The Alfresco installer won’t even run.  Same goes for Contelligent.  Jahia was neat until an article over a certain size would totally break the page editor in both Firefox and IE.  Didn’t try other browsers, as I shouldn’t have to.   Liferay was neat, but it’s very portal-centric.  Not surprising since it’s first and foremost a portal server.  It requires a different way of thinking.  Magnolia would be nice, except it’s a pain to use the Author-pushes-to-Public activation thing, and using a single servlet instance is such a pain.  I then took a look at dotCMS, which is certainly promising.  Surprisingly, it’s a fork of Liferay, but tailored to actually be a web CMS.  All of the CMSs were easy to get to a broken state.  Remove the wrong thing in the weird configuration interface for Magnolia?  BACKTRACE!  Breathe the wrong way on Liferay?  A template will get stuck, or it will cause your browser to go into a redirect loop until you navigate away and clear your cache or restart the browser.  As for dotCMS, I made one change to the standard footer, and suddenly the live version of all pages using the standard templates break, even though the preview and live-edit modes of the pages work!

Say what you will about the poor scalability of the PHP CMSs and blogs, at least they work.  Back to Wordpress for now.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

NETDOOR IS AWESOME!

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

I don’t know why, but I’ve always been fascinated with usenet.  For years I’ve wanted to run my own server, and all the magic that entails.  Okay, so it’s not that magical and is actually quite ugly under the skin.  Anyways, I contacted Giganews and worked out a deal for a suck feed, where my news server essentially acts as a leecher, and sends posts upstream should your local users actually make a post.  My choice for the news server is INN, which is quite a beast to configure.  Worst of all, its only mode of shoving news posts elsewhere via nntp is with the IHAVE command.  Even worse, as a matter of policy and certain technical reasons, Giganews doesn’t let suck feeds post with IHAVE.  You must use POST and you have to enjoy it.

Last night I joked with @TheDauthi that I could probably whip something up in perl in a couple of hours.  He said I could do it in five lines.  It took a few more than that. To figure out a solution, I looked in the man page for the newsfeeds and came across the following sample entry:

The standard outgoing spool file lists the storage token, a seemingly short and simple string of letters and numbers that maps out to an article somewhere in the spool, and the message ID. Honestly, I don’t need the Message-ID and could leave it out of the spool file if I really wanted, but it makes for a pretty log file. Back on track, move the spool file to a unique name, flush the spool, if there are lines in the file, connect to the server, fetch each local article using sm, post it, shutdown the connection, and unlink the working spool file. It goes something like this:


#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use Net::NNTP;
$workfile = "/opt/inn/spool/outgoing/work.giganews." . int(rand(10000000));
rename "/opt/inn/spool/outgoing/giganews", $workfile;
$foo = `/opt/inn/bin/ctlinnd flush giganews`;
open(SPOOL, $workfile);
@a = <SPOOL>;
if ( @a > 0 ) {
$nntp = Net::NNTP->new("news.isp.giganews.com");
foreach $a (@a) {
chomp($a);
($token, $id) = split /\s/, $a;
print "POSTING $id ($token)\n";
$nntp->post(`sm $token`);
}
$nntp->quit();
}
close(SPOOL);
unlink $workfile


As for the newsfeeds entry, it looks something like this:


giganews/Bl.tags.giganews.com,Xl.tags.giganews.com,\
backlog1.nntp.ams.giganews.com,backlog1.nntp.dca.giganews.com,\
backlog2.nntp.dca.giganews.com,bcklog1.nntp.dca.giganews.com,\
bcklog2.nntp.dca.giganews.com,border1.nntp.ams.giganews.com,\
border1.nntp.ash.giganews.com,border1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com,\
border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com,border1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com,\
border2.nntp.ams.giganews.com,border2.nntp.ash.giganews.com,\
border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com,border2.nntp.sjc.giganews.com,\
border3.nntp.aus1.giganews.com,feeder1.nntp.dca.giganews.com,\
intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com,internal1.nntp.ash.giganews.com,\
internal1.nntp.dca.giganews.com,internal1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com,\
local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com,local02.nntp.dca.giganews.com,\
local1.nntp.ash.giganews.com,local1.nntp.dca.giganews.com,\
local1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com,news.giganews.com.POSTED,\
news5.aus1.giganews.com,nntp2.aus1.giganews.com,\
num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com,number1.nntp.ams.giganews.com,\
number1.nntp.ash.giganews.com,number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com,\
number1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com,number5.nntp.dca.giganews.com,\
number6.nntp.dca.giganews.com,small1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com,\
nntp.giganews.com:*,!local.*,!junk,!control:Tf,Wnm:


The extensive path exclusions are necessary due to the weird fact that in the earlier days of Giganews, internal articles didn’t get tagged with a distinct Path item, e.g. nntp.giganews.com for articles when they were served internally. Sites fed by Giganews got the nntp.giganews.com in their Path. These days that’s not a problem. Unfortunately that doesn’t help when you’re pulling over five years worth of articles for one group.

Speaking of pulling articles, this is a suck feed. Something needs to pull articles from Giganews. Fortunately the INN distribution includes a utility called pullnews that implements a suck feed. As it’s not named *suck*, it actually works. I recommend setting up at least two parallel runs of pullnews. One for your text groups and one for binaries. Split it up even more if you can. You have a large number of concurrent connections. Put them to use!

There are a few other hints. Try fetching text groups from text.isp.giganews.com instead of news.isp.giganews.com as there is a significant speed difference on the order of about 10:1. When you’re starting your feeds, run pullnews like pullnews -w -0 to sync up your batch of groups to the current high water mark if you don’t want old posts. Otherwise, play around with the options to get your groups how you like them. Also, consider trimming down your active file to make programs like rtin happy.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

Sorry, the future isn’t here.  Please try back in another decade.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

Last night’s sleep was brought to you by the letters: woke up fifty times.

While an exaggeration to some extent, I did manage to wake up after every single dream throughout the night.  Typically, I would realize it was a dream and hit the eject button.  One dream I had the characters arguing with me that it wasn’t a dream!

“Here’s this large complicated washer/dryer combo with two consoles.  It’s really neat!”

“Wow.  That’s something.”

“It even gives you an inventory of all materials used and a receipt for the washing.”

“Why would I want that?”

“Because…”

“I could understand if this were some sort of commercial washer/dryer combo, but this is for home use.”

“Uhh..  Well look at this over here.  Home stereo stuff!”

“Why is it on the same aisle with laundry crap?”

“Uhh..”

“And seriously, why does the washer have two PCs in it?”

“Because it has two consoles!”

“The one on the left cuts into the area where the washing machine’s tub lies, which should reduce it’s height by 60%, but if you look inside it, it’s full capacity.

“That’s just how great it is!”

“Laws of physics are being ignored.  This is a dumb dream. I’m out.”

“But…”

*wake up*

The dream where the characters argue was even weirder, and involved a few real individuals, so I’ll keep that one to myself.  The curious part is why I was looking for a new washing machine in a dream.  Does my subconcious mind know something I don’t?

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

For my own reference…

Outlook and Outlook Express are complete junk.  They require the LOGIN SASL mechanism for smtp authentication which is unsupported and non-standard according to Cyrus SASL.  So, all you have to do is build sasl with –enable-login and all will probably be fine.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

So Marshall has been cleaning up the Pearl office, and brought over an IBM clicky keyboard.  I laid claim to it immediately.  Threw the Type 7 in the store room.  I now make loud clicking noises when I type.  It’s great!

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

The Texas Instruments TI-nspire calculator has a large screen and interchangeable keypads that also change the personality of the device.  Unforunately this means the calculator itself has to be large.  It’s literally the same shape as a Sunset T1 test set, although only a fraction as thick.  So it’s large and probably won’t fit in you pockets.  They actually make a nice padded carrying case that probably has a belt loop, if you’re feeling especially nerdy.  Anyways, if tiny is what you want, look elsewhere, and I even have recommendations for that.

So you have this nice and neat calculator with high-resolution display, natural “text book”-style entry, and all of that, but you need TI-84 compatability for some reason.  Maybe it’s nostalgia.  Maybe you need a -84 app.  Maybe you prefer the layout of the 84’s keypad.  Maybe your teacher wants you to use a TI-83, 84, or 89 and nothing else.  It doesn’t really matter.  The fact is, you can swap out the keypads and switch over to TI-84 mode.  The emulation is COMPLETE.  You don’t get nice beautiful text, you get huge ugly pixels.  As I highly doubt anyone would prefer this mode after using the nspire native mode, they provide a carrying pouch that will fit nicely in a three ring binder or perhaps a Trapper Keeper sporting kittens and palm trees and ALF.  Also, it should be noted that it uses the classic TI-84 keypad and not the newer curvier crap.  In other words, they made it right.

Next up is the nspire keypad.  With this, you get the nspire OS and its high resolution display, multiple shades of gray.  The keypad has your usual keys, and in between them tiny buttons for all the letters of the alphabet and a few other symbols.  If there’s one thing they missed, it’s a one-touch way to take the multiplicative inverse/reciprocal of a number.  Rather, you’re expected to do it the “hard” way.  Either do 1/x or x^-1.  Oh the horror.

The screen is beautiful and is the highest resolution they offer in any of the TI calculators.  When graphing, you get to see fine details that just aren’t possible with less resolution.  The calculator mode is nice.  It uses natural “text book” style entry, which makes it easy to enter those formulas for RLC circuits or just finding the ERP of a given transmitter setup.  The 99 previous calculations are available simply by scrolling up.  If you can figure out how to program the thing or can manage to keep notes using the non-QWERTY keypad,  you have 16MB of storage at your disposal.

One neat feature is the ability to hook up the nspire to a PC or Mac.  There’s only one problem.  The Windows driver doesn’t support 64-bit vista.  As such, any computer of recent vintage is left out of the fray.  Either Microsoft made it too annoying to develop drivers for the OS, or various companies are lazy.  As even some high-end, high-profit hardware doesn’t support 64-bit Vista, I’m willing to be the problem is Microsoft.

By now you’re asking, “Is this calculator right for me?”  Let me ask you a few questions.  Do you like pretty displays? Do you like or need a graphing calculator?  Can you deal with a large device?  Do you like natural input style?  Do you have $135 or more budgeted for your calculator?  If so, go ahead and buy it.  If all you want is a calculator with natural entry, pocket-sized, no graphing capability and you want to spend $20, then the Casio FX-115ES and FX-300ES will probably suit your needs.

BIG FAT EDIT

Turns out, they do support 64-bit machines.  You have to dig into the install directory to get the 64-bit driver.  For whatever reason, the 32-bit driver is installed by default and will cause massive failure when you try to use the calculator with the computer.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

Passed the test to get my general class ham license.  Although Rob’s new license was granted in just a couple of days, both of us that tested for our upgrades from tech to general have yet to see the FCC ULS database updated.  I guess new licenses get priority as upgrades have temporary authority to work under the new license class for as long as the CSCE is valid.  I’m attempting the Extra test in June.  Let’s just say this test is actually difficult.  So difficult I had to buy a calculator!

Speaking of which, I bought and really like the Casio fx-115 ES.  For $17 you get something that can do weird complex things and a nice display to boot.  It’s not a graphing calculator, nor is it programmable, which is perfect for test situations.  Also, I’m not spending more than $100 on a calculator.

The next couple of weeks at work are going to be a drag.  Turn ups are everywhere.  I even have two projects that will use the same hardware in a short period.  Several late night tasks, weekends will be worked, and all that.

The drawing thing is just… going.  I’ve made progress on a few techniques while drawing a character, but still haven’t gotten to the point where I can consistently draw characters, much less draw them in any given pose.  At least I try to match the rest of the head to the lopsided head shapes. Also, I’m actually drawing the heads with knecks, as it matters with hair.  Sometimes I even draw (disproportionate) shoulders when needed.  I haven’t scanned anything in the past few days as I’ve sort of slacked off.  Tonight I sketched a few heads, but nothing worth showing to the world.  I’ve almost regressed in some ways.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

Security is an illusion, so buy the lock with the neatest key.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

1 601-845-2632

Large file collection!  Doors will slowly trickle in.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

I’ve revived RetroGrade BBS.  Turns out with the DSL package, phone lines are 50% less than they’d normally be.  It won’t be such a financial burden.  Another big change: no telnet access.  Also, certain doors will not be put on the bbs.  The two doors32 doors will not be moved over, as they require windows.  On the up side, the doors that tended to bring the bbs to a crawl won’t be an issue as we’ll be running on a non-multitasking operating system.

I want to add a local node for myself and a couple of non-public telnet nodes for people that are known to me personally or at least have known them on irc for a decade or so.  The local node is a priority, secret telnet nodes, not so much.  For all this to work I’ll need to get microsoft networking for dos functioning. Not a fun task.

So, for those that are interested, the BBS will be available at 601-845-2632 once the phone company moves.  Estimated turnip date is between monday and the 14th.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

I can’t even pick the No. 3 tonight.  I just can’t find the right grip.  The pick just falls over in my fingers and wobbles in the cylinder instead of pushing on pins.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

So the crazy buying spree that ended last week left me with a set of lock picks.  Over the past week I’ve picked up a few locks, mainly padlocks, and got to picking Friday night.  First off was a Kwikset deadbolt.  It fell to raking with a half diamond pick.  It took a minute or so.  A Masterlock No. 3 and a cheap Chinese knock-off fell quickly to jiggling a long jag pick and raking with a half diamond.  Both fall as soon as the pick is fully inserted.  A Brinks-branded brass body lock was a little more difficult.  I actually had to do single pin picking, but it fell within a couple of minutes.  Bored with these I got to picking on this infinitely rekeyable practice lock I purchased.  I was able to pick it up to five pins without much difficulty.

Saturday, I picked up another brass-bodied Made-in-China generic brand padlock.  It too failed to yield to jiggling with the jag, but it was about as easy to pick as  the Brinks.  I soon grew bored and hit up the lockpicking101.com forums for ideas.  The suggestion?  Load up the practice lock with spool pins, a type of “security” pin designed to make picking a little more difficult.

I repinned for six pins, five with spools, and got to picking.  A few hours later, and I’m entrenched in the battle.  Minute movements bind half the pins, backwards movement caused by one of the spools makes everything else reset.  I eventually grew frustrated and removed one of the pins, but another two hours later I still couldn’t get it.  With the cylinder at body temperature, I decided to give it a rest and do something else.

First off, to reinflate my ego I used the jag a few times on my No. 3 and the cheap knock-off.  Then I decided to do some single-pin picking on the thing.  It’s only four pins, but it’s more about honing technique instead of a major feat.  Consider it the same as weightlifting with low weight and high reps.  I spent an hour and a half picking and repicking the thing and I must say I learned quite a bit.  Things like knowing which pin I’m on, what I’m pushing on, the feeling of pins setting, and so on.  All really basic stuff when it comes to picking, but all very important.  Then, there’s that wonderful *click* when the lock opens.

I really like this new hobby.  It’s a weird mix of puzzle-solving, manual dexterity, and collecting.  That’s right, you’ll become obsessed with collecting locks.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

So Apple is trying to make jailbreaking the iPhone a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.  This ridiculous argument has no merit.  Jailbreaking the iPhone does not allow one to download pay apps from Apple’s blessed App Store for free.  It allows the iPhone owner to install non-blessed apps on the phone.  As such it is not copyright control circumvention, but a way of making the iPhone open to any developer without paying a “tax” to Apple.  It is a threat to Apple’s business model, not a violation of the law.  I would have expected such moves out of Microsoft, but it turns out they’ve realized a truly open development platform means more developers for their devices and even allow developers access to the source code to Windows Mobile with nothing more than an electronic agreement.

With that out of the way one would wonder if I have or will jailbreak my iPhone.  The answer is most assuredly NO.  I like the fact that the AppStore model requires developers to meet a minimum level of competency to have their app listed.  The Apple “tax” on developers is a meager $100, which is cheap considering you get a compiler, test environment, debugger,  tons of documentation, the ability to have your app distributed in the app store, and they don’t let your app into the app store if it’s complete crap.  Oh, did I mention you don’t even have to pay the apple tax  to get the development tools and you can toy around with development and install your apps on your own phone?

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.

Can’t say I didn’t try.

Mirrored from JohnHavard.com.