the New York Times [ www.nytimes.com ] which need a login and store cookies. As I have logged in to their site at some time in the past I get immediate access to all their articles. But if I reference them in a blog post many readers will be forced to register (some readers will object to this). With the NYT this isn’t such a problem as it’s free to register so anyone who is really interested can do so (with a fake name if they wish). But I still have to keep thinking about the readers for such sites.
   I should probably preview my blog posts from a different account without such cookies.


8. Failing to provide calculations. My current procedure is to include the maths in my post, for example if you have a 32bit data type used to store a number of milliseconds then it can store 2^32/1000 seconds which is 2^32/1000/60/60/24 = 49.7 days, in this example you can determine with little guessing what each of the numbers represent. For more complex calculations an appendix could be used. A common feature of blogs is the ability to have a partial post sent to the RSS feed and the user has the ability to determine where the post gets cut. So you could cut the post before the calculations, the people who want to see them will find it’s only one click away, and the people who are happy to trust you will have a shorter post.


9. Linking with little reason. Having a random word appear highlighted with an underline in a blog post is often not very helpful for a reader. It sometimes works for Wikipedia links where you expect that most readers will know what the word means but you want to link to a reference for the few who don’t (my link for the word Wikipedia is an example). In the case where most readers are expected to know what you are referring to then citing the link fully (with a description of the link and a human-readable form for an email client) is overkill and reduces the readability of the text.
   The blogging style of “see here and here for examples” does not work via email and does not explain why a reader should visit the sites. If you want to include random links in a post then having a section at the footer of related links would probably be best.


10. Linking to a URL as received. Many bloggers paste URLs from Google, email, and RSS feeds into their blog posts. This is a bad idea because it might miss redirection to a different site. If a Google search or an email gives you a URL that is about to go away then it might redirect to a different site. In that case citing the new URL instead of the old one is a service to your readers and will decrease the number of dead-links in your blog over the long-term. Also using services such as www.feedburner.com may cause redirects that you want to avoid when citing a blog post, see my previous post about Feedburner [ http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/08/20/feedburner-item-link-clicks/ ].

Here are some less common problems in citing posts:

1. Inappropriately citing yourself. Obviously if there is a topic that you frequently blog about then there will be benefit to linking to old posts instead of covering all the background material, and as long as you don’t go overboard there should not be any problems (links to your own blog are assumed to have the same author so there is no need for a disclaimer). If you write authoritative content on a topic that is published elsewhere then you will probably want to blog about it (and your readers will be interested). But you must mention your involvement to avoid giving the impression that you are trying to mislead anyone. This is particularly important if you are part of a group that prepares a document, your name may not end up on the list of authors but you have a duty to your readers to declare this.
   Any document that you helped prepare can not be used by itself as a support of claims that you make in a blog post. You can certainly say “I have previously demonstrated how to solve this problem, see the following reference”. But links with comments such as “here is an example of why X is true” are generally interpreted to be partly to demonstrate the popular support for an idea.


2. Citing secret data. The argument “if you knew what I know then you would agree with me” usually won’t be accepted well. There are of course various levels of secrecy that are appropriate. For example offering career advice without providing details of how much money you have earned (evidence of one aspect of career success) is acceptable as the readers understand the desire for some degree of financial secrecy (and of course in any game a coach doesn’t need to be a good player). Arguing the case for a war based on secret data (as many bloggers did) is not acceptable (IMHO), neither is arguing the case for the use of a technology without explaining the science or maths behind it.


3. Not reading the context of a source. For example I was reading the blog of a well regarded expert in an area of computer science, and he linked to another blog to support one of his claims. I read the blog in question (more than just the post he cited) and found some content that could be considered to be racially offensive and much of the material that I read contained claims that were not adequately supported by facts or logic. I find it difficult to believe that the expert in question (for whom I have a great deal of respect) even casually inspected the site in question. In future I will pay less attention to his posts because of this. I expect a blogger to pay more attention to the quality of their links than I do as a reader of their blog.

While writing this post I realised that my own blogging can be improved in this regard. Many of my older posts don’t adequately cite references. If you believe that any of my future posts fail in this regard then please let me know.

Share This

The short story: we lost the baby. "Cord accident". The long story: Sarah woke me up at about 2:30am on Tuesday morning in a panic because she'd woken up herself at about 2am, and realised that she hadn't felt the baby move since about 8am the previous day. I had a quick feel, but couldn't feel anything like his usual vigorous kicking, and eager to put her mind at rest, called Labor an Delivery at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital to see if we could come in. They said we could, so we jumped in the car and got there at about 3:25am. They hooked up Sarah to a fetal heart monitor, but after anxious minutes, they couldn't pick up anything, so they got out the ultrasound machine. It was pretty obvious from that that there was no movement. We'd lost him. So from about 4am onwards, we, well, tried to come to grips with the fact that we'd lost our baby. That we'd been robbed, 13 days from the finish line, and that we weren't going to be bringing a baby home to all the stuff we had ready for him there. The doctors briefly mulled over whether to have a C-section to deliver Joshua, as was the plan, or induce. Apparently it's psychologically better for the mother if she delivers naturally, since she doesn't have the constant reminder for 6+ weeks while she recovers from the C-section. However, the doctors decided that as nothing had really changed from a delivery point of view, and they wanted to do a C-section for reduced strain on Sarah's heart, they opted for a C-section. They managed to get a free operating room slot in the Stanford ORs, so they transferred Sarah over there, and they started performing the surgery at about 10am. Joshua was delivered sometime around 10:15am. I got to see him and hold him while we were still in the OR. He was perfect. 4 pounds 12 ounces. He didn't look that small. We were wondering if he was going to make 5 pounds or not. Maybe he would have by the 17th. I brought him around to show Sarah while she was still on the table, but it was hard to get him up to a good position that she could see him from, and she was a bit zonked out from all of the drugs. They finished up at about 10:45am, and took her to the recovery room, where they didn't really want me, so one of the nurses from Labor and Delivery took me back to Lucile Packard, to spend some time with Joshua. There she let me hold him for a while, and look at him, and take some photographs. Then she weighed him and measured him, and took some more photographs. The nurse was really compassionate about the whole thing, and it felt like we were there for a good couple of hours, which was good, because apparently Lucile Packard and Stanford don't really inter-operate very well, and whilst physically transferring a patient just involves wheeling them down a corridor, getting all the paperwork sorted out is a completely different story. So while Sarah was only supposed to spend an hour in recovery, she spent three hours there, because they were waiting on paperwork to release her, then waiting on a room to be available, then the right people weren't talking to each other, so they didn't know they didn't know that a room was available from midday. I forget what time we actually got out of recovery. The doctors, being the overcautious bunch of people that they are, wanted to keep Sarah in the Cardiac Surveillance Unit for 24-48 hours so they could check on her vitals post-delivery. They let us out of there late today. We're currently in a general ward. I thought they said it was for gynaecology patients (they didn't think it'd be terribly considerate to stick us in with all the other recovering mothers and their babies), but there's some male patients in here too, so I'm not sure what this ward is. In terms of coming to grips with things, they brought Joshua up to our room for pretty much as long as we wanted yesterday, and Sarah was more with it by then, so she could hold him, and we could take more photographs. It's been really hard. I was awake from when Sarah woke me up in the morning until about 10pm that night. Fortunately I was able to get a cot in the room with Sarah, so I could stay the night there. I'm staying here tonight as well. The obstetrician that delivered Joshua said that his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck twice and once around his body, and was pretty tight around his neck. They can't say for sure that that's what happened, but it's a good enough explanation for us, and we're not going to have the little guy cut up for an autopsy, which may not tell us anything anyway. So we're taking some small comfort from the fact that we're able to make a healthy looking baby, and that Sarah's heart performed fine throughout the pregnancy and delivery, and that this was just one of those so very unlucky accidents. Apparently babies get their umbilical cords wrapped around their necks all the time, and most of the time it's not a problem. So we know that he didn't have any birth defects, and it wasn't because of something Sarah ate, or because Sarah got sick or anything. It's just plain bad, rotten luck. We'll most probably try again, but the next pregnancy is going to be hell. It'll be like walking on egg shells the entire time. Clearly, your baby isn't out of the water until he's screaming in the delivery room. There's a lot more I want to write, but I also want to get this finished and get some sleep, so here's a brain dump of what's been going through my head for the last 48 hours:

• Dammit!
• Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!
• We only had 13 days to go
• We just had the baby shower on Saturday!
• We just bought the last few things at Babies 'r' Us on Monday. He was probably dead by then.
• We were so ready. We'd gotten everything. We bought a cool jogging stroller! We bought a super-awesome safety table of a high chair.
• I never thought my Tuesday would end up like this when I went to bed on Monday night
• He looked so perfect. We've been robbed. He's been robbed.
• The little bugger was too active for his own good
• We were supposed to be having our Caesarian class the next day
• Should we try again? Can I handle seeing Sarah go through all the pain and suffering of another C-section?
• It's just not fair!
• I wouldn't wish this on anyone
• This sucks
• This just isn't fair
• We'll get through this

We've been very grateful for the near endless stream of visitors, phone calls and SMSes, and flowers. It's helped us not dwell on things, especially given all of our family is so far away. Sarah's Mum, who was going to arrive in 5 weeks, is now arriving on Friday, so that'll be good for Sarah. Sarah will hopefully be discharged on Friday or Saturday. We're planning on cremating Joshua, as it just doesn't seem right to bury him over here and then someday move back to Australia and leave him all alone. Current thinking is we won't have a funeral service. Here's what I emailed to the people we were going to send the birth announcement to:

Hi everyone, It is with heavy hearts, that we have to tell you that rather than announcing Joshua's birth on the 17th of September, we have to say that yesterday, we learned that we lost him, 13 days before he was to be delivered. Sarah woke me yesterday morning at about 2:30am, because she'd woken up at about 2am, and realised that she hadn't felt Joshua moving since about 8am the previous day. She tried a few things to get him moving, but they didn't work, so we hurried into Labor & Delivery at the Lucille Packard Children's hospital. There, they confirmed the worst, no heartbeat. Yesterday morning at about 10am, Sarah had a c-section so the doctors could deliver little Joshua. He was absolutely perfect, weighing in at 4 pounds 12 ounces (2.15 kilograms) and 26.7 centimetres (10.5 inches). Yesterday was a very long day. Sarah is currently recovering in the Cardiac Surveillance Unit (CSU) of Stanford Hospital (her aorta has been absolutely fine, the doctors are just being their usual cautious selves). It's a little bit up in the air as to whether she'll spend the entirety of her recovery in the CSU, or if she'll be transferred back to the Post-Partum area of Lucille Packard after 24 hours. (We hope that she does get transferred back, as the CSU isn't really used to dealing with post-c-section patients, particularly ones that have lost the baby). The obstetrician that delivered Joshua said that his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck twice, fairly tightly, and once around his body. So whilst we'll never know for sure, it looks like it was a cord accident. That's a good enough explanation for us, so we're not going to have him autopsied. That's about all I can report at the moment. If you'd like to speak to Sarah, you can either call home and I'll try to keep Sarah's extension forwarding to her hospital room, or you can call my cell phone. I've got it on vibrate all of the time, and I'll answer if we're not in the middle of something. If you're calling from Australia, my extension at home will let you connect to my cell phone. If you're local, and would like to visit, we'd love to see you, just call ahead to check where we are. It's going to be hard, but we'll get through this.

I've been using source control management (SCM) systems going back to the the very limited RCS back in the early 1990's. Over the years, I've migrated my SCM to take advantage of improved functionality. Recently, I migrated from subversion to git. While I keep my home directory in SCM (initially CVS, then SVN, now GIT) and that directory is replicated across Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X systems, a big reason for changing from svn to git is to give people more access to my open-source projects. Periodically, I'd have my CVS and SVN repositories available on a public web server. But, that typically required some effort of mine to mirror a public copy from my private repository. Using a distributed SCM like git, there is no additional effort needed to make a public copy of my respository. But, a bigger win over just making a public respository available is allow users to have their own local respository. While I appreciate the patches (bug fixes and improvments) users email to me, there are some cases where I feel the patch has limited value and don't incorporate it into my upstream respository. With a distributed SCM, users can maintain their own local patches while being able to merge changes that I make to the project's canonical repository. Though, I do hope users to continue to send patches that would be useful to a project's user base. As an added benefit, git has much improvement mechanisms for users to do so. For my private use, the distributed repository system is not a big win. However, git has much improved branching over subversion which will help when I want to make a local branch for experimental changes. To convert from my single private respository to a useful public git repository, I've separated my open-source projects into discrete git repositories. The histories of the git repositories on some projects go back to 2002. Unfortunately, I was not able to migrate my tags from subversion to git because git-svnimport got confused about the odd tagging/commits from the cvs2svn tool I used when I migrated from CVS to SVN. If checking out a particular old version is important, one can refer to the dates in the project's debian/changelog file to find the commit matching that release. At some point, I may write an automatic tool to retag the version numbers on the projects. The public git repositories can be browsed at http://git.b9.com/gitweb. I'm modifing my Lisp web site creation tool so it will automatically add the git repository to each project's website. For now, the typical URI to clone a git repository would in the form of git://git.b9.com/<project>.git. I expect users of my projects will find the new, much deeper access to my open-source projects empowering. The set of commands to clone the current set of open-source repositories are:
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-base64.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-modlisp.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-photo.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-readline.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-rss.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/clsql.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cluck.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/ctsim.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/getopt.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/hyperobject.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/irc-logger.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/kmrcl.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/lml.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/lml2.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/md5.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/pipes.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/postoffice.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/ptester.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/pubmed.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/puri.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/reversi.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/rlc.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/rt.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/uffi.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/umlisp.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/umlisp-orf.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/vcs-tree.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/wdq2wav.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/wol.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/xlunit.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/xmlutils.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/xptest.git

I've been using source control management (SCM) systems going back to the the very limited RCS back in the early 1990's. Over the years, I've migrated my SCM to take advantage of improved functionality. Recently, I migrated from subversion to git. While I keep my home directory in SCM (initially CVS, then SVN, now GIT) and that directory is replicated across Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X systems, a big reason for changing from svn to git is to give people more access to my open-source projects. Periodically, I'd have my CVS and SVN repositories available on a public web server. But, that typically required some effort of mine to mirror a public copy from my private repository. Using a distributed SCM like git, there is no additional effort needed to make a public copy of my respository. But, a bigger win over just making a public respository available is allow users to have their own local respository. While I appreciate the patches (bug fixes and improvments) users email to me, there are some cases where I feel the patch has limited value and don't incorporate it into my upstream respository. With a distributed SCM, users can maintain their own local patches while being able to merge changes that I make to the project's canonical repository. Though, I do hope users to continue to send patches that would be useful to a project's user base. As an added benefit, git has much improvement mechanisms for users to do so. For my private use, the distributed repository system is not a big win. However, git has much improved branching over subversion which will help when I want to make a local branch for experimental changes. To convert from my single private respository to a useful public git repository, I've separated my open-source projects into discrete git repositories. The histories of the git repositories on some projects go back to 2002. Unfortunately, I was not able to migrate my tags from subversion to git because git-svnimport got confused about the odd tagging/commits from the cvs2svn tool I used when I migrated from CVS to SVN. If checking out a particular old version is important, one can refer to the dates in the project's debian/changelog file to find the commit matching that release. At some point, I may write an automatic tool to retag the version numbers on the projects. The public git repositories can be browsed at http://git.b9.com/gitweb. I'm modifing my Lisp web site creation tool so it will automatically add the git repository to each project's website. For now, the typical URI to clone a git repository would in the form of git://git.b9.com/<project>.git. I expect users of my projects will find the new, much deeper access to my open-source projects empowering. The set of commands to clone the current set of open-source repositories are:
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-base64.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-modlisp.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-photo.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-readline.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cl-rss.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/clsql.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/cluck.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/ctsim.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/getopt.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/hyperobject.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/irc-logger.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/kmrcl.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/lml.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/lml2.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/md5.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/pipes.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/postoffice.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/ptester.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/pubmed.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/puri.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/reversi.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/rlc.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/rt.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/uffi.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/umlisp.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/umlisp-orf.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/vcs-tree.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/wdq2wav.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/wol.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/xlunit.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/xmlutils.git
git clone git://git.b9.com/xptest.git

On your clients you have to modify /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf:

#com2sec paranoid default public
com2sec readonly default public
exec .1.3.6.1.4.1.2021.8.3 aptupdate /usr/local/bin/nagios-check-apt-updates Get the check script to the client:

# wget –no-check-certificate \
https://kosh.ganneff.de/ganneffutils/nagios/nagios-check-apt-updates \
-O /usr/local/bin/nagios-check-apt-updates
# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/nagios-check-apt-updates Allow the snmp user to make use of apt-get:

# echo “snmp ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apt-get update” >> /etc/sudoers
# echo “snmp ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apt-get –simulate upgrade” >> /etc/sudoers Restart the snmpd:

# /etc/init.d/snmpd restart
Restarting network management services: snmpd. On the nagios monitoring system you have to run something like this:

# /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_snmp -H <client> -t30 \
-C public -o .1.3.6.1.4.1.2021.8.3.101.1 \
-r “No updates available”
SNMP CRITICAL - *”Security updates (1): libkrb53; “* iso.3.6.1.4.1.2021.8.3.101.1=”Security updates (1): libkrb53; ” After upgrading the client you should get:

# /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_snmp -H <client> -t30 \
-C public -o .1.3.6.1.4.1.2021.8.3.101.1 \
-r “No updates available”
SNMP OK - “No updates available” iso.3.6.1.4.1.2021.8.3.101.1=”No updates available” Debian, opensource, planet

I did upload a updated version of eGroupware to my pool. You can grab it from http://ftp.cyconet.org/debian/archive/bpo/egroupware/1.4.001.dfsg-2.1~bpo40+1/ or via:

deb ftp://ftp.cyconet.org/debian etch-backports main non-free contrib For installing the rules analog backports.org applies. Have fun! backports, bpo, Debian, opensource, planet

I spend a few hours today trying to get Scalix to work right...I managed to be able to loginto the admin console at the end, yay!Still: it seems that it's pretty much unusable except by Outlook (maybe, I havn't tried that).The reason is simple: they don't let me log into the web mail. With none of my browsers. Because they havn't understood what 'Gecko' is.For tech people (apparently the Scalix people don't fall into this category), Gecko is the 'rendering engine' inside Firefox, Mozilla and a few others.With 'others' including the trademark-unencumbered Iceweasel fork of Firefox, or the Gnome webbrowsers "Epiphany" and "Galeon". Which are not "supported" by Scalix (do you happen to actually know what you are supporting? Did you develop for the Gecko rendering engine or for the Firefox UI?).Other people in the "I'm a web 2.0 company, but I don't know my stuff" hall-of-shame include the huge german email provider GMX. Their new webmail 'preview' is also only enabled if you claim to be using Firefox or Internet Exploder. They neither have understood why all Mozilla browsers include the Gecko id...

I like seeing movies. I don't always blog about them, but sometimes they're just too good to ignore them in the long run. Here's a recap of some of the movies I saw recently:

• The Core: Somebody broke the earth, and now we have to blow nukes in the earth's core to fix it. Over the top. Silly. Switch brain off, and it's still not entertaining. Probably might be if you're extremely drunk, but I wasn't at the time.
• De Tweeling: Two twin girls get separated at age 7 (or so) when their parents die, and now they grow up at opposite sides of World War II. When they meet near the end of the war, the differences between their lifes seem unsurmountable, but they manage to overcome them decades later, when one of them is about to die. Chilling movie that really, really gets to you, without overdoing it. A real recommendation if I ever need one.
• Shackles: a teacher with a violent history gets to work in a prison school and tries to get these violent kids enthousiastic for poetry. Interesting camera work, but the tempo of the movie is too slow, and I think they slightly overdid it on the poetry—which, IMO, isn't remotely as good as the director seems to think.
• De Hel van Tanger: About two bus drivers who end up in a Moroccan prison for allegedly attempting to smuggle drugs. Loosely based on real events. Wasn't what I expected from it, but still not too bad.

That's it for now.

kernel hangs. My amd64 desktop machine seems to hang with latest kernel. 2.6.23-rc3 seems to be okay, 2.6.23-rc4, rc5 seems to hang my system hard after a few hours. It doesn't respond to pings. Hard to reliably reproduce and hard to analyse. Hoping this patch is the right fix.

Written to count votes with the d’Hondt method, released as a single C99 source file. I know I know, why did I write it in C? Well, because I felt like it. Now you don’t have to ask that question in my comment space in a rude manner

We're about 40 miles outside of Bakersfield, CA now, leaving us 289 miles to get home. We'll be packing up shortly to start the trip while Leif is still asleep. This puts us in San Francisco a day earlier than projected. It means another night in a hotel in the target city, but at least it'll mean that the driving is behind us.

Lessee, I think we were in Albuquerque last time I posted. Since then, we saw the petrified forest a second time, this time when the sun was up so we could enjoy it. The temperatures were so warm during the day, we had to idle with the AC on to keep Leif from waking up screaming. We continued on to Flagstaff after that where we found a nice healthfood deli for dinner and collecting more snacks. My back reminded me that twisting to pick up a diaper bag while holding Leif isn't a particularly good idea, so we spent the night in a hotel and a bed instead of in the camper, and trekked off to the grand canyon.

We met Karina and Chris up there. Sometime in this stretch, we also misplaced the camera. Hopefully it's not sitting at the hotel in Flagstaff. So, we only have a couple pictures of us at the GC, sitting on Karina and Chris' camera. The two of them flew up from Tucson, and Chris offered to take Angie and I up for a sightseeing tour. The last trip I had been on overtop had been an adventure, but this flight was smooth, and nice to be able to say "Hey, I missed that", and then spin around to see it again". Karina managed to keep Leif calm and happy for the hour that we were up, which was also a nice break for us. Angie and I both started to worry about him at around the same time - something like 10 minutes before the end of the flight. =)

The rest of the day was spent wandering along the rim, ending in a nice dinner and sleep at the campsite. The next morning, we went to hear a ranger talk to people passing by about his topic-du-jour. In this case, it seemed to be about the wildfires going on the south rim. He had a telescope pointed at the river and would answer any questions, though. After that we packed up and headed out.

Our intended stop yesterday had been Needles, CA. It turns out that there's nothing there. No name-brand hotels, no Mojave information centre (despite there being signs for it), and a lot of dwellings with the sides falling off. The stretch over to Barstow seemed like the most boring stretch of the trip, probably because we had intended to stop at Needles, but also probably because we know that from here we're just going home. We carried on until Leif's patience totally expired and stopped in Tehachapi for the night.

We think Leif might be starting to push out a second tooth. He also might've gotten a touch too much sun at the Grand Canyon. It was hard to find shady spots to nurse him, and his hat seems to have gotten buried somewhere in the van. He's in good spirits, but his cheeks had a red tinge to them last night. =( He's almost six months, now, so we'll be able to put sunscreen on soon. In the meantime, we'll try to find a place to buy another hat today.

Update: We got access to the place today. Yay! Straight home for us!

Thanks to Philipp Hug and Patrick Winnertz, virtualbox is now available in Debian. I have just installed my first virtual machines, and I am now able to run Windows 2000 or Ubuntu from my Debian box. I was using Qemu until now, but the performances (despite the Kqemu accelerator) were quite bad, and I simply couldn’t run any Linux 2.6 based distributions with the kqemu active. Setting up virtualbox is really easy, just run aptitude install virtualbox virtualbox-source, compile the vboxdrv module (I have used module-assistant), add your user to the vboxusers group, and that’s it! I only had to download manually the guest additions iso image from http://www.virtualbox.org/download/1.4.0/, as the VirtualBox manager wasn’t able to find it automatically. You can launch the VirtualBox manager from the graphical menu and set up your first virtual machine.