tales from the "it's life Jim, but not..." dept.

I upgraded my blogging thing. Woo go me. Only thing that seems to be broken is the link tool :/

Posted by TdC at 1:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m at work over this weekend on location in Brussels (hums “land down under”). We’re doing a disaster recovery test for BigCompany. As of now I have been on location for about 40 hours, and have actually worked a whopping 10 minutes or so. Poor average I’d say tbh, though luckily it’s no fault of my own.

Still, there are the usual perks, 100+ euro booze bill (per person), general malarkey, cheeseburgers at 2 am, and looks from the other hotel guests. Err, I mean, serious work related discussion, going to bed on time and NO internet :p

So there were troubles with the test, but that is the purpose of the test ofc. Sometimes procedures get changed, sometimes this causes problems for disaster recovery tests. The trick is to discover the balance between running fine in the production environment, and being able to get the environment up and running in a disaster scenario within a decent timeframe.

Posted by TdC at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I scored 84% on the Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10 OS part 1 exam! Pleasing!
I’m stoked, in a minor way, and I actually want the other bits too, even though that will prolly mean bloody dTrace hehe.

Anyway, once I feel that I am up for it I’ll post what I used to get there. Apparently some people could use it a bit (myself included).

Posted by TdC at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a Solaris 10 exam coming up this Tuesday. As my scope at work entails that I do not create users or manipulate printers, I have to cram a lot of information into my overworked brain that I will never use again :-(

# zoneadm -z one install
Preparing to install zone .
Creating list of files to copy from the global zone.
Copying <1607> files to the zone.
Initializing zone product registry.
Determining zone package initialization order.
Preparing to initialize <698> packages on the zone.
Initializing package <78> of <698>: percent complete: 11%

Also, I’ve only ever used Solaris on SPARC, so all the intel-schmintel whatzits is unknown to me and has to be learned :-/

In a fit of vanity, I took out a test at my optician to try out contact lenses. I must say, putting them in my eyes was difficult, but not entirely undoable. Wearing them was somewhat unpleasant, but the sensation of not wearing glasses was great, even though my eyes were feeling a bit strange, but getting them out of my eyes was nasty. The buggers just didn’t want to come out :/ Now my eyes feel like they’ve been sandblasted, as sort of combination of the feeling that I’ve just cried for 6 hours, and that I haven’t slept in the past four days. Nasty. I hope it goes away soon, and that when I try them again tomorrow it won’t be as bad.

On the very bright side, I’ve sold my house. CHA-CHING!

Posted by TdC at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

how to make a cheese toastie:

1) put cheese on bread
2) put bread(cheese) under grill
3) let bread auto-toast from excess grill heat
4) once cheese is grilled to liking, spread liberally with tomato sauce, HP sauce or Branston Pickle according to mood.
5) consume while making masculine noises of glee

ofc, if you’re a snob you can use different kinds of cheese at once :p

Posted by TdC at 8:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Norco should be proud of their young sponsoree imo. He, and the camera crew, have done a good job creating the dvd.

Not only does Ryan Leech know exactly what he is talking about, he also manages to explain the finer points of a move clearly to the viewer while demonstrating the move several times and the dvd shows it from multiple angles. Ryan also explains his personal mind-set for trialling, and stresses that he feels people should have fun on the bikes and be responsible.

The tricks and moves on the dvd are broken down into beginner/intermediate/expert segments, and is also split into a trials specific and a general freeride section so Ryan demos that he can use both a trials bike and a burly Norco freeride bike with equal ease. You get a lot of footage for the price, Ryan explains everything in great detail and he even manages to come across as a really nice bloke to boot.

If you want pumping sounds and people jumping off big things then look elsewhere: this video is a serious educational aid and I recommend it to anyone from any mountain biking background if they want to further their skills. TdC says 10/10!

I didn’t want to mention it (because I feel it’s not worth it tbh) but I also have Tricktionary vol. 1 featuring Aaron Chase and Jeff Lenosky. Sadly those guys come across as camera-shy wooden puppets, and the dvd runs through the tricks so quickly that there is only 20odd minutes of footage. Get it if you’re a fan but otherwise avoid imo.

Posted by TdC at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

but I simply can’t resist :D

http://www.myspace.com/thelancashirehotpots

Posted by TdC at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

in case you non-EU people don’t know it, Germany is the current chair-country of the EU (since jan 1st), and they’re pushing for the banning of violent games.

as we all know, video games are clearly the root of all evil, and violent ones are the worst, and we should never beg the question why some flipped out kid is playing violent game for 14 hours a day and never going outside, because obviously the game is at fault even before said kid gets his sticky paws on it. it sits there in the cesspit of evil that is the poota-game shop (run by a raving psychopath ofc) on a shelf while radiating violence and oozing insanity.

it almost makes me wish that someone would freak out and go on a death rampage and it would come to light that they play a totally non-violent game like World Snooker Champ 18 hours a day. obviously it would still be the games fault :/ anyway, since rock and roll is here to stay, television just makes too much money and book-burning is so passe, I suppose they have to blame something.

personally I blame burmese kittens for all the violence in the world. those ickle fluffy beasties just sit there, being cute and extruding death. I had one in my hands the other day, and after playing with it for a bit I just had to go outside and kill some old lady with a hammer. the cat told me to.

Posted by TdC at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firstly, a very merry Noob Jeer to all of you on the interwebnet! I wish you all well, and hope that nasty things will pass you all by this year.

My NYE/NYD was spent largely in bed with my lovely GF and a bottle of champagne, very nice indeed! We’d gone away for the weekend together, to a little hotel in Edam (where the cheese (yes that cheese) gets made). Edam’s picturesque and quiet enough, and we chilled out and celebrated the coming of the new year together in a romantic fashion :)

teb mtb!!
I’m back on it! ofc, at the time of this writing, I have’t been on it for two weeks, but that’s the holiday season for you heh.

teh battlefield!!
been playing lots of bf2142. there is still a lot of stuff wrong with it, for example the disconnection from the master server thing still occurs (though much less than before) but now the game also crashed to the desktop at random times

noo poota parts!!
I got a gForce 7950GX2! hubba bubba!, though it’s not as fast as I thought it would be, it does allow me to play bf2142 at 1920x1200x32 with AA and AF maxed out and all detail settings on full. ahem :)

hmm I’ll update when I think of more stuffs to write :)

Posted by TdC at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the battlefield2142.com site:

• Master Server Disconnects: We are adding client side enhancements to eliminate Master Server Disconnect Issues.

Well, well, two things to say about that:

1) about fucking time

-and-

2) about fucking time

Also, between you and me, I don’t believe a word of it until I’ve experienced it for myself.

In an aside, I’ve sold my two 7800GT’s, my mobo and cpu on the Dutch marketplace, and gotten upgrades for next to nothing. My god, the stuff was so cheap that I’m thinking of never buying something at release from a shop again!

Posted by TdC at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

today I reinstalled MT-Blogroll, a nice widget to control who I link to in the “links!” block. It’s pretty cool, you can even have it display “last updated” information within the link so you can see who’s been pulling finger and who hasn’t. I’m pleased with it, though it was a bit wierd to install the hard way. there are some quirks still to be ironed out by it’s maker. He’s done a good job though imo.

I’ve caved in and gotten myself my Christmas present early. I’ve been saving up for a while and couldn’t hold off any longer. I’ll post a pic when it comes in later this week :) It’s a nerdy thing though, so boring as hell to any non nerdy readers (slim chance eh).

I was supposed to go to Rotterdam for work today, though I managed to fail miserably. I stood about at the station waiting for a train that just got more and more delayed, and then didn’t run at all once it had arrived due to mysterious “technical difficulties”. After working out that no matter what I did I’d be too late for my scheduled meeting, I decided to give up and go to work at the Arnhem location. I was there at 09:20, meaning that I’d gotten up at 06:30 for fuck all use. And it rained quite severely the whole time too :/

Work is a bit strange atm: I have the feeling that I am just getting dumber and dumber for some odd reason. While it (hopefully) isn’t true, it does worry me a bit because it is making me unsure of myself and I don’t like that. In fact, all things considered I should be super duper pleased with mysef atm. I’m done with the hospital and the horrible accident that happened last year that resulted in me limping badly for 14 months, I’ve got a wonderful new mountainbike and I’ve just bought myself a nice pressie. Strange that I should feel down. Perhaps it’s the (shit) weather?

Posted by TdC at 6:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

well, I discovered that some important files were missing from my website. Amongst others, the CMS that brings you this blog (though lucky for me there are automated database backups so the damage isn’t too much) and the GALLERY (which may yet bring me to tears because while I have all kinds of backups, they are daily and I am worried that the backup may have occured after the files dissapeared and before I noticed)
so. I am worried :-(

Posted by TdC at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

they may look good, but tbh inho they are aluminium clad shite :/

ever since I got the RAZR, based on a whim ofc -no research at all-, as I only make calls and texts and don’t use my phone for anything else (partly due to the Dutch telecom companies all being *****, partly due to the fact that I *already* have an mp3 player/camera/agenda thing) I thought it would be ok.

so, after having gotten the thing it was broken within a week: the pretty laser-cut keypad stopped working after a ride around town in my pocket. That got fixed, and the phone was fine imo. Despite a slight dwindling in battery life, and the fact that sending text messages with it is pure hell due to the crap software everything seemed to be going well with it.
Yesterday, after another ride about town the tft packed it in. Sure, it was raining and all that but the phone was in my backpack for crying out loud. Now I have a phone with no screen! Last night it totally didn’t work, this morning it will turn on -though it’s kinda hard to work with when you can’t see shit eh?

I want a new phone! Someone recommend me one!

Posted by TdC at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

hmm. some thoughts (and spoilers perhaps so watch out)

I liked:
-I totally dig the gravity manipulation thing, though it did make me queasy at times
-I liked the tiny world in the box, though I instantly twigged that I’d get to go there
-I like the portals being everywhere and also the way they take you to seemingly random places
-I like it that there are going to be two stories at once (or at least that’s the way it seems to me: the whole aliens using humans thing and the tormented dead busting loose Cherokee thing)

I didn’t really like:
-the way you can’t look everywhere with total freedom, perhaps it’s something to do with the gravity thing? meaning you have 360deg visibility on the horizontal axis, but only 180deg or so on the vert. your char doesn’t automatically “turn round” when you move the mouse through 180deg vert.
-the way it reminded me of both Doom3 and Quake4 at once :/
-the way that the spirit realm thing felt like I’d seen it before in a game but couldn’t remember which one.

right now I give it 7.8 out of 10

Posted by TdC at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The sc chains are short. My rear wheel’s all the way forwards against the stops and with perhaps a mm or so to wiggle it about in with the chain almost bar-tight. The new tyres clear the stays with about 5mm to spare.

Been out for a wee test run to see if it all held together. The gimp feels very light, agile and agressive. The holy rollers are ofc new, and they squeek hehe, and are pumped to 50psi, so that’s prolly where lots of the lightness and agressiveness come from.

It was murder getting the hookworms off: I was tired, it was late, I hadn’t eaten, my tyre levers kept slipping, etc but I stuck at it and got the both of them done in about an hour.

The chain though. boy, that chain is hot! It’s not a chain it’s a work of art! it’s so cool I almost didn’t want to put it on the bike! shadow conspiracy pwns!

see updated pics here

Posted by TdC at 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know this, because my Shadow Conspiracy chain that I got from HubJub arrived either today or yesterday! Why the “or” do you ask? Well, when I got up this morning the package containing the chain was lying neatly on my bed by the window. As I was asleep, I can only hazard a guess that someone else let the delivery postie into the apartment block and he chucked it in through the open window, but I prefer to think that Shadow Conspiracy ninjas inflitrated the building in the dark watches of the night to deliver my interlock chain right into my sleeping hands!

Yesterday evening I went to see X3 -The Last Stand. Pretty decent, as far as comic to film action conversion movies go. I was pleased with certain things and less pleased with others, for example Xavier laying on the uber morality and ethics while Wolverine, Storm and Beast get to lay the smack down on their fellow (but misguided) mutants.

Thursday I’m picking up the package that the evil posties will finally release to me (though tbh I am a bit scared because the tracking website tells me that it’s already been released o_0)

Now the important news: my lovely girlfriend and I celebrate our three years of being together! yay! go US!! <3

Posted by TdC at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mine looks like a pretty flower! The applet to generate the picture can be found here. Cool, I had to let you guys in on it :-)

Posted by TdC at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EDIT 02/07/2007: I have confirmed that you *may* experience LDAP wierdness using this configuration due to the fact that you may come into contact with a bug in Sol8 causing an LDAP query to be done regardless of it being configured in your jail or even in your server. I have to talk to Sun about this. I’ve seen it happen and it’s weird.

EDIT 07/04/2007: I’ve hear that chrooted FTDd done “my way” may behave erratically when you configure the jail, and then install an LDAP client on the host (at some later date). I have yet to have this quantified, because the people who complained about it have yet to let me look at their servers. So, if *you* happen to be in the know, don’t hesitate to drop me a line at tdc -at- alphanor -dot- org eh. Cheers!

Some time ago I was asked to look at building a possibly anonymous FTP server running in a root jail on Solaris.
I had a short time to study Sun’s built in anonymous server that has it’s own chroot functionality, but the people I was doing it for told me that they wanted control over the usernames and passwords.

Here are the thoughts I had:

Split configuration and data

The FTP server situation I was looking at required as much security as possible, so I chose to keep the configuration and the user’s data on separate logical partitions. Also I chose to mount the data volume with the nosuid option. In fact, I suspect that the configuration volume could be mounted nosuid too (though not read only ofc, because the server will have to write to it’s device nodes), but I seem to recall not checking it at the time.

Using the Solaris FTPd in a root jail

To do this I used the Solaris FTPd manpage almost exclusively. Everything you need is there. I reprodue it here in part:
For anonymous ftp users, in.ftpd takes special measures to
restrict the client’s access privileges. The server performs
a chroot(2) command to the home directory of the “ftp” user.
In order that system security is not breached, it is recom-
mended that the “ftp” subtree be constructed with care; the
following rules are suggested.

~ftp Make the home directory owned by root and unwritable
by anyone.

~ftp/bin
Make this directory owned by the superuser and unwrit-
able by anyone. Make this a symbolic link to
~ftp/usr/bin The program ls(1) must be present to sup-
port the list commands. This program should have mode
111.

~ftp/usr/lib
Make this directory owned by the superuser and unwrit-
able by anyone. Copy the following shared libraries
from /usr/lib into this directory:

ld.so.1*
libc.so.1*
libdl.so.1*
libmp.so.2*
libnsl.so.1*
libsocket.so.1*
nss_compat.so.1*
nss_dns.so.1*
nss_files.so.1*
nss_nis.so.1*
nss_nisplus.so.1*
nss_xfn.so.1*
straddr.so*
straddr.so.2*

~ftp/etc
Make this directory owned by the superuser and unwrit-
able by anyone. Copies of the files passwd(4),
group(4), and netconfig(4) must be present for the
ls(1) command to work properly. These files should be
mode 444.

~ftp/pub
Make this directory mode 755 and owned by root. Users
should then place files which are to be accessible via
the anonymous account in this directory.

~ftp/dev
Make this directory owned by the superuser and unwrit-
able by anyone. First perform ls -lL on the device
files listed below to determine their major and minor
numbers, then use mknod to create them in this direc-
tory.

/dev/zero
/dev/tcp
/dev/udp
/dev/ticotsord

Set the read and write mode on these nodes to 666 so
that passive
ftp will not fail with “permission denied” errors.

~ftp/usr/share/lib/zoneinfo
Make this directory mode 555 and owned by the
superuser. Copy its contents from
/usr/share/lib/zoneinfo. This enables ls -l to
display time and date stamps correctly.

Anonymous or not?

Solaris 8 comes with a reasonably easy to set up ftp server with built in chroot capabilities, but if you want to use this one you will be stuck with two users. Using either of the two to log in will automagically place you in a preconfigured jail.
These predefined users are anonymous and ftp, special users who are defined with a minimum of privileges and configuration to set up ftp sessions. They are not passwordless though, useing them to log on will see a password dialog, though the server doesn’t care what you type as long as there is an at-sign (@) in there somewhere.
It is possible to configure the Solaris FTPd to use a chrooted environment where defined users can log into using actual passwords, though ofc you’d have to decide for yourself weather ot not to deal with the security and technical configuration issues that arrise

Building the jail (please note I was using the Veritas Volume Manager here)

root@testsun # vxassist make ftpchroot 100m
root@testsun # vxassist make ftpchrootdata 500m
root@testsun # newfs /dev/vx/rdsk/ftpchroot
root@testsun # newfs /dev/vx/rdsk/ftpchrootdata
root@testsun # mkdir -p /jail/ftp
root@testsun # chmod -R 700 /jail
root@testsun # mount /dev/vx/dsk/ftpchroot /jail/ftp
root@testsun # cd /jail/ftp
root@testsun # mkdir -p dev etc usr usr/bin usr/sbin usr/lib usr/lib/security upload
root@testsun # chmod -R 555 dev etc usr
root@testsun # ln -s usr/bin bin

Finding the libraries to use

root@testsun # ldd /bin/ls | nawk ‘$3 ~ /lib/ { print $3 }’ | sort | uniq
/usr/lib/libc.so.1
/usr/lib/libdl.so.1
root@testsun # ldd /bin/sh | nawk ‘$3 ~ /lib/ { print $3 }’ | sort | uniq
/usr/lib/libc.so.1
/usr/lib/libcmd.so.1
/usr/lib/libdl.so.1
/usr/lib/libgen.so.1
/usr/lib/libmp.so.2
/usr/lib/libnsl.so.1
/usr/lib/libsecdb.so.1

root@testsun # ldd /usr/sbin/in.ftpd | nawk ‘$3 ~ /lib/ { print $3 }’ | sort | uniq
/usr/lib/libbsm.so.1
/usr/lib/libc.so.1
/usr/lib/libcmd.so.1
/usr/lib/libdl.so.1
/usr/lib/libmp.so.2
/usr/lib/libnsl.so.1
/usr/lib/libpam.so.1
/usr/lib/libsocket.so.1

root@testsun # cp /usr/lib/libnsl.so.1 /usr/lib/libsocket.so.1 /usr/lib/ld.so.1 /usr/lib/nss_* /usr/lib/straddr* /usr/lib/libmp.so* /usr/lib/libc.so.1 /usr/lib/libdl.so.1 /usr/lib/libgen.so.1
/usr/lib/libsecdb.so.1 /usr/lib/libpam.so.1 /usr/lib/libbsm.so.1 /jail/ftp/usr/lib

root@testsun # chmod 555 /jail/ftp/usr/lib/*
root@testsun # cp -R /usr/lib/security/* /jail/ftp/usr/lib/security
root@testsun # chmod -R 555 /jail/ftp/usr/lib/security/*
root@testsun # cp /bin/ls /jail/ftp/bin/
root@testsun # chmod 111 /jail/ftp/bin/ls
root@testsun # cp /bin/sh /jail/ftp/bin
root@testsun # chmod 111 /jail/ftp/bin/sh
root@testsun # cp /usr/sbin/in.ftpd /jail/ftp/usr/sbin/
root@testsun # chmod 111 /jail/ftp/usr/sbin/in.ftpd
root@testsun # cp /etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/shadow /etc/pam.conf /jail/ftp/etc
root@testsun # chmod 444 /jail/ftp/etc/*
root@testsun # mkdir /jail/ftp/etc/default
root@testsun # chmod 555 /jail/ftp/etc/default
root@testsun # echo “/bin/sh” > /jail/ftp/etc/shells
root@testsun # chmod 555 /jail/ftp/etc/shells
root@testsun # cp /etc/default/init /jail/ftp/etc/default/
root@testsun # chmod 444 /jail/ftp/etc/default/init
root@testsun # mkdir –p /jail/ftp/usr/share/lib/zoneinfo
root@testsun # chmod 555 /jail/ftp/usr/share/lib/zoneinfo
root@testsun # cd /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo
root@testsun # tar -cf - .|(cd /jail/ftp/usr/share/lib/zoneinfo; tar -xvf -)
root@testsun # chmod 555 /jail/ftp/usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/*
root@testsun # cd /jail/ftp/dev

Creating device nodes

root@testsun # ls -lL /dev/zero /dev/tcp /dev/udp /dev/ticotsord /dev/ticlts /dev/conslog
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 21, 0 Jan 28 2005 /dev/conslog
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 42, 0 Jan 28 2005 /dev/tcp
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 105, 2 Jan 28 2005 /dev/ticlts
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 105, 1 Jan 28 2005 /dev/ticotsord
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 41, 0 Jan 28 2005 /dev/udp
crw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 13, 12 Jan 28 2005 /dev/zero

root@testsun # mknod conslog c 21 0
root@testsun # mknod tcp c 42 0
root@testsun # mknod ticlts c 105 2
root@testsun # mknod ticotsord c 105 1
root@testsun # mknod udp c 41 0
root@testsun # mknod zero c 13 12
root@testsun # chmod 666 *
root@testsun # cd ..
root@testsun # mount -o nosuid /dev/vx/dsk/ftpchrootdata /jail/ftp/upload
root@testsun # chmod 1755 upload

Configuring a user

root@testsun # useradd -d / -s /bin/sh ftptest
root@testsun # passwd ftptest
New Password:
Re-enter new Password:
passwd: password successfully changed for ftptest

root@testsun # cat /etc/passwd | grep ftptest > /jail/ftp/etc/passwd
root@testsun # cat /etc/shadow | grep ftptest > /jail/ftp/etc/shadow

Now open /jail/ftp/etc/pam.conf and remove everything. Then add the following:

ftp auth required /usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so.1
ftp account required /usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so.1
ftp session required /usr/lib/security/pam_unix.so.1

Check that /jail/etc/passwd, shadow and group do not contain classified information.

Configuring the service

Open /etc/services and create a service to designate the ftp traffic in the jail so you can tell it from regular ftp traffic (if you so desire ofc)

ftp-jail 2121/tcp
ftp-jail 2121/udp

Now the Sun will designate traffic on port 2121 as “ftp-jail” (Please note that if you’re not going to be quick and dirty like me you prolly should also add 2120 as ftp-jail-data or something)

Open /etc/inetd.conf and define the ftp-jail service and what the superserver has to do about it:

ftp-jail stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/chroot chroot /jail/ftp /usr/sbin/in.ftpd -l –d

The options -l and -d tell the FTP server to log near enough everything.

Open /etc/syslog.conf and add the following lines to facilitate the FTP daemon’s logging. Note that I sent it to the general messages file. Ofc you can send it anywhere. A remote loghost being most desireable.

#ftpd
daemon.info /var/adm/messages
daemon.debug /var/adm/messages
daemon.err /var/adm/messages

Now you can kill -HUP inetd and syslogd.

Testing it

root@testsun # ftp testsun.intranet 2121
Connected to testsun.intranet.
220 testsun FTP server (SunOS 5.8) ready.
Name (testsun.intranet:TdC): ftptest
331 Password required for ftptest.
Password:
230 User ftptest logged in.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 ASCII data connection for /bin/ls (192.168.1.10,32999) (0 bytes).
bin
dev
etc
lost+found
upload
usr
226 ASCII Transfer complete.
40 bytes received in 0.0084 seconds (4.65 Kbytes/s)
ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.

Netstat output

testsun.intranet.ftp-jail testsun.intranet.32998 32768 0 32768 0 TIME_WAIT
testsun.intranet.2120 testsun.intranet.32999 32768 0 32768 0 TIME_WAIT
testsun.intranet.33000 testsun.intranet.ftp-jail 32768 0 32768 0 ESTABLISHED
testsun.intranet.ftp-jail testsun.intranet.33000 32768 0 32768 0 ESTABLISHED

Logging output

Nov 3 11:57:14 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 373804 daemon.info] connection from 10.129.10.114 at Thu Nov 3 11:57:14 2005
Nov 3 11:57:14 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 988435 daemon.debug] <—- 220
Nov 3 11:57:14 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 738965 daemon.debug] testsun FTP server (SunOS 5.8) ready.
Nov 3 11:57:18 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 577562 daemon.debug] command: USER ftptest^M
Nov 3 11:57:18 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 988435 daemon.debug] <—- 331
Nov 3 11:57:18 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 337738 daemon.debug] Password required for ftptest.
Nov 3 11:57:21 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 416587 daemon.debug] command: PASS
Nov 3 11:57:21 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 988435 daemon.debug] <—- 230
Nov 3 11:57:21 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 636382 daemon.debug] User ftptest logged in.
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 577562 daemon.debug] command: PORT 10,129,10,114,128,231^M
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 988435 daemon.debug] <—- 200
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 223037 daemon.debug] PORT command successful.
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 577562 daemon.debug] command: NLST^M
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 988435 daemon.debug] <—- 150
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 742713 daemon.debug] ASCII data connection for /bin/ls (10.129.10.114,32999) (0 bytes).
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 988435 daemon.debug] <—- 226
Nov 3 11:57:23 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 766787 daemon.debug] ASCII Transfer complete.
Nov 3 11:57:26 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 577562 daemon.debug] command: QUIT^M
Nov 3 11:57:26 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 988435 daemon.debug] <—- 221
Nov 3 11:57:26 testsun in.ftpd[26494]: [ID 811691 daemon.debug] Goodbye.

Well that was fun wasn’t it? Just some notes here at the end: this was the quick and dirty method. There are prolly more refined versions out there in google though I didn’t find any tbh. Also, who wants FTP when there is SSH? eh? :-)

Posted by TdC at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

hmm. I was thinking about the huge amount of blog posts I still have to transfer from the SQL dump I made of the previous CMS I had to this current one. A couple years worth iirc, though most of them are probably junk there are several in there that I am considering keeping.

Sadly the posts I’m refering to are mostly from a period where I was pained, pissed off, generally disgruntled or outright at war with the world. In short, I tend to be most verbous durning periods where life is against me. Now, here is the question: why would I want to keep the posts from that period? Why should I not give in to my laziness and just leave it?

I do know that people have read those posts and contacted me with kind words, and that I respect very much. For them I would allow the posts to once again grace this blog, but for me? Life is good now, why would I remind myself of life-not-so-good?

In another batch of laziness of the things I’ve not yet done, I still haven’t converted my text log from my trip to New Zealand into electronic form. In this I also laze about: it’s 40 pages or so! Ooh err. Still, as a challange to myself I think I should do it, unedited, unaltered. Hehe teh fear! I can’t even remember most of it, but the NZ trip was cool. Reading the log should allow me to relive the cooler moments :)

Posted by TdC at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wootness! Longtime mate MysticG has finally lost it become inspired and created a website dedicated to the wonder that is the longest story in the whole of the world!

The Story’s (yes, capital S) original origination is detailed by MysticG like so:

The Longest Story In The Whole Of The World (TLSITWOTW) was spawned a long long time ago on the BarrysWorld Forums.

We don’t know conclusively if the BarrysWorld thread was the first but it’s the only one that came up under a TLSITWOTW on a Google search (as at 21 May 2006, some 3 years after BarrysWorld had ceased to exist in any way, shape or form).

The basic idea of TLSITWOTW was to create an ongoing (i.e. never ending) story that any registered user of the forums could add the next piece to. Users were free to do anything they chose. They could create/kill/resurect characters, places, storylines or anything else for that matter.

In 2006 although long gone itself, BarrysWorld had a spiritual home in the guise of FreddysHouse. Whilst reading the forums MYstIC G stumbled across the long dead (2+ years) TLSITWOTW thread and along with Testin da Cable (TdC) decided to try and re-ignite the flame.

So why don’t you join us and contribute to The Longest Story In The Whole Of The World (TLSITWOTW)? All you have to do is register, sign in and post the next section chunk of story.

Have Fun!

Regards
MYstIC G & Testin da Cable (TdC)

PS: Posting “The End” is not big and it’s not clever and can always be undone with a simple “or so you would think, but” in the next post!

PPS: This thing is new, so we’ll be messing about making changes to it as we go, no complaining!

There’s a part of the Story (Volume III I believe) still available here in a long dead thread in the freddyshouse forums and once apon a time I actually collected both volumes I and II in a text file availble here in which the following people participated. Mostly I did all that stuff from work, so don’t tell my boss :-)

Anyway, if you feel like participating, sign up and have a go, or visit the website and enjoy it to your heart’s content!

Posted by TdC at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Um, lemmesee….

Firstly: let me say that Hitachi Deskstars are wank. Ofc, they used to be better known as IBM Deathstars, but I try not to believe hype too much. Anyway, I had a 250GB SATAII disk and it started to fail. Now I have a yummy Westeren Digital. Woo.

Secondly: in a scandalous move to get back on something resembling an XC bike I’ve ordered an On-One Scandal! Scandalishious!! I’ve gone for the 16”x26” model, as I aer teh shortish at 5’8” for an 18”er. Ooh I’m now tempting myself with pretty carbon parts as Brant of On-One, a master of amazing deals, has allowed me (and everyone else who wants one ofc) to also order a rigid carbon fork at an amazing price :)

Thirdly: the sharper eyed amongst you will have noticed the new link in the sidebar ;-)

Posted by TdC at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In response to this thread on Freddyshouse:

imo it’s not the world, but what the writer has the chars do that makes a story believable. iow, you can have all the elves and dancing pixies you want just as long as your chars act on situations regarding good/evil/humanitarian/etc issues in a humane fashion that readers can relate to.
To me you can’t have a fantasy character jaunt through a dungeon slaughtering everything that moves (much like most fantasy games these days) because that char will have to be a raving psycho to get that done. Such chars tend to have major issues with what they’re doing (or a mate doing so) just to tone down the lunacy.

for example, Rand in the Wheel of Time goes all gay and weepy, keeps holding back, struggles with himself, etc because otherwise us humans extrapolate that he will flip out and wreck the world. because he’s that powerful, us readers imagine that he can do it. We sympathise with Rand (while still calling him gay behind his back) because the writer tortures him so.

another example is perhaps Frodo in LotR. he’s the epitome of teh ghei: he doesn’t want his burdon, he doesn’t want to destroy it, everyone’s out to get him, he spends most of his adventure hurt wet and miserable, and that is why everyone loves him. He’s certainly not an uber powerful elven lord with a glowing sword slaughtering orcs by the score, but a small hobbit. Easilly overlooked, but not because nasty Tolkien keeps chucking great dollops of danger at him.

tbh my fave “fantasy” (anti)hero of the moment is K.J.Parker’s “Poldarn” of the Scavenger trilogy. He gets hurt, gets into a lot of trouble, everyone’s out to get or manipulate him and he has no idea at all what’s going on up to the last ten pages or so of book three. He’s certainly not all-powerful.

Sadly the last example doesn’t really fit the fantasy creteria you describe inasmuch as there are no elves/dragons/dread lich kings/etc. He’s just a bloke in a semi-medievel country at an undetermined period of time. That I also happen to like because the writer doesn’t bother with hinting that “ooh arr it could have been earth!!1”

In Jordan’s case, he uses the “Wheel of Time” and the “pattern” and threads and things as metaphors for fate and destiny. Can anyone (except maybe the Dalai Lama) really explain how that stuff works without resorting to metapor? The wheel comes into play to symbolise the never-ending struggle of good v evil / light v dark / blue v red through all of eternity. Jordan explains the “one power” as the force that turns the wheel of time. A human might interpret this as it being some kind of cosmic force. A scifi boffin might call it midiclorians or solar rays or reverse molecular destabilisation patterns or that wierd stuff that Captain Kirk uses as aftershave. It really depends on the reader accepting something a writer places in the world or not. Like you said, you read “one power” and thought “wtf?”, whereas I read “one power” and thought “oh, ok”.

Boiling down: for me, it’s not that your chars have scales, wear mail and have tentacles, if they can tap the life force and channel it by their mind’s power, wield an axe they got off a dragon-priest or a laser sword they made themselves in a hut on a desert planet or are just regular guys finding themselves in irregular circumstances, but it’s how they deal with the shit that makes them believable. How they struggle to not do insane/improbable/(really) unbelievable acts (that would wreck the scope of the world). That’s where it’s at.

Posted by TdC at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

also I have a cold and Morrowind TES:Oblivion!

I should be pleased!

after a few weeks of being very busy and stressed I had a couple of days off and got to spend some quality time with my lovely girlfriend (who was ill, had her birthday and ate lots of tapas with me. ofc I have now caught her cold and am feeling bleh myself :/) We did get good and chilled though. Lots of wine, good food and some beer helped, but we also saw lots of each other and all was good. Note to self: must not forget to service our bikes!

Workies is now calming down. though I’ve lost track of everything I’ve done and still have yet to do I’m no longer feeling as if everything’s slipping away and I’m not getting anything done. not knowing what had been done and constantly having to check everything just sucked bigtime. well, it seems that my couple of days off to chill out have done their little magic. or at least I now have the feeling I’m on top of things and know what I am doing.

Before I continue jet let me say that I hate Websphere very very much. Almost as much as I hate wasps, and about half as much as I hate Lotus Notes.

now, on Oblivion:

it’s like a very very very polished Morrowind, and the world is simply gigantic! also the level of detail is just ott. they have grass that is animated and stuff. if you thought BF2 had grass think again :) I have a pretty hefty computer: two 7800GT’s, 2048mb ram, amd X2 4400+ and the game runs like a dog when I’m outside. like a 10fps dog! maybe it’s one of those games that doesn’t like SLI. or maybe I’m just pushing it with 1280x1024 and everything maxed out ;) note: mind you I had 4xAA on at the time and was running about in full daylight with full grass on and everything heheh

a niggle is that they don’t allow HDR and AA on at the same time, though mind you I’m not as tech savvy as I used to be and I’m unaware if the one implies the other. tbh HDR is far prettier than Bloom+AA. they’ve gotten some nice glow and fire-esque effects going on there that I’m quite partial to, and the lack of AA doesn’t really get in your face imo.

enough technical stuff! do I like the game? what? like right now? right now….no. right now Oblivion is a very very polished Morrowind, and I played that a long long time ago man. right now Oblivon is a slightly boring slow and repetitative game with a tad sucky AI. yes, SUCKY (what else is new) AI!! my god! For my first Fighter’s -or should I say “Idiots”?- Guild mission I had to deliver some weapons to some morons who’d foolishly run off to de-infest a Goblin infested mine without taking their weapons with them. Uh-huh, yeah right. Well, I gave the idiots my fellow fighters their requested weaps, and they suddenly all ran off, dissapeared or became hasted and dissapeared, or just dissapeared, running, faster than me, in the dark, into the darkend mine. Oh, did I mention they didn’t wait for me? Did I also not mention WTF these so-called fighter buddies of mine were doing in the fucking mine without weapons?

Aaaanyway, two of the morons idiots got dead because I wasn’t there to take the heat. In fact the Goblins prolly ate them because I could only find one fighter afterwards and he didn’t show any forms of stress at his comrades being butchered and eaten in front of his nose either. Ho hum. Right now I’m already a mighty level 3 and thinking of selling my “special edition”.

also, on a note of extreme geekness I installed SmartyPants. A nice MT plugin which gives me nice “curly quotes”, ‘ticks’ and some other stuff.

That’s about it. Laters.

Posted by TdC at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

sadly my playtime is now also being eaten by my job along with personaly time et al.

after getting lots of people at Freddyshouse all riled up for a friday evening filled with games (this was yesterday btw) my job decided to make me so busy that I no longer had time to be a part of what I’d started. I did try denying it to myself , as being “very busy” still usually means that I can spare a few minutes every hour to get online and talk to people, but this time I found that I really couldn’t swing it :/ by tuesday workies had the pressure so high that I barely had time to have lunch. anyway, I had to drop my activities for the FH gamesday, I haven’t been to the gym and yesterday was gamesday and I got home so late and tired that I didn’t even try to get online. I’m a bit miffed that I had to drop the organization on some unsuspecting heads, and more so that I didn’t get to play! I was looking forward to playing some CSS, ET and BF2 against some of the FH lads while I worked through a pile of munchies and some beer, but it was not to be. I really hope that Throddy, Gale, Ash, Babs and everyone else had a great time (and that I was missed a bit (prolly sworn at tbh)).

today was no different and I’m at work and have been so since early this morning. personally I was extremely pissed off even before I got to work because the rear brake on my bike decided to semi-lock up and which ever way I turned I had a head-wind blowing frozen slush in my face. nice. workwise things didn’t go well either: first we weren’t allowed into the building, then our engineer got lost, then he got locked in a building he wasn’t supposed to be in, after we’d saved him the server then refused to see it’s new tapedrive so I had to fix that. the fast 360 drives use a different driver than the standard one it seems. here’s how documentation can’t effect things in the real world :/ after this oracle refused to start, MQ started but didn’t want to start it’s channels but everything pretended to work. after an hour’s worth of swearing things went more or less swimmingly. that’s where we are now. I have a good hope that I can go home in an hour, which I’m not saying out loud in case someone hears heh. which is good because I’m existing only on coffee as I’ve not yet had time for brekky. a pizza and some beer is in order!

Posted by TdC at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

thanks to Ch3tan of freddyshouse I’ve been made aware of a “banned” ad for the xbox360. imo it’s quite teh funni :)

there’s also a parody here :-)

Posted by TdC at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m working on integrating a photo gallery type thing with the MT platform that I use to blog. It’s more work than I thought it would be (heh) though, and I’m a bit pressed for time. oh dear. now I really have to run!

Posted by TdC at 7:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

as some of you may have noticed, alphanor.org has moved house and now lives in a powerful server host owned by the nice folks at networkredux! I’m really pleased, and I’m sure this new host will be a lot faster and more reliable than my old FreeBSD workstation sitting at the end of a DSL line :-)

after what seems like an age, gandalf the dual pentium II xeon (!) workstation, webserver, mail platform, filestorage thing and general toy will be powering down. I must say I’m a bit sad :-)

Posted by TdC at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The European parliament voted “yes” to the saving of telecommunications and internet data. As of july 2007 all EU countries must save phone, email and internet communications for a minimum of 6, maximum 24 months. This includes locational data from mobile phones.

Only header data will be saved, not content aparantly. This more or less means that they will be able to see who emailed who, but not what was written. Though not explicitly mentioned, it’s a good guess that they’re also going to keep track of what webpages people visit. The data will be used to “help prevent serious crimes” I believe, amongst other things.

Now anybody with half a brain will know that, at least on the internet, it’s extremely easy to get around this if you can be bothered. I’m reasonably sure that this measure is to watch the 99.98 percent of the population who aren’t hardened criminals and terrorists. I certainly hope that when Joe Average gets pulled over for speeding the nice policeman can pull up a list of the websites he’s been visiting recently to check he’s not a terrorist paedofile hippy radical anti-globalist starbucks hater who regularly emails his pal Osama @ thisisntaterroristhideout.org. sarcasm Roll on 1984!

Now I find this a hard argument: on the one hand I don’t really care that others can see how much porn I surf, or that my mobile tells the man where I am at all times. The latter may even come in handy at some point tbh. On the other hand for this measure to be effective at all the data will have to be analized with minimal delay or it won’t be useful for it’s intended purpose at all. Tbh they may as well put a camera in my house to keep watch in case I suddenly develop an incling to make home made explosives. After all, they watch me in the street and on the internet as well :/

Posted by TdC at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

long but good read here. well worth the effort.

Tbh I’m extremely chuffed with what they’re researching. Gone are the days of the squeaky clean gaming environment imo. No longer will you be looking at a screen, manipulating a pawn in the gaming world of your choice, but watching a film with bells on. Even better, you’re participating in a film! In this example a WWII flick, so ducking behind a wrecked tank to avoid the canny Hun tossing some Steilgranate at you may bring you face to face with Henry Fonda, Maximilian Schell, James Caan or Edward Fox, for in this particular case Valve are attempting to emulate a war movie of that period.

There’s going to be grit both on screen and under your boots playing these games. We’re getting motion blur, bloom, even film grain that simulates the wear and quality of period celluloid! And 5.1 sound! And realistic smoke, dust and rain! Frigging brilliant imo! One of the reasons I happen to like COD2 alot is because it reminds me of an old WWII movie: it’s chaotic, there are people running about and getting in the way. There’s dust, smoke and percipitation obscuring your view. It’s noisy and there’s lots of things going on at once and I like that.

Ofc the WWII era isn’t for everyone, but to come back to Valve, and to their HDR demo Lost Coast there’s much more there than making your game look like an old movie: the lighting effects are amazing: you can see dust in the air, bloom and such replicate you squinting and the sheer prettiness of the light falling through the windows distracted me from the nasty combines coming to kill me heehee.

Now a thought occured to me, and that is that players may not actually be pleased with all the crud that is getting in their way in a game. For example, I imagine that a gamer like Throdgrain (of the freddyshouse forums} likes things like smoke grenades and flashbangs in CS:S because he can use them against his foes, but he won’t like a dust cloud blowing down a street he’s moving up because then he won’t be able to see where he’s going and he certainly won’t like Valve’s idea of depth of field because then he won’t be able to see the terrorist he’s hunting crouched 50 yards away as well as he used to.
Now me, I like the idea that I’m watching a movie I can participate in, but I can imagine that playing a game like BF2 is going to become very different with things like depth of field put in place. For example, I’ve learned that everything is in focus on my screen and that only things like viewing distance, fog of war, name it what you will can effect my god-like abilities to see everything at once. I can be shooting at a nasty 5 yards in front of me, but I can spot the sniper moving into place 200yards beyond that instantly.

So, all the next gen games are going to be different. Playing style is going to be different. It may well be more realistic, but is it going to be better?

Posted by TdC at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

logicalish - it would be logical if the world, your perception of it or your interpretation of the logic were warped. and/or options apply.

Posted by TdC at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Been playing SP a bit now, and imo it’s quite good. the level of detail is just amazing: there are flurries of snow (I’m in Russia atm), smoke from whatever source grenades, explosions, etc looks good -and better: when there is smoke your enemies can’t still magically “see” you. Which is great imo. From screenies I gather there will also be rain and stuff later. I wonder how that’s going to turn out. The snow in Russia is quite good imo: gentle flakes with the occasional wind-driven gust flurrying about. Anyway, that stuff is nice imo. The textures are decent and the level of detail is quite good (I have everything on full, with filtering set to AF, not the bilinear or trilinear option). The AI chars look and move like computer generated things though, not like motion-captured people.

Now for what I *really* like about it: it feels like chaos! It feels “real” in that aspect: it’s like an old warmovie. Imo there’s a genuine feeling of running about and trying to stay alive. The Russian campain, where I am in now, manages to capture chaos, madness and confusion quite well in SP, though I must add I am playing in the highest difficulty setting so that may help it a bit. Your AI teammates aren’t as thick as they seem in the demo, though they are’t the brightest either tbh: they’re still perfectly capable of kneeling directly in a sniper’s field of fire and not getting out of the way which bugs me because while I don’t particularly care about realistic worlds, I do care about AI not screwing up and doing dumb things.

The baddies (and goodies) are quite vocal, so you’ll be hearing lots of “cover me Ivan, I’m reloading!” and stuff, though that does get a wee bit irritating after you hear it for the umptheenth time. The AI does help a bit though: “fascists flanking on the left” or words to that effect. Kinda handy when you’re about to pop up and toss a grenade.

I’m really not far into the game atm: just unlocked the English campaign tbh, but up to now I like it!

Posted by TdC at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

well, as you can see I’ve managed to break my blogging thingy. for some odd reason my previous blogging app refused to do SQL statements a la select * from blog_content where blog_id = somenumber so I fiddled with it for a bit and then gave up.

This on the other hand is something entirely new (for me) called Movable Type. it seems quite cool, has loads of fiddley things to er… fiddle with and works quite well I must say. if I weren’t so sleepy I’d move all the old blog entries to this new thing, and even make it obey my layout wishes but I shan’t cos I require sleep. something for the weekend maybe?

Posted by TdC at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

been faffing about with the stylesheets.
what do you think? it’s not done yet though!!11

Posted by TdC at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well I’ve been playing with this pLog thing for a day now, and I must say that I’m pretty pleased with it on the whole. things to do has been reduced to simply writing my own style template and then I’m more or less done! woot!

my (only) windows pc is being a bitch over the DNS changes I did to facilitate the flawless merging of the internal and external networks though: for some odd reason it just won’t resolve correctly. naturally all the unix boxen
get it right heh. oh well, you can’t have everything ;)

Posted by TdC at 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

yay :)
still fine-tuning the open box. want to setup ntp as well.
get the other boxen to pull time off the open.
now off to bed, tomorrow and sunday will be really busy days heh.

Posted by TdC at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

woo all that hard hard work on a saturday evening ;)
everything seems to work perfectly tho, all is cool.

Posted by TdC at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)