What's That Noise?! [Ian Kallen's Weblog]
Saturday January 15, 2005
Booting linux in single user mode Today, we had to bring up a Debian host in single-user mode and it didn't want to cooperate. Note to self:
Next time LILO doesn't want to stop for a boot prompt, hold down the
shift key to force to stop for a prompt.
I don't know if that's a Debian default or something, but it's really annoying that something special is required to get a boot prompt.
( Jan 15 2005, 11:03:22 PM PST ) Permalink
Wednesday January 12, 2005
Jack of All Trades I thought I was pretty broadly skilled with my work spanning software engineering, network and systems operations, some DBA-duties and variety of other do-it-cause-it-needs-to-be-done endeavors.
Well here's a something funny: Chef and Missile Treaty Compliance Inspector. Yea, this is an actual job that is posted right now:
Job Description: Responsible (sharing duties with one other chef) for the preparation of three daily meals (brunch & dinner only on Sundays) for approximately 20-25 personnel at remote, self-contained site in Russia. Duties include menu planning, food ordering & resupply, inventory management, kitchen maintenance and sanitation and catering support to infrequent special functions on and offsite. As treaty monitor, may occasionally operate the On-Site Continuous Monitoring System in accordance with official START treaty missile inspections at Votkinsk.Where can you sign up? HotJobs (what do you mean by "hot"?). I took the liberty of mirroring the job ad, since I'm not really familiar with the lifecycle of job ads posted there. I thought it was good enough to keep!
If that's not your cup-of-tea, Technorati has some great jobs open right now. Most of them don't even require you to
walk, cross-country ski, or walk with snowshoes, a distance of 2.5 - 3 miles without rest in all seasons, including winter temperatures as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheitnor
shoveling sidewalks and building entrances and digging out snow around satellite dish area and other equipmentNot that there's anything wrong with that. ( Jan 12 2005, 12:58:23 AM PST ) Permalink
Monday January 10, 2005
Eclipse and iTunes Something's really goofy with my Powerbook!
If I'm listening to iTunes and then starting working in Eclipse, I get static popping and scratching in my ears. It hurts! It sucks! It just isn't right! Is this Apple's way of telling me they don't want me to develop code with Eclipse?
I'm marching over to MacWorld to protest!
( Jan 10 2005, 02:29:46 PM PST ) Permalink
Saturday January 08, 2005
Developer Contests Over the last few weeks I've been paying more attention to the API's that blog and taggregator services offer. I've also starting looking more into the API's that blog tools offer.
The Technorati Developer's Contest results are in. I was especially impressed with the visualization effort by Michael Dale'sTechnorati Touchgraph application. While it is a little rough around the edges in places (some of the implementation's PITA'ness is just AWT and crapplets being what they are), these kinds of graphical renderings of the Technorati cosmography are really great. Wondering now if anybody has tried something like this with Macromedia Flash, hmm....
If anybody is entering the Blojsom Developer Contest and wants help with the Technorati API, there's a Java client in the SDK and I'd be happy to lend assistance with it.
( Jan 08 2005, 12:04:12 PM PST ) PermalinkManaging Multi-Timezone Conference Calls I'm ringmastering a project that requires coordination with parties near and far. Most of the coordination for these kinds of things functions well with email, IM, wiki and CVS. But sometimes a plain-old conference call is in order.
Getting all of the parties lined with
- a number to dial into
- invitations and acknowledgements (RSVP's)
- conference call times with the time and timezone contextual to the recipient
Monday January 03, 2005
PHP and mod_perl w/mysql breakage on Mac OS X I'm working with code in PHP, Perl and Java that all have to access MySQL. I haven't had any problem using PHP configured "--with-mysql" and mod_perl with DBD::mysql on Linux but on Mac OS X, it just doesn't work.
My setup is: Mac OS X (Panther) with Perl 5.8.1, MySQL (v4.0.17) installed with Fink. Apache (v1.3.31) was compiled with both mod_perl and PHP. When I deployed a mod_perl module that connected to MySQL, the connections always failed with this error:
DBI connect('bjorkdb;port=3306','hamster',...) failed: Protocol mismatch. Server Version = 0 Client Version = 10 at ...which was really confounding because the connections in other runtime contexts were fine. I double checked to make sure I didn't have multiple libmysqlclient's around or additional Perl installations. All of that checked out.
I recompiled Apache without PHP and everything works great. So my conclusion is that something funky happens on Mac OS X when linking libmysqlclient. Looks like I'll have to keep another set of Apache binaries around should the need to run PHP locally recur, otherwise I'll just stick to the compile that has mod_perl but not PHP.
( Jan 03 2005, 12:01:11 AM PST ) Permalink
Sunday January 02, 2005
In Every Season: Turn, Turn, Turn I still feel a small sense of propriety for things I've worked on in the past. Even way in the past. Even when not an inkling of anything I'd worked on back then is likely to have survived any of the incarnations since then. On the other hand, I'm probably doing better than my friends whose efforts over the years completely dot-bombed-in-flames. I guess this is the time of year when I mark the time by life's events (including gigs) and reflect.
Hearing talk of Gamespot's decline (for me, Gamespot.com was a gig that started nine years ago and ended three later), like "Gamespot going down hill" is kinduva bummer. I was concerned when I read of Scott Rosenberg's book break but a lot of the fine folks I have fond memories of at Salon (four years ago) are still there and doing a great job! And like myself, a lot of folks that I worked with over the years have moved on to work on and accomplish great and interesting things, so it's all good.
OK, reflection time is over now.
Thankfully, I really dig what I'm doing now! Happy 2005 to all of my friends and colleagues past and present!
( Jan 02 2005, 11:02:38 AM PST ) Permalink
Saturday January 01, 2005
The Top Tsunami Sites I did a little digging around and found some of the top sites for relief information, reactions, pictures and videos of Sunday's Tsunami.
- The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog
- On going coverage of relief news, publications and other linkable resources
- Tsunami Relief
- Google's thumnail list of relief organizations
- QuickBird Images of Tsunami Sites
- Stunning satellite photos with before and after shots of Sri Lanka and Indonesia
- Cheese and Crackers: Tsunami Video
- Tons of links to amateur video's from the region that capture the power and immensity of the tsunami
- Blog
- I can't read Japanese but people that do are reading this a lot
- Raw Print | Westboro Baptist Tsunami Statement
- Those Kansas right-wing nutjobs (ya know, the "god hates fags" zealots) are at it again with their Sodom and Gomorrah crap. "Thank God for Tsunami. Thank God for 3,000 dead Americans!" Wow, you'd think the pastor at Westboro Baptist Church is really Osama Bin Laden. More and more, I think that seceding from the union sounds like a good idea.
- Support UNICEF's Tsunami Relief Efforts
- Ya know, it's for the kids. $50, $100, $250, $500 or any amount you can give will make a difference.
- Network for Good :: Help Support Disaster Relief in Southeast Asia
- A good collection of emergency response and on-going relief organizations. Certainly there must be one for you.
- CNN.com - Aid groups accepting donations for victims
- Who says that big media has no soul? They care too!
- MoveOn.org: Tsunami Relief
- The Bush administration stepped forward first with $15M, then $35M and today brought it up to $350M. MoveOn's petition says
President Bush and Congress must offer whatever assistance is necessary to prevent further human suffering in the wake of the tsunami disaster.
Friday December 31, 2004
Pictorial Fallout Seems like there are no events without photostreams anymore.
Here are some from last night's fiesta and after party that followed Scobleizer's Technorati visit.
( Dec 31 2004, 12:49:48 PM PST ) Permalink
Hey 2004, don't let the door hit you on the butt on your way out! I have a lot of things to be thankful for this past year. However, 2004 brought on a sufficient number of painful kicks-in-the-teeth, I say good riddance!
The bad stuff has been damn bad:
- The loss of my grandfather
- The prevalence of red states
- Widespread devastation striking people on a massive scale
- Local devastation striking my friends and neighbors
But there was good stuff too:
- My family and my kiddos continue to blow me away with how wonderful they are, my love and pride swells
- Working with all of the terrific folks at Technorati has been a thrill
- And life in general has been quite good, albeit hectic
- People are trying to help
Wishing for a good 2005!
( Dec 31 2004, 10:56:36 AM PST ) Permalink
Thursday December 30, 2004
New Years Resolutions I have a number of personal, professional, creative and spiritual objectives, but I won't chunk them into specific intervals or milestones. At least not here and now. So for next year, I'll keep it simple: I resolve to help make the world a better place than it was last year.
That's my new years resolution.
( Dec 30 2004, 02:13:30 PM PST ) Permalink
Saturday December 25, 2004
Hasta La Vista, mod_perl - Hola mod_parrot! While I've become more fond of running my application outside of the webserver (i.e. using mod_jk2 to wire Tomcat to Apache is my preferred modus operandi these days), mod_perl will always have a place in my heart; I'm actually writing a mod_perl handler for a simple web application right now.
Well, I'm painfully aware of how mod_perl is getting long in the tooth. So I was pleased to read of mod_parrot. While it's probably going to be a while before I get a chance to mess with Perl 6 and Parrot (or even Python and Parrot), I'm hopeful that mod_parrot will provide high productivity with application with modernized programming facilities in the future.
| Oh, by the way, Happy Festivas! |
|
Friday December 24, 2004
Learning to say kaddish Recent reading: Living a Year of Kaddish
One of the things rattling around my mind these days is grief. I recently listened to my dad, aunts and uncles eulogize my recently departed grandfather at his burial service in New Jersey. It's given me plenty to think about as far as what I knew of him on both a first and second hand basis. Growing up on a coast opposite of his, my knowledge of him has been the product of the fleeting visits and the lore passed on by my parents. But I'll always be fond of the interest he took in my goings about, the twinkle in his eye that sparked when he engaged in conversation with me and some of his funny little habits like cutting an article out of the newspaper for some anticipated future reference that would never take place.
The traditional grieving process has a number of rituals and practices that are vaguely familiar but only by hearing or reading of them. I've not before been proximate to these traditions but my grandfather's passing has produced an interest in them. So I picked up Living a Year of Kaddish by Ari Goldman to learn a little more about it. The book consists of a succession of short thought recordings (even blog-like, as it doesn't read like a diary) of the year that followed the death of Goldman's father. The traditional purpose of kaddish, a daily prayer for the deceased (preferably three times a day), is to help the loved one get closer to and eventually arrive at gan eden (paradise). Saying kaddish for eleven months and then on the death anniversary (yahrtzeit) is an obligation of the children but is also a prayer for all who grieve. At least, that's my understanding of it and my knowledge is nominal with these things. But I have to say that Goldman's take on it, that the purpose of kaddish is more inward looking, resonates with me more.
Indeed, I've been thinking a lot about who my grandfather was, who his eldest son, my father is and who I am. And what will my children know of my father and myself in the years ahead. There is much to consider. I previously didn't know the kaddish prayer but I'm taking the time to learn it now. ( Dec 24 2004, 03:31:40 PM PST ) Permalink
To me, kaddish is more for the living than for the dead. I believe that in my daily recitation of the prayer, I was coming to terms with who my father was and who I am. If I missed a day of kaddish, I suffered, not my father.
When I die, I want my children to say kaddish for me, but for themselves, too.
Tuesday December 21, 2004
Rigorous Operations, Agile Development When it comes to software development, I generally eschew rigorous planning. I prefer to take a defined set of use cases, ascertain that they are the important ones and develop tests and code to fullfill them -- no design documents, no architecture documents and no UML diagrams unless they're helping me think through the data model and call stacks (i.e. sequence diagrams).
The recent colo move that I worked on all last weekend with my cohorts at Technorati was a good demonstration where rigor pays off: operations. Physically moving an entire network requires shared knowledge of complex network systems, detailed resource allocation and troubleshooting contingencies amidst a maze of dependencies requires rigorous documentation, planning and coordination. My hats off to Matt, David, Aaron, Bill and Adam for rising to the occasion and kicking butt. It's been an honor and a pleasure, gentlemen.
I'm in New Mexico for a spell, hoping to take a side trip up to Ski Santa Fe to get a lil bit o' frozen bliss.
( Dec 21 2004, 04:35:58 PM PST ) Permalink
Saturday December 18, 2004
Rollin' rollin' rollin', keep them servers rollin' Technorati's entire infrastructure was brought down this morning in order to move it.
Here's the flickr tag to follow it.
No ETA on service restoration but I'll post updates where possible.
( Dec 18 2004, 03:01:57 PM PST ) Permalink
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