The Copiale Cipher used by an 18th century secret society has been deciphered.
Decrypting secret codes has to appeal to the kid in all of us.
After the discusison on picking up a Maemo device, it just did not work out that way.
First, the successor to the N810, the N900 was never released in Canada. So I'll have to wait for a Maemo device I could use I thought. Second, Nokia partnered with Intel to merge Maemo and Moblin into Meego. Ok, I can wait a bit longer unit a Meego device is available in Canada.
But then the final event just killed it. Nokia decided that another mobile OS would be better for its future devices. As they say, "I don't do Windows."
So that leaves me with Android. And, as soon as it was available in Canada, I got myself a Nexus S.
The ProGit blog has a nice post on using the new git notes feature.
Just now catching up with using Emacs in daemon mode. On that blog post, an anonymous commentor shows the best way to use emacsclient to start the Emacs server if it is not already started.
One last note is that the -c option will result in the same
behaviour as the -t option if the DISPLAY environment variable is
not set.
I am starting to feel the slowness of Firefox so I wanted to see if Chromium could fulfill my web browser needs. So far so good.
The first big issue was getting Flash working with my x86_64 version of Chromium. I found a tidy set of instructions to get and install the 64-bit Flash plugin. Just make sure you get the latest version of the plugin.
Update: The 64-bit version of flash is too old and has many security vulnerabilities. You should really get the latest 32-bit version and use the 32-bit plugin wrapper for your browser if you run a 64-bit version of Linux.
Recently I have been getting "Received unexpected response from..." errors. I found a TechSpot blog with a fix that worked for me.
I am not the only person pondering what mobile platform to get.
Though as I blogged already, I'll be going with Maemo.
Just listened to the IT Conversations podcast Great Public Communications Skills which covers Carmine Gallo's new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.
Two clips Carmine mentions specifically to watch are:
- The return of Steve Jobs at MacWorld Expo 1997.
- iPhone release at MacWorld 2007 (jump to 26min mark)
What I found interesting is that these 2 presentations, approximately 10 years appart, use the same presentation techniques.
I have devices that run both Android (OpenMoko Freerunner) and Maemo (N810). With new devices now available that run newer versions of Android and Maemo, I was trying to decide which one I would get (the WAF will not allow both).
The Google Maps Navigation announcement really made me want the new Motorola Milestone phone. That is a sweet app.
However, after reading Harald Welte's summary of Android Mythbusters and Comparing Freedom on Maemo and Android Android does not seem like the platform I want. If reviews of the just now shipping N900 are positive, that will be my choice.
My wife has been organizing all our family photos using F-Spot for several years. After a long bout of inactivity, she started to work through the mass of photos that we have just been collecting and not sorting through. After she imported the pictured, she noticed that the date of the photos that F-Spot was reporting was off from when she remembered taking the pictures.
Well it turns out that F-Spot is indeed getting the dates wrong and is changing the EXIF header dates to be incorrect as well! A good summary of the problem is F-Spot Considered Harmful.
I think I'll take a look at digikam.
Watch the video of a nine year old's shootout goal and be amazed.
I actually think he had some sticky stuff on the heel of his stick, but the timing involved to hit the net while spinning is still impressive.
If you ever wondered where NHL hockey team names originated, then read The Origins of All 30 NHL Team Names.
I don't know of other funny flags from the past, but this Benin Empire flag is hilarious. I love how the guy apparently attempting to shake hands is greeted. I guess it wasn't that friendly a place to visit.
One area that the Linux desktop has been missing is proper color management. Well, Richard Hughes has started developement of a GNOME Color Manager.
If you typically send patches to mail lists then Felipe Contreras' git send-email tricks blog post is definitely worth reading.
The new ikiwiki world order is now in place. Well, at least on my site. Gone is the old order run by make files and m4 scripts.
I also finally took the time to remove some old cruft and to validate many links that may pages have. There is still much todo, but that will happen gradually.
This is the first ikiwiki blog post.
Another neat story about an encrypted message sent to the President of the USA in 1801. I find this kind of story fascinating.
Dave Jones is a genius. Using mutt and your editor to highlight your coding errors -- he should have patented that one!
While poking around on the Single UNIX Specification web site, I noticed a link to a Firefox Search Plugin.
With this plugin installed, you can search for keywords in the SUS directly from Firefox. Very cool.
Update 2009-10-12: Newer SUS link
As an emacs user, I knew the butterfly command. I just don't find it that useful.
In a discussion on creating a git repo for the gcc code base, Linus describes how git uses delta chains and how they relate to packing.
In the same discussion Linus has additional low level explanation.
With help from Andrew Cowie's blog post Getting Blosxom to work... my blog now has a functional RSS 2.0 feed.
Update 2009-10-12: Removed link to old RSS feed
If you have a feed for your blog, make sure it is valid by using FEED Validator.
Check the validity of my RSS 0.91 and RSS 2.0 feeds.
Update 2009-10-12: Remove links to old RSS feeds
Zach Rusin has created a very easy on the eyes git cheat sheet. This is very useful if you use some git commands only once in a blue moon.
In the C/C++ programming language, data can be given the volatile qualifier. Typically, people think this is sufficient to prevent code ordering problems. Well, volatile does not do that.
Linus provided a great explanation of the problem on the lkml today. Definitely worth reading. Also, you should read Linux Kernel Memory Barriers from the kernel documentation.
Update 2007-10-14: Also check out the LWN article The Trouble with Volatile.
Dave Jones got some spare time and merged in my first 3 x86info fix up patches:
There are a couple more patches I need to send Dave now that the first set have been merged.
At OLS2007 I went to Rob Landley's Cross Compiling Linux tutorial where Rob introduced his Firmware Linux project. Unfortunately we ran out of time and didn't actually get to using the cross-compiler.
Rob's approach to cross-compiling packages is to build a native environment (using qemu) so that you don't actually have to cross-compile packages. Cool idea!
Anyway, to build the root file system that qemu will use, Rob used UML (User Mode Linux) to step around the root privileges required for mounting the loop device. I had trouble getting UML going on my laptop so I wrote a patch that evening to use genext2fs to create the root file system. Just to show how slow I am at following through, I finally sent the patch to the mail list. We'll have to wait and see if Rob likes it.
Update 2009-10-12: Rob eventually started using my patch.
Even though this is not really a security issue, be aware that if you leech WiFi access from somebody, the access point owner can control the data stream you get (and send!).
Upside-Down-Ternet is a funny example of what one guy did to his leeching neighbours.
There have been some netfilter changes that have caused a lot of confusion when it comes to configuring the kernel. The new netfilter implementation accompanied a bunch of netfilter kernel configuration name changes.
Linus was not amused and then pointed out how the netfilter Kconfig could have been implementation to avoid any issues.
If you've heard of pointer aliasing but have not fully understood what it means, read this great explanation by Krister.
A nice HOWTO on compiling a kernel for a Fedora system.
We have all used coffee or a Coke to keep our eye's open when we should be sleeping. What if you could take a pill to change when your brain says it needs a rest? Read about modafinil and newer drugs that are coming that will radically change what "a good night's sleep" means.
Software developers tend to gravitate to the GTD methodology. Why is that? Robert Peake (CTO of DavidCo) has written an article, Getting Software Done, that demonstrates the parallels between the GTD methodology and software development.
Getting into a regular backup routine is starting to become a priority for me. So finding an article covering backup issues is timely.
The article's author recommends dar as the backup software.
I finally ran into a firewall issue in that I could not gain access to a git repository that was only available using the git protocol.
I knew how to setup OpenSSH to be a SOCKS proxy, so I needed a way to get git to use a SOCKS proxy.
Works great!
While I was at OLS this year, I attended the Writing a Linux Filesystem tutorial presented by Steve French.
During the tutorial Steve provided an excellent reference to the Writing a Simple File System paper. The paper has 2 extremely useful diagrams that depict the relationships of the VFS objects and the system call mapping to data structures.
When you are programming it is often convenient to have 32-bit values that, when displayed in hex (base-16), spell words (e.g, 0xdeadbeef). These values are useful for signifying specific conditions either within a program's resident memory or in persistent storage.
I found a cool list of words that were pragmatically generated and expanded to include l337 spellings.
I came across an easy-to-understand explanation why linux does not need defragmenting.
Linux Magazine has an excellent article, Embracing the Git Index, that demonstrates how git's index is used.
If you still are under the illusion that WEP is a safe way to secure your wireless access point, think again. Read how the FBI demonstrated cracking WEP in 3 minutes.
Ulrich Drepper has a blog entry about using the environment variable MALLOC_PERTURB_ to aid in the detection of typical memory usage bugs in programs.
Using this debugging feature is as simple as setting the environment variable and running the program you want to test. No recompiling required. Sweet!
Mark Wieczorek documents his discovery of a Google Proxy. If you are accessing the web from a slow connection this could be an invaluable tool. Check it out.
Don't want to burn ISOs for the new Fedora Core 5? And then to wait for several hundred megabytes of updates for each machine you install to?
Check out Updated FC5 Network Install which will show you how to setup a Yum repo so that all your installs use an updated image of all the OS RPMs.
Every kid goes through a stage where secret codes and invisible ink are exciting. Eventually though, you find that what you need to say to your buddies is not really top secret and the effort to encode your "Let's go play hockey" message is impractical.
I still find cryptography interesting and the article How I Broke The Confederate Code (137 Years Too Late) is very cool.
Icon Manager is an excellent app for creating and editing icons on your Palm. With this application you can also create your own customized icon file that only has the icons you use.
Maceyr has an excellent Icon Manager blog post with links to many free icon sets near the bottom.
Update 2009-10-11: Fixed links
Just came across an excellent thread about GTD's weekly review on the Getting Things Done Public Forums. Many people have trouble doing the weekly review and the discussion in this thread is great. In particular, read Bernard's reply.
When a computer is compromised one of the first things the intruder does is install a root-kit. The article How to scan your Linux-Distro for Root Kits is an excellent step-by-step HOWTO to detect if your systems have been kitted.
The article Nine things you should know about Nautilus has some excellent tips for setting up Nautilus so that it is less annoying.
I've been using a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 USB mouse for several years, but have had trouble getting the 2 side buttons working with my browser. Until last night! A late night Google session and some tinkering brought the 2 side buttons to life.
Many people seem to have set the Buttons options (to a value of 7), but I have
found that it is not needed. Below is the relevant section of my xorg.conf
file (I am running Xorg X11 version 1.0.1 on Fedora Core 5 at the time of this
writing):
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
EndSection
With these settings, you can use the xev utility to verify the button number
for all buttons and wheels on a mouse. For my mouse the rear side button is 8
and the side front button is 9. I thought this was strange since I can only
count 7 distinct buttons on my mouse (I believe this is why everybody sets the
Button option to 7). Anyway, xev never lies.
One more key to the puzzle: what button numbers does Firefox use for the Forward and Back functions? Turns out to be button 6 for Back and button 7 for Forward. Thanks Gentoo HOWTO.
Now for the final setting, we need to map mouse buttons 8 and 9 to buttons 6
and 7 respectively. This is where the xmodmap utility helps us out. Just
add the following line to ~/.Xmodmap:
pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 8 9 6 7
This expression places buttons 8 and 9 in the location for buttons 6 and 7. The mystery buttons 6 and 7 are then mapped to buttons 8 and 9, though I don't know how these button codes are generated from the mouse.
A restart of X (i.e., init 3 followed up with init 5) and xev now reports
the side buttons as button 6 and button 7. A final test in Firefox shows that
I now have side button control of Forward and Back.
Hope this helps somebody get their side buttons working.
Leslie Franke's blog has an entry listing what he considers to be the best free Palm software. I agree with many of his choices and was grateful to learn about Icon Manager.
Check out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation article Fill'er Down. Just another example of Harper Hypocrisy.
Rick Mercer, as usual, nails Prime Minister Steven Harper's decision to not fly the Canadian Flag on the Peace Tower at half-mast.
It's sickening really.
kernel.org hosts gitweb that is an excellent interface for browsing kernel code changes changes.
You can even track the stable kernel queue.
Took me a while to getting around to reading Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Linux and Rsync (I had plucked it but left it for a long time). Wow! I wish I had read this one long ago.
I had no idea rsync could pull off this kind of rolling backup. I really need
to take the time to set up this kind of backup system (or any backup system for
that matter 
Just came across, Five-Minutes to a More Secure SSH. Covers the steps to setup SSH to use key-based authentication instead of using traditional passwords.
Just learned of MSMount5 from Notes on Going Retro with a Clié N610C.
I've only spent a little amount of time playing with it, but it appears to allow you to access applications and databases that exist on the SD card. I have confirmed that an application copied to the /Palm/Programs/MSMount directory on my SD card shows up in the default launcher without needing to select the card first. Cool!
If you have git and plucker installed, then you can easily create a Plucker version of the git documentation for you Palm.
plucker-build --title="git" --doc-name="git" --doc-file="git" --stayonhost="" --maxdepth=10 file:///usr/share/doc/git-core-x.y.z/git.html
For the lazy among us, here is git.pdb.
Update 2009-10-11: Removed git.pdb because git documentation has been updated significantly since I created this plucker document. Also, I no longer use a Palm device so plucker is not an application I use anymore.
Thought I'd mention the plugins I am using with blosxom for this blog.
- Markdown
- SmartyPants
- permtimez (formerly known as sortz)
These are well documented on their respective sites and/or in the plugin file itself.
git supports applying tags to the HEAD, but is not so easy to check out a specific tag. See the LinuxMips wiki for a description of how to check out a tagged release.
Fedora Extras is keeping up to date with new releases of git so now I can take a stab at figuring out how git works.
On a Fedora system, start with /usr/share/doc/git-core-x.y.z/core-tutorial.html.
I am thinking about using graph wallpaper for my blog entries to make them look more notebook like.
Came accros Start Your Own Workblog With Blosxom - 10 Minutes Or Less. A nice easy to follow set of instructions on getting blosxom up and running on your web server.
The offical docs describing how to create a customized flavour.
While looking for blosxom flavours I came across the above mentioned group's Blosxom Flavour and Theme Registry. I'll give it a perusal.
All those who cannot read this speak up now.