All Posts

The complete list of posts, in reverse chronological order.

2021

March

  1. Kingswood 2461

    My Mom's childhood phone number.

2020

November

  1. Hades: There is No Escape

    After just over 80 hours, I've finally reached the epilogue in Hades.

  2. Vim Template Files and :keepalt

    Using :keepalt with Vim template files to preserve the alternate-file setting.

May

  1. ACNH: Starting my Garden

    First 5V on my new garden!

March

  1. PC Build March 2020 Edition

    Dipping my toes into Ryzen Gen 3.

February

  1. Recovery

    Marking the passage of time.

2019

September

  1. XOXO 2019

    Another XOXO has come and gone, with an emphasis on Community.

July

  1. Twitter vs. Mastodon: On Abandoning the Titanic

    I vent some frustrations about the 800 lbs blue bird.

April

  1. Including Remotes in Team Offsites

    This post was originally written in October 2014, but I lost it in my drafts. It's still relevant in 2019, so I'm sending it out into the world. I'm starting this blog post on a northbound train, fresh off my team's annual planning offsite. As a remote worker I'm fortunate …

January

  1. Tracking Cash with You Need a Budget

    You Need a Budget (YNAB) is a budgeting app for web and mobile that helps you track your spending and save for the future. Here's how I track cash spending in YNAB without wanting to tear my hair out.

2018

December

  1. 2018 Retrospective

    As is tradition, I find myself thinking about the past year and future plans over the December holiday.

October

  1. Ansible Playbook: Reboot Servers

    An Ansible playbook to reboot servers that require a reboot.

June

  1. Easier Drone Deploys with Docker Images

    Custom Docker images for Drone CI can reduce redundancy and simplify setup of new deployments. We'll look at incrementally building custom images for deploys, and how that affects our Drone configuration.

  2. TaskPaper 3: Child-aware Archiving

    Here's a TaskPaper "Archive" replacement that keeps child tasks with their parents.

March

  1. Ansible, Postfix, and Mailgun

    Here's a simple set of Ansible files that allow your hosts to send mail through Mailgun via Postfix.

  2. Termux for Android

    Wherein Termux for Android lets me build my website on my phone.

2017

September

  1. Miracle Cube Timer

    Here are a few ways I've used the dead-simple Miracle Cube Timer from Datexx.

  2. Goodbye, Burrito

    We say goodbye to a little friend.

April

  1. My Ansible Holy Grail: Bootstrapping a VPS

    Hey, my grail can be whatever I want it to be.

February

  1. PC Build (December 2016 Edition)

    Details on my Core i5 Z170 Radeon RX 480 build.

  2. Goats in the Machine

    I think my hardware is conspiring against me.

2016

November

  1. Open Letter to Maggie Hassan

    I'm writing in to voice my support for Senator-elect Hassan, and to express a desire for more frequent communications from her and her staff.

  2. Love Each Other

    We can disagree and still love each other, unless...

September

  1. How "Oldschool" Graphics Worked

    "The 8-Bit Guy" explains how color and graphics worked on old 8-bit systems like the NES and Apple II.

  2. OK Uber, that's not creepy or anything

    When targeting marketing gets personal.

June

  1. Bullshit

    Harry Frankfurt, "Bullshit!"

April

  1. Priorities

    The daily struggle

March

  1. Early Adoption

    Quick shout out to mth-ci-runner-1, which was GitLab CI runner #22.

February

  1. Feminist Frequency: Twitter, Conspiracies, and Information Cascades

    Anita's response to Twitter Trust & Safety Council conspiracy theories.

  2. Forest: Stay Focused, Be Present

    Forest for iOS. Stay focused, grow your forest.

  3. Showing Up

    On showing up to the table

January

  1. Ansible 2.0 Released

    Exciting news: Ansible 2.0 was released earlier this month!

  2. Debian Release Nicknames

    I just learned that every public Debian release, starting with Debian 1.1 Buzz in June 1996, has been named after characters from Toy Story.

  3. 2016

    This seems like a good time to follow up on my 2015 post.

  4. pigz: parallel gzip

    pigz for multi-core gzip

2015

November

  1. A Night In with Shia

    Finally got SLB up on the TV

  2. Morgamic: Reorgs: Choose Wisely

    Mike Morgan's thoughts on reorgs.

October

  1. FIDO U2F Security Key

    I recently heard about FIDO U2F through GitHub, and picked up a key on Amazon. Here's how it works with Dropbox and Google.

July

  1. IFTTT and Taskpaper TODO Workflow

    A writeup on my DO Note/Dropbox/Taskpaper workflow which allows "ubiquitous capture" on iOS devices.

May

  1. Freedom of Panorama

    Today I learned of Freedom of Panorama, a broad term for copyright law concerning works of art in public or private places.

February

  1. Upcoming: RFID on Raspberry Pi

    With a spare Raspberry Pi on hand, I can finally do a project I've had on ice for ages: an RFID-controlled, Pi-powered music player.

January

  1. Remote Control via BitTorrent Sync

    IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS for remotely initiating BitTorrent downloads using BitTorrent Sync.

2014

December

  1. 2015

    I'm not one for resolutions, but it's hard not to think about changes one could make in the new year.

October

  1. Fresh Starts

    For the first time in many years, I have a Windows PC.

  2. Simple Firefox Content Scripts

    This post includes notes from creating my first Firefox add-on, a simple plugin that modifies my Pinboard homepage.

  3. PC Build (Fall 2014 Edition)

    I'm building a new budget gaming PC with Marshall.

September

  1. Smells

    Apropos of nothing, a list of smells I enjoy.

  2. Monday Focus

    Less Twitter, more Pomodoro.

  3. When Consoles Die

    It didn't used to be this way.

August

  1. Family Restrooms

    The perils of needing to pee.

June

  1. How to Be a Girl by gendermom

    A mother and the daughter she didn't know she had.

  2. "Brothers" web series on Indiegogo

    BROTHERS follows the daily lives, the ups and down, ins and outs of what it means to live as a transgender individual in today’s urban society.

February

  1. Ice King's Search History

    From Reign of Gunters (Season 4, Episode 24)

2013

December

  1. Unproxy Gmail Images

    Use the hash, Luke.

November

  1. The Message is Clear

    “Boys are the norm, girls the variation.”

  2. Yeah, Thank You, Bye

    The machines are learning.

October

  1. Things I Will Miss About Brooklyn

    Let me count the ways.

September

  1. Cookie Clicker

    So many cookies.

  2. Streaming MP4 with Nginx

    For my later reference, here's a guide to preparing MPEG-4 video for web streaming.

August

  1. Computer Dark Ages

    Steve Jobs on IBM (1985)

  2. Biking in Brooklyn

    It took a year, but my bike finally followed me to Brooklyn.

July

  1. Google Reader Discontinued

    For posterity: the Google Reader site, post-sunset.

June

  1. I Know That Subway Stop!

    Watching Glengarry Glen Ross, I realized the subway stop was eerily familiar. On closer inspection, it's the local stop I take to work every day.

April

  1. Marked: Overriding Styles

    The GitHub style bundled with Marked is pretty good, but I prefer to substitute a couple fonts and remove the outer border. Here's how I modify the built-in stylesheet without duplicating the whole CSS file.

  2. Open Tech NYC 2013 Notes

    The inagural Open Tech NYC conference was held in Long Island City, Queens this past Saturday, March 30. My notes are rough and incomplete compared to the talks themselves, but here they are for posterity.

  3. Mean Beef Stroganist

    On Distilling a Woman's Accomplishments

March

  1. Adventures in Git: Deploy on Push

    For posterity, here's a small Git post-receive script to update a checkout when a bare repository receives a push.

  2. Google Reader Sunset

    Google today announced that Google Reader will be shut down on 1 July 2013.

  3. Moved to Pelican

    After lots of nitpicking and too many hours of fine-tuning by hand, I've finally migrated this site from self-hosted WordPress to Pelican.

2012

December

  1. Journal from the Terminal

    For years, I've employed a very simple log file to track upgrades and significant configuration changes to my server: one update per line, starting with the output from date(1).

  2. Trends in iOS Icon Design

    No comment, other than to remark at the visual similarity between the new Dropbox and Google+ iOS app icons.

  3. Dropbox for iOS: Version Conflict

    Which version do I want to keep? Where's the button for, "I have no goddamn idea?"

  4. Transit Markers in Apple Maps

    Least favorite feature about Apple Maps in iOS 6: the transit markers are next to useless.

  5. Adventures in Git: Move Commits from Master to New Branch

    The other night, I sat down with Git to solve what turned out to be a very simple problem: what if you've started making commits to your master branch, but want to move your work into a feature branch?

November

  1. Page Rank after SSL Migration

    I migrated my blog to SSL on Nov. 6, but setting a 301 redirect on the non-SSL version has dropped me down below Twitter, Google+, GitHub, Stack Overflow, and one or two others in Google. Geek frustration level rising.

  2. Two-factor SSH to Ubuntu 11.04 with Google Authenticator

    Read on for instructions setting up two-factor auth for SSH logins under Ubuntu. I used 11.04 Natty Narwhal; other releases may require small tweaks.

  3. Defining INI Entries for PHP Scripts

    Mostly useful to passing PHP INI settings to wrapper scripts like phpcs and phpunit.

  4. Level Up

    Archived here, for posterity: repeating the last command you typed into bash.

  5. Filesystem Events on Mac OS X

    inotifywait is a Linux thang, but if you need similar functionality on Mac OS X, check out wait_on. Available via homebrew.

  6. Vintage NYC

    Found in old Moulton family papers. Date and photographer unknown.

October

  1. Starstruck

    Had my first starstruck moment in Brooklyn, standing next to Maggie Gyllenhaal on the subway.

  2. Feedback Loop

    William Chan blogs, and Nginx is watching.

  3. Keeping Up

    When what you know is who you are.

September

  1. IRC Clients

    IRC is an important communication channel at my new job. After being a long-time irssi and Textual user, I gave Linkinus a spin before finally installing weechat. weechat looks to be the winner.

  2. Hearts, Park Slope

August

  1. New Page: Mac OS X Setup Guide

    I've created a new "Mac OS X Setup Guide" page to keep track of my preferred Mac OS X configuration.

  2. Impersonation by Gravatar

    There's a discussion going on at work regarding the potential for impersonation using Gravatar. There is some merit to this concern, though I consider it a little flimsy.

  3. Drawing ACS-mode boxes in the terminal with Ruby

    VT100 included an alternate character set (ACS) that enabled box drawing within the terminal. Here's a script from StackOverflow to test support for ACS.

May

  1. Rasmus on Interpolation vs. Concatenation

    Rasmus Lerdorf has been tweeting this morning about concatenation vs. interpolation in PHP. Micro-optimizations to be sure, but an interesting look under the hood.

  2. You Can Take It With You

    I look forward to the day when my various bits of gear learn to talk to each other.

April

  1. Trillium

  2. Spotted salamander

  3. Spring Toad

  4. Google on the iPhone

    In which I explore things which were taken for granted.

  5. Test Post

    Welcome, indeed.

  6. Experiment: Digital Permanence and Ownership

    When it comes to digital goods, I'm hesitant where I throw my money. Value is subjective and situational. I'm not a huge movie buff and I rarely rewatch, so \$8.99/monthly for Netflix isn't bad. On the other hand, I loathe the idea of subscription-based music: if I wanted …

March

  1. Amongst the Tall Trees

  2. I get to

    Thank you, Paul.

  3. Git Subtree Merges, Orphaned Branches, and GitHub

    Git supports a merge strategy called the subtree merge which brings a branch into a subdirectory of another branch. How are these created, what if the dependency isn't a Git project, and how does GitHub display unrelated branches?

February

  1. Transforming Business

    You can ride the wave, or watch it pass by. Just don't waste your time trying to stop it.

  2. State of PHP 2012

    Rasmus presented the State of PHP 2012 at Etsy. Here are some pretty raw notes, with approximate times.

January

  1. Being Nice

    For my own reference, on running processes nicely.

  2. On Internationalization

  3. Preware Ubuntu 11.04 Chroot Script

    I'll need this later. [code name="chroot-wrapper.sh"]

  4. SOPA Protests

    Archived for posterity.

  5. Conferencing in Boston

    I've been fortunate enough to attend three conferences through my employer: jQuery Conference (2010 and 2011), and WordCamp Boston (2011). I've regretted not blogging about these, so in lieu of a full recap, suffice it to say these were awesome, energizing events and I hope to keep participating in the …

  6. There's Always a New Tweet

    I don't spend much time tweaking my UI, but I do attempt to minimize distractions. New mail notifications, badges showing unread messages, growls of all shapes and sizes, all these have a very poor signal to noise ratio, and rarely do they impact my current priority.

2011

December

  1. iTerm 2 Skinny Fonts: Solution

    For reasons that were unknown to me, iTerm 2 would display a nice, thick font when the laptop was the primary screen, but a very thin font when the Acer was primary.

  2. Is the Earth Special?

    I loved this recent Slashdot post. It's full of interesting facts about our planet.

  3. Locked Files in Mac OS X

    You may observe files with the correct ownership (chown) and permissions (chmod u+rw) that are write-locked. In my experience, the files were editable with sudo, and modification via the Finder would prompt for an administrator password. In these situations, you may be dealing with additional file attributes.

  4. jsRender: Passing Variables to Nested Templates

    Is there a cleaner way than $view.parent.parent.data.key?

November

  1. UC Davis and the Pepper Spray Incident

    On November 18, 2011, seated members of a nonviolent protest on a University of California, Davis quad were pepper-sprayed at close range by Lt. John Pike.

  2. Webpages as Screen Savers in Mac OS X

    jQuery can power your screensaver. Your move.

  3. PHP 5.4 Changes

    From the PHP 5.4.0 RC1 "NEWS" file. Traits, array dereferencing, CLI built-in web server, and more.

  4. Where Are My Pills?

    Wherein the machinations of the health care industry adversely affect my ability to function.

  5. Nest Harvesting

    Bald-face hornet's nest, found off Buffalo Road in Rumney, NH.

  6. Updated: Amazon S3 for WordPress

    I've updated my "WordPress Media in Amazon S3" post with a diff of my Zend library modifications.

  7. Use openssl to Issue Raw HTTP Requests

    telnet is a handy tool for examining a raw HTTP connection, but it fails hard on HTTP over SSL. Turns out openssl can step in.

October

  1. Google+ for Google Apps

    It's finally here.

  2. WordPress Network Plugin Management

    I need to test all of these, at some point.

  3. mysqlhotcopy: error 24

    What does it look like when you try to mysqlhotcopy, but don't have a high enough open files ulimit?

  4. Installing CPAN Modules without Root

    Today I needed to run mysqlhotcopy, but it was failing "undefined symbol: mysql_init" in DBD::mysql. My Perl is rusty at best, and I finally resorted to reinstalling DBI and DBD::mysql using the local user.

  5. Better Local Dev Hostnames with Dnsmasq

    I use ghost to configure development environment hostnames for all my local test sites. I wondered if there wasn't a more robust solution that supported wildcards.

  6. Automatic Ellipsis with CSS

    How do I keep forgetting about text-overflow: ellipsis? Maybe a blog post will help cement it in my memory.

  7. Zoom.it API REST Considerations

    The Zoom.it API offers both RESTful and non-RESTful responses. The non-RESTful variant is suitable for clients that are limited in some way.

  8. REST APIs and Security in PHP

    When creating a REST endpoint, how do you protect your data from unauthorized access?

  9. Liquid Televison

    Apparently Liquid Television is now on the web. Time to re-watch The Maxx.

  10. Responsive Design Quick Tips

    "Responsive design quick tips," reblogged from Brad Frost on Google+.

  11. Demarked

    Mark Pilgrim seems to have removed himself from the Internet.

September

  1. WordPress MU Domain Mapping Patches

    Get domain mapped URLs for any blog, and fix paths to the MUPLUGINDIR.

  2. Filesystem Caching without Cruft in PHP

    Cleanup your file caches while you're still using them.

  3. Saving WordPress Media to Amazon S3 (Teaser)

    On saving media directly to Amazon S3.

August

  1. Welcoming Harper Hawke

    Harper Hawke Backstrom came into this world Wednesday, August 10, 2011, at 21:24. We are happy to announce that he is healthy, handsome, and nursing well.

  2. Google Chrome 13 "Pretty Print" Scripts

    Screenshots of Google Chrome 13's "pretty print" feature for scripts.

  3. webOS 3.0.2 Changes

    Observed changes from the webOS 3.0.2 update.

July

  1. Merlin Mann on Marketplace of Ideas

    Words on caring.

June

  1. Python and PHP: Giving a Rat's Ass

    Should you give a rat's ass about being competitive with PHP?

May

  1. PHP, symlinks, and the realpath cache

    I've had issues in the past where symlinked web directories don't point to the correct file after the symlink target is changed.

April

  1. World of Warcraft: TCG Card Numbering

    The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game seems to have a very specific ordering of cards, which I'm attempting to accurately interpret.

  2. Portal 2: Now with More Portals

    When I think about the original Portal, I think of increasingly challenging puzzles, easter eggs, and the sarcasm and insults of a cruel AI. Portal 2 continues this tradition in a very satisfying way.

  3. Subversion and "Skipped '.'"

    Skipped '.' seems to be Subversion's way of saying, "svn up hit an external that isn't a working copy."

March

  1. Google Apps Transition

    I've started transitioning my Google app settings over to my newly-transitioned Google Apps account. Google Reader is now done, except for all my starred posts.

  2. Sprint AIRAVE installed

    Took longer than expected due to a DOA unit, but the AIRAVE is installed! Nice to have five bars of service in my house.

  3. Migrating to PHP 5.3: call_user_func_array()

    I've been updating various old pieces of code after our PHP 5.3 upgrade yesterday afternoon. Today, call_user_func_array() has been a recurring theme.

  4. Private Information

    Somehow, I feel like the NH Electric Co-op values their own privacy far more than they value mine.

  5. On Frameworks

    Everyone wants what they don't have.

February

  1. Sprint AIRAVE

    I should get a Sprint AIRAVE in the mail this week. Cell service at home is about to improve dramatically.

January

  1. New Hampshire HB240: Approval Voting

    Wow\: "Will NH adopt approval voting?"

  2. sf.net Passwords Reset

    SourceForge had a compromised password scare, so I take some comfort in having a random password generated by pwsafe.

  3. Locking Down rsync Over SSH

    For my most recent backup scheme, I needed to lock down rsync over OpenSSH while allowing scheduled syncing. I did it using the authorized_keys command="command" option to restrict access for a specific private key.

  4. Light Reading

    Picked up Clean Code and Design Patterns based on some programmers.se recommendations. Hopefully I'll be able to apply the concepts to PHP.

  5. prettyPrint for JavaScript

    I'm not a ColdFusion programmer, but I am a long-time fan of dBug for PHP. I just stumbled across James Padolsey's prettyPrint, which adds the same debugging feature to JavaScript.

  6. How Not to Serve Ads

    I don't have Flash installed in my primary web browser. Google Chrome tries to download ads served by npr.org. Sometimes this causes tabs to close.

  7. Testable Factories

    So I wrote a post about testable classes in PHP, and before I even hit "Publish" I read something on StackOverflow that challenged some of my opinions. I wrote that I didn't need testable factories, but what if I did?

  8. Thinking About Testability

    I've been thinking a lot about unit tests, lately. In the Bad Old Days I could var_dump() my way through a problem and deal with the consequences, but that isn't good enough any more. Today, I want my tests to run themselves, and that's forcing me change the way I structure my code.

2010

December

  1. Running gitweb in FastCGI Mode

    Maybe my Google-fu is just failing me on this one, but I had a hell of a time getting gitweb to run in FastCGI mode.

November

  1. Makefile for CSS and JS Minify/Compress

    I've had an ever-growing need to automate the minification and compression of CSS and JavaScript files on my web server, and while I'd written some rudimentary Makefiles in the past, I finally found time to write a kick-ass general purpose Makefile that can be applied to any project with very little modification.

  2. Ubuntu 8.04 on Linode: Cloning and Upgrading to 10.04

    Here are some jumbled notes from my Linode VPS's upgrade from Ubuntu "Hardy Heron" 8.04 to "Lucid Lynx" 10.04. I wanted to do a test run before such a huge upgrade, and I did so by cloning my VPS to a VMware Fusion virtual machine. Note that I …

September

  1. Cron Output in Google Reader

    I've created a Django app to log cron output, simultaneously reducing the amount of email I get and enabling me to make cron output more verbose.

  2. Appify: Wrapping Shell Scripts as Applications in Mac OS X 10.6

    Today I'm publishing appify, a shell script that turns any other non-interactive shell script into a double-clickable Mac OS X application bundle.

August

  1. WordPress Stack Exchange Goes Live

    WordPress Answers is in public beta. Get in.

  2. WordPress StackExchange

    "WordPress Answers," the StackExchange-powered question and answer site for WordPress, has made it out of Area 51 and into a week-long private beta.

July

  1. Cataclysm Beta

  2. WordPress Themes and the GPL

    There's some debate over whether WordPress themes are automatically GPL because of the way they are loaded by, integrate with, and depend on WordPress, which is GPL.

  3. Blizzard To Post Real Names on Forums

    [{@align=right}][img-big] Blizzard today announced an upcoming change to the way users are represented on the official forums: included with each post will be the user's real name. Obviously, the shitstorm was immediate and intense. (Over 5,000 posts in the four hours 12,600 posts in the 7 …

June

  1. WordPress 3.0 Released

    At long last, WordPress 3.0 is here. Thanks to Pete Mall for his post on upgrading WordPress MU to WordPress 3, and for [@andrea_r][]for bringing it to my attention. Total upgrade time: \~5 minutes on Subversion checkout with no mods. Can't wait to use the custom post types …

  2. Google Background Images

    Google tests background images.

May

  1. Growing Up

    How can growing up feel so slow, but so fast, at the same time?

  2. Ads vs. Content

    Red highlights added by me. I wonder if Google has policies regarding this type of ad layout. I think having this poor a ratio of content to ads dilutes all the advertising. Whatever the case, I hate wading through this many ads in search of the article.

April

  1. The Killer Technology

    This is a rant against saying some device/software/platform will "kill" another.

  2. Cool Dude in Shades

    He's good at putting them on, now, and he likes to push them up on his head and tell us "hat" very matter-of-factly. (Actually, he says most things matter-of-factly.)

  3. Raised Garden Bed

    Weekend project.

  4. Upgrading to Snow Leopard

    I've just upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard," and had one problem along the way.

  5. The iPad is OK… Sometimes

    The impending release of the Apple iPad has increased the chatter on my Twitter and Google Reader feeds, with some commentary pro-iPad, some con-, and some mocking the rest. It's also subject of a lot of discussion here in the office, usually in terms of which model we would like …

January

  1. Subversion: Missing Features

    I love many things about git, but I use Subversion at my day job. Two git features please me enough that I took the time to build them into my svn workflow: paged diffs and "commit -v." As of 15 September 2011, this script will also diff properties using the …

  2. My Browser is Sentient

    Noticed some weird traffic coming into my router this morning.

2009

October

  1. Ding III

    Third time's a charm.

September

  1. Tunneling Everything through SOCKS5

    Kicking that VPN habit.

  2. Removing All Partitions in Mac OS X

    Here's now to "remove" all partitions on a disk under Mac OS X by clobbering the partition map.

August

  1. Information Gathering

    The lure of data is still strong, but how do you organize it all?

June

  1. Video in the Browser

    Ogg Vorbis video, in the browser, no plugins required.

  2. Bash Completion

    It would be difficult to not like bash's programmable completion. It's too bad I've had such a hard time wrapping my head around the programmable completion toolkit.

May

  1. Firefox Personas

    Easy theming for Mozilla Firefox.

  2. On Entropy

    Hulu's desktop application has been released.

  3. Palm Pre Countdown in your Mac OS X Dashboard

    Hurry up and wait.

  4. Live in the Past

    Just caught this advert on an Engadget article.

  5. Waiting for the Palm Pre

    Pre-release Pre thoughts, and some words on competition in the smartphone space.

  6. Google Search Options

    Google has added some search options to pages, including date-based searches, a variety of ways to find related information, and more options for displaying images with your results. Good stuff.

  7. The Incredible Shrinking RAM

    Looks like RAM is getting smaller.

  8. Managing Money with Buxfer

    I think this is the app I've been waiting for.

April

  1. Please Insert Quarter

    I'm now the proud owner of a Midway Galaga cocktail table. Current TODO: Research hardware (joysticks, replacement grills) Mount LCD and Dell SX270 inside cabinet Get a bump key so I can open the damn door [][][][] []: /media/2009/04/front1.jpg []: /media/2009/04/plaque.jpg

March

  1. A Vim of a Different Color

    After one too many compilation errors due to a missing quote/brace/bracket/etc., I finally enabled Vim syntax highlighting. The rabbit hole: :syn on. These colors suck. Look for themes. 4 bit themes suck. Let's set up an 8 bit color terminal. Leopard's Terminal.app fails, install iTerm 0 …

  2. Google Documents and Google Apps

    I've been loving Google Apps lately, but there have been some headaches as I reconcile my old Google account with the new Google Apps account.

  3. PHP 5.3.0 Changes

    PHP 5.3.0 looks promising.

  4. XKCD: Students

    xkcd, comics, school

February

  1. Local Documentation: PHP, Django, jQuery

    Here's how I created local mirrors of the online documentation for several projects under Mac OS X 10.5.6.

January

  1. 16.7 Exabytes

    I'm a big deal.

  2. Open Letter to Don McIver

    Wherein I call a spade a spade.

  3. World of Warcraft Tooltips Redux: phpBB 2 and Wowhead

    Easy Wowhead tooltips in phpBB, with caching for quick link coloring.

2008

December

  1. Variable Variables and Arrays

    Memorize the order of operations, I guess.

November

  1. Baby Food

    Just eat it.

  2. Death Knight Primer

    Quick tips for the newbies.

  3. Mug Shot

    I got mugged.

October

  1. A Cunning Disguise

    With a wick-wack bitter lack of youthfulness & charm, this old man kept rhyming on.

  2. Space

    Freedom is never having to worry about disk space.

  3. JavaScript Bookmarklets

    Automation is good.

September

  1. Ani DiFranco - Red Letter Year

  2. VMware Fusion 2

    Digest version: it's sweet.

August

  1. Smarter Parsing with Smarty

    Don't gobble my markup.

July

  1. Stupid VMware Tricks

  2. ADOdb, MySQL, and Transactions

    Transactions should be supported by everything.

  3. Google: Search Result Editing

    Great googly moogly.

  4. Vim, Terminal.app, and the Delete key

    Vim rulse^H^Hes.

  5. IE "Operation Aborted" and jQuery

    I should know better.

  6. Google Doctype: Firefox Quick Searches

    Easy is good.

  7. Guitar Zero

    I'm a fanboy, so what?

June

  1. Thunderbird and Vim

    Why don't I use mutt, again?

May

  1. Announcing Marshall Leif

    Welcome to the world.

April

  1. Abusing screen(1)'s Default Shell

    Three other people will find this useful.

  2. Moving On

    A change of scenery.

March

  1. Python Indentation and Vim

    Holy wars, to some.

  2. Expiring Trees in Dirvish

    Perl isn't fun to read.

  3. SXSW Six-word Reviews: Textutils Edition

    Some nuggets, some turds.

  4. The Business of Being Born

    "Business" being the operative word.

February

  1. Ani in Concord 2/28/2008

    Always a joy.

  2. ASCII Art Spam

    Extra points for creativity.

  3. test.txt: PHP Exploit in Server Logs

    These have always interested me, for some reason.

January

  1. Apropos

    Wise words.

2007

December

  1. SVN Repository Explodes, No Serious Injuries

    Close call.

  2. Linking to E-mail Messages

    But not in Thunderbird.

  3. Psychedelic TV, Courtesy of Netflix

    Broken things ahead.

November

  1. Changes

    For the better.

  2. Leopard: SMB Easter Egg

    Bwahahaha.

  3. World Usability Day New England 2007

    A too-short conference on universal usability.

October

  1. The Blow in Boston

    The Blow doesn't blow.

September

  1. Flickr Updates (23 September 2007)

    109 new photos.

  2. Custom Template Blocks in Django

    Recycle some code.

  3. The Twig is now Closed

    Nice to know you.

August

  1. Alpha Five Updates: Syndicated Feed

    Syndicate your updates.

  2. On Burning Men

    Burn, baby.

  3. Moving from Qmail to Postfix

    A day of changes.

  4. Vacation, Interrupted

    I hate airlines.

  5. Logitech V270 Bluetooth Mouse

    I work at a computer cable company and use a wireless mouse.

June

  1. Make Up Your Mind

    ![][]

  2. Jumping Ship

    Man the lifeboats.

  3. Flickr Updates (17 June 2007)

    14 new photos.

  4. Improving Network Performance on Mac OS X

    The default Mac OS X 10.4 has a default configuration for delayed ACK that made some of my network operations unbearably slow, most notably Samba. This note on Mac OS X Hints fixed things for me, improving transfer speeds noticeably. The short version: add net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0 …

  5. Siege

    Make it stop.

  6. User-Agent?

    Didn't expect that.

  7. Statistics

    Some figures.

May

  1. Flickr Updates (28 May 2007)

    6 new photos. (3 Friends & Family)

  2. Adobe "Customer Service"

    Customer disservice.

  3. Me vs. Puzzle Quest

    Gah.

  4. New color scheme?

    Something like that.

  5. Giving Feedback

    Don't tell me what I can now do.

  6. War on Tourists

    Via Boing Boing: America's war on tourists. Honestly, this country is ridiculous in so many ways.

April

  1. OO.o Calc: Skipping Days

    Spreadsheet geekery.

  2. Power's Out

    Updates from the front line.

  3. UDP DoS?

    Traffic problem.

  4. Sixohthree.com qmail fixed

    Running a mail server is almost worth all the trouble.

  5. SlackBuilds.org: Community Package Scripts

    All the fun without all the work.

  6. Merging PDFs in Linux

    And it all comes together.

  7. Number 8!

    Call the cheerleading squad.

March

  1. Downtime

    Eight months.

  2. Slackware: Daylight Saving Update

    Time to upgradepkg.

February

  1. RIT Falling Behind

    Flex those pipes.

  2. World of Warcraft: New Models on the Horizon?

    Unfamiliar faces.

January

  1. You Are Not Prepared

    Seriously.

  2. Friday Randomness

    iPhone, ftrain, Warcraft.

  3. I've never wanted a mobile phone

    Shiny.

  4. Server Move

    For real this time.

2006

December

  1. Handling Spam II: Follow-up

    Everything keeps breaking.

  2. My Country

    'Tis of thee.

  3. Burning Crusade Cinematic Intro

    Oh, how it burns.

  4. Handling Spam II: Revenge of the Spam

    It never stops.

November

  1. Ani DiFranco in Concord

    And many more.

  2. Public Service Announcement

    Four new e-mails in my box today, all saying the same thing: vote. New Hampshire has on-site registration at the polls, you granite staters have no excuse.

October

  1. Rest in Peace

    Bootsie, family pet of 20 years, sworn enemy of canines, and friend of everyone else, has passed away. Thank you for the companionship.

  2. [Ding]x2

    Second sixty.

September

  1. Web Icons: "Silk"

    Lickable.

August

  1. View from the Top

    I can't see my house from here.

  2. Sunset

    A thing to be enjoyed.

  3. Creating eReader Books

    Reading on the cheap.

July

  1. Upcoming: Portal

    Check it out.

  2. Websites that Changed My Life

    One woman's quest to conquer the web.

  3. Company are Doing Stuff

    I are smart.

June

  1. Penny-Arcade Redesign

    -1 for implementation.

May

  1. Public Service Announcement

    Important announcement.

  2. Broadening Horizons: RF Online

    I picked up RF Online over the weekend.

  3. Greasemonkey & Opera

    It's not just for Firefox anymore.

  4. E3 2006

    Links from the 2006 Electronics Entertainment Expo.

April

  1. Secret Language

    Spoiler\: I'm an Excalibur.

March

  1. Google Sitemaps and WordPress 2.0

    Quick and dirty.

  2. World of Warcraft: Ajax item tooltips

    Geeky navel gazing ahead.

  3. Cross-post: Warcraft item links in macros

    Fun and time-saving.

  4. Monkey See

    Or maybe, great minds think alike?

February

  1. Background Noise

    Green is good.

  2. Hey look, it's winter

    Where'd that stuff come from?

  3. Opera for Nintendo DS, & Misc.

    Via Planet GameCube: Opera Software today announced that it will deliver the World Wide Web to Nintendo DS users in Japan. In Opera's agreement with Nintendo, Nintendo DS users will now be able to surf the full Internet from their systems using the Opera browser. The Opera browser for Nintendo …

January

  1. 4096 Color Wheel

    Pretty colors.

  2. Ding!

    Took me long enough.

2005

December

  1. Anyone for static Warcraft?

    Hooray for hard-to-organize things.

  2. WoW: Stargate SG-1 Tribute

    Easter eggs a-plenty.

November

  1. Blog? What's that?

    I know, I know, it's been a while. There will be no apologies or excuses!

October

  1. Fall Updates, 2005 Edition

    Not much going on, really.

  2. Banshee

    It plays music, it doesn't just scream wildly.

  3. MediaWiki Calendar Template

    I heart wikis.

September

  1. WordPress via Subversion

    More progress.

  2. Zip Technology

    I can see the train of thought now.

  3. JavaScript Anagram Helper

    I'm tired.

  4. Better to Just Get High

    This is Freudian, somehow.

  5. Penny-Arcade @ MIT

    Damn.

  6. The More Things Change...

    The more they stay exactly the same.

  7. Moving Out

    It's time.

  8. Quote Test

    Testing, one, two.

  9. Saving Music Videos in iTunes 5.0 for Windows

    No, I haven't done it yet.

  10. WordPress Upgrade

    Progress, they call it.

  11. In the Trenches

    So much for civilization.

  12. Flickr Calendar View

    My life, compressed.

  13. Controlling Spam

    Stripped of all power.

August

  1. Twist that Knife

    Ouch.

  2. Taming Google

    Down, boy.

  3. Pat Robertson & Amtrak?

    Guh?

  4. In Debt, and Indebted

    A quick "Thank you".

  5. Lunch Money

    It's never been just video games.

  6. Custom Plates

    I want them.

July

  1. Exploring Flickr

    Where do I sign?

  2. Brought to you by the number 1™

    This is profound.

  3. It's the Thought That Counts

    Wait, I thought sharing was bad?

  4. Handling Spam

    Roll your own, that's why we have open source.

  5. Man Convicted for... Something?

    On drawing the wrong conclusions.

June

  1. Travelog: To Jen and Back

    Early this AM I drove back into Wentworth, fresh off the train from North Carolina after visiting with Jen all weekend. Nice place, it was. I saw a bit of art, ate some good food, and generally just hung out for a few days. Also on the docket was a …

  2. Font Resource

    Over at FileFormat.info there is a pretty cool resource for finding Unicode characters. For example: the inverted Ohm sign. They've got character codes, a Java reference, raster and vector files of the character, and more. That's a lot of data for just one character.

  3. Aggressive Advertising

    A few days ago I clicked a link to an Ars Technica article and was greeted by a full-screen advertisement for Vonage. This was not much of a surprise, these commercial breaks are standard fare on many websites today. What did surprise me was the page that followed: [][] Maybe Vonage …

  4. Microsoft Intelligence

    I cannot fathom the chain of events that led to this limitation of Microsoft Excel 97:

  5. Thunderbird Display Errors

    I never liked those buttons, anyway.

May

  1. That Crushing Feeling, and Tangled Webs

    Unweaving the web.

  2. Sunday Miscellaneous: eBay Detective and Others

    Sunday grab bag.

  3. Must Read

    Do it.

  4. Politics-by-Numbers

    So apparently, in July, 2002, Bush and Blair met to discuss possible justifications for the war on Iraq. Timelines were considered, as well.

  5. Python as Calculator

    Quite handy, I say.

  6. Massive Experiences

    Geeky post, beware.

April

  1. Loading title, please wait...

    Not that kind of tape. Well, actually, it is that kind of tape...

  2. Linguistic Profile

    I am teh quizmaster.

  3. Ergodex DX1

    Customize your input.

  4. Audio Excellence

    Ear candy.

March

  1. Leakage

    How did the web seep so far into e-mail?

  2. Phisher Fishing

    One down, several thousand to go.

  3. Accidental Absence

    Sorry I've been away. I took a trip to the beach.

  4. Firefox Packages on Slackware

    A time saver, for sure.

February

  1. Post-Boskone Post

    It was cool, yeah yeah.

  2. News to Me

    Lies within lies.

  3. Memorex Black CD-R Changes

    Bad idea.

January

  1. New CD II

    Never stop never stop.

  2. Related Feeds (Supposedly)

    And you were there, and you, and even you.

  3. Thoughts on rel="nofollow"

    Follow me follow me follow me down, down down down.

  4. Targeted Ads in RSS

    Bigger boobs now, via Ars.

  5. HTML Labels & Netscape 7.0

    News flash, three years late.

  6. Backup Musings

    I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine.

  7. Useless Spam?

    Whyfor?

  8. If This Pad Could Talk...

    It would get pretty boring after a while.

  9. Modern-Day Propaganda

    Scary.

2004

December

  1. Internet Alphabet

    A-Z, but !V and !Y.

  2. Saving iTunes Music Store Videos in Windows

    Be the archive you want to see in the world.

  3. Prior Art

    Which came first?

  4. Bash Tips: Set Remote Variables

    Seldom necessary, always difficult.

  5. Dockadd, Revealed

    Hey, there it is.

  6. Free Fone, Friend

    VoIP me.

  7. Six Degrees

    Everyone is connected somehow, right?

  8. Life's Little Pleasures

    Violent videogames are not for kids.

  9. Well, that was fast

    In record time.

  10. HTML Under the Microscope

    Yeah, I know you don't care.

  11. Hello Blog

    Haven't been updating lately.

November

  1. On Playing Half-Life 2

    Or lack thereof.

  2. What's that I smell?

    Faster than a speeding shutter.

  3. Tweakin' the Feeds

    Whoops.

  4. Firefox 1.0 Released

    Spread the word.

  5. Is a Recount in Order?

    Maybe we didn't lose after all.

  6. Ani Fall Tour '04

    I've got my tickets. Do you have yours?

  7. Just a Reminder

    Who's '1337?

  8. Snowflakes

    Ice crystals in November.

  9. To Have, or Have Not

    But still, my gut tells me that it is wrong.

  10. POV-Ray Fumblings

    A cat, right? It's a cat, isn't it?

  11. CS:S Physics Fun

    Lookit them cabinets fly!

  12. A Source of Entertainment

    Counter-Strike\: Source has been released.

  13. Comment Spam Update

    A short update on comment spam.

October

  1. Total Lunar Eclipse, Right Now

    If you're reading this, you've already missed it.

  2. Help from Unlikely Places

    For the less stylish among us.

  3. Working Stiff

    I have a job.

  4. Couldn't Resist

    Which file extension are you?

  5. Subversion Wiki Updates

    I've updated the Subversion page on my wiki with instructions for ViewCVS.

  6. Unlocking iTMS Tracks

    Much as I love their products, Apple has still failed me in one important regard: they have not released iTunes for Linux.

  7. CompactFlash Price Drops

    When did CompactFlash cards get so cheap?

  8. May I Have Another?

    Going broke has never been easier.

September

  1. Web Dynamics

    I am officially sock-less.

  2. Thursday Miscellaneous

    Been blogging only lightly these past few days.

  3. The Downside of AdSense

    That's the news. Now here's Al, with hot gay men.

  4. Righteous Babeage

    Buy tickets or perish.

  5. Being Ultra Semantic

    HTML can be beautiful, if you let it.

  6. Comment Spam

    The floodgates are open.

  7. Dynamic Pages with JavaScript and the DOM

    Potentially confusing and/or helpful.

  8. MySQL Backups with Subversion

    Server administration while you sleep.

August

  1. Random though

    Buenos dias, gringo.

  2. Speaking of Coding...

    I speak in tags.

  3. Escaping JavaScript for PHP

    We call this "overkill."

  4. More Subversion Reading

    You know you love it.

  5. Moving On

    The end of an era.

  6. Dust Settling

    I hate doing the Right Thing.

  7. Free Words

    The blog is dead, long live the blog.

  8. Under Control

    I think this the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  9. Alternate Dimensions

    Just don't turn it 90 degrees around the Y-axis.

July

  1. July Updates

    I have much to be thankful for.

  2. Gere on AIDS

    How would you spend $300 billion?

  3. On HTML Butchering

    Microsoft Word hates you.

  4. Ani DiFranco, Live in Buffalo

    I am the rain king.

  5. Happy Birthday to You

    May you live long, and prosper.

June

  1. Misguided Hierarchies

    I am sorry for what I have done.

  2. Ani DiFranco: Official Bootleg Series

    I love New Ani Album Day.

  3. Bash Tips: Giving Feedback

    Be nice to your users.

  4. Ximian Connector: First Thoughts

    Short version: even Evolution can't make Exchage not suck.

  5. Fahrenheit 9/11 in Theatres Friday

    Be there or be Republican.

  6. Cory Doctorow DRM talk

    DRM only exists to hurt consumers.

  7. Food Costs

    I am excessively anal-retentive.

  8. State Speed Limit

    Somebody explain this to me.

  9. One Week Later

    At least it's over.

  10. Surgery Tomorrow

    Scary knives to come.

May

  1. May Update

    It hurts.

  2. Darkpole

    A rare opportunity.

  3. Kaboom

    Zap.

  4. Bash Tips: SCP Compatibility

    Where am I? Where are you?

  5. Sunday Miscellaneous

    Miscellaneous stuff on a gray Sunday.

  6. The Stylus is So Yesterday

    New stuff. Palm Wireless Keyboard.

  7. Spring Update

    Puzzle in a paragraph.

April

  1. Too Good to Pass Up

    Hot dang that there's a smart pooch.

  2. Variable Web Content

    This is what I call "fun!"

  3. Offline IMAP in Entourage

    Hint, it's supported.

  4. Snowy Sunday

    It's April and it's showing. April showers... April snow showers?

  5. Hacker Culture

    Hack, don't crack.

March

  1. Musical paranoia

    Spin it again.

  2. Virii Lie

    I don't remember sending this.

  3. Bash Tips: Wildcards

    Use them constantly.

  4. Thinking of the Big Picture

    We are dust.

  5. With a "D"

    Observations of Deaf culture.

February

  1. Wiki way

    Interesting things happen on the web.

  2. Linux Trucking

    Open-source benefits all.

  3. Stylin'

    Pretty colors.

  4. Align Along a Line

    They're trying, I know they are.

  5. A Faker in our Midst

    Comment spam, fake blogs, and pills, oh my.

January

  1. School Days

    Not many left.

  2. New CD

    I got teh shinny.

  3. You Should Read This

    There are things people do, good things.

2003

December

  1. ISO, and You?

    I am learning.

  2. Painting With Light

    Experiments with aperture, shutter speed, a bright blue LED in an otherwise dark room. My kingdom for a tripod.

  3. New Haircut

    Snazzy, no?

  4. Unemployment Starts at Home

    I've just read yet another article on US outsourcing to Asia for more and more IT jobs. Specifically, Corporate America's Silent Partner: India, via Slashdot. From the article: True, corporations likely won't feel comfortable about openly talking about their offshore activities until job growth returns to the U.S. Job …

  5. I should blog...

    Because it's not like Karl is going to. Haven't had much to blog about lately. I've been reasonably busy with classes and work, as well as side projects. Most of the computer related things I do end up in my wiki, which is turning out to be invaluable. (And I …

November

  1. Of Scripts and Such

    Where to start? "Scripted Administration." That's been the phrase of the past three months of my life. Mac OS X Scripted Administration, to be more precise. Why? Who? Where? I'll get to it.

  2. Winding Down

    Winter quarter is drawing to a close. It's already ancient history for most of the students here...

  3. More Spam, Please

    "Like any person who portrays an image of power, this power is only derived from those willing to support them."

  4. ACGT, If You Please

    I have this problem speaking my mind. I clam up, don't say anything that might be remotely confrontational. Even sometimes, when I think it's important, I still say nothing. Don't ruffle the feathers, don't stir up those waters. I wonder where it comes from. I think, My dad seems like …

  5. New Toy

    New toy: Zaurus SL-5500. 1, 2, 3. Yeah, I did it again...

October

  1. Blast From the Past

    Ah, memories.

  2. In Other News

    Abby wins!

September

  1. More Information in my Pocket

    What about...

  2. Miscellaneous Hackery

    Mostly UML.

  3. Fall Updates

    Cheese sandwiches, co-ops, website updates, and thin clients, oh my.

  4. Ninja Power vgextend!

    Logical volume management is changing the way I think about storage. (Warning: it only gets geekier from here.)

August

  1. Still Playing Roles

    Lately, there has been much discussion regarding the complex dynamic between professors and students. Many people have already weighed with their thoughts on context, roles, hierarchy, respect and boundaries. Should professors befriend their students? Would friendship diminish their authority and level of respect in the classroom? There's a lot to …

  2. Metadata Rhymes with Metadata

    Metadata! What is it? It's data, but it's more than that: it's data about data. "So," you're asking, "why should I care?" Well, I'm glad you asked! Sit a spell, won't you?

  3. Pocket-sized Internet

    As I mentioned, I'm the proud owner of an 802.11b wireless networking adapter for my Palm m500. I promised I'd post about it, and who am I to disappoint?

  4. I Think I'm Alone Now

    No roommates; Xircom Wireless LAN.

  5. Bash Tips: Testing Arguments

    Ever want to test command line arguments in bash, mixing arguments and execution options? I have. Here's one way to do it.

  6. The Word is "Excess"

    We have a new resident in the University Commons parking lot.

July

  1. Only in New Hampshire

    Welcome to the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles. If you would like more information, you should probably go somewhere else.

  2. Getting There From Here

    I've logged sixty-four hours of long drives since the beginning of June. That's a lot.

  3. What'd I miss?

    Smile, you're still alive.

  4. On Bragging

    I twitch.

  5. The Lure of Data

    Slashdot linked to an article at the New York Times entitled The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive? The basic gist is this: some people become addicted to information, getting a rush from multitasking and being connected. In other words: it's me, and it's why I feel compelled to catch …

  6. Summer of Three Day Vacations

    Tomorrow, I leave work early to drive to New Hampshire. Friday, I will leave New Hampshire for Massachusetts. Saturday, I will leave Massachusetts for New Hampshire. Sunday, I will leave New Hampshire for Rochester. Estimated driving time: 22 hours. Have a good weekend. Enjoy the holiday.

June

  1. A Lone Echo Post

    There has been quite a bit of talk lately regarding Echo, which aims to replace RSS as the syndication de facto standard. This drive for a replacement is due in no small part to the politics around RSS, and what seems to be a general distaste for Dave Winer, father …

  2. Dock Annoyances

    "An application should always present a window when its Dock icon is clicked." Does anyone else find this feature slightly annoying?

  3. Bash Tips: Automatically Go Root

    I did some scripting for work yesterday, and came up with this little snippet to ensure important scripts will run as root.

  4. Lock Your Doors

    "It appears that CONNECT is used for tunneling proxy servers. Apparently, these proxies can be used for spam."

  5. Internet Explorer fumbles.. he's down!

    There goes the neighborhood.

  6. Chevron Seven Locked

    Friday. 8:00. SCI FI. Stargate SG-1. Don't miss it. I know where I'll be. The three-hour block will start off with Stargate: The Lowdown, followed by the two-hour season premiere. I've been big into SG1 lately. Used to watch it back on HBO. How long ago was that? So …

  7. No News is Good News?

    Not much to report. I am settled back into the apartment here at RIT, enjoying the peace and quiet, but missing friends of various size and stature.

May

  1. Those "Game" Things

    After reminiscing about old SNES RPGs in my last post, I sort of went insane for a couple hours. I would like to collect Game Boys. There, I said it.

  2. TODO

    Things I will do when school ends (in no particular order): Move useful content over to the main Bwerp server. Find a better way to manage online content. (Not talking blogs here.) Stabilize my thin client setup. Play old SNES RPGs, like: Link to the Past Earthbound Secret of Mana …

  3. Movie Night: Matrix Reloaded

    Excellent flick, I recommend you go see it.

  4. Summer Plans

    I'm staying at RIT for the summer. Will update soon. Transmission en--

  5. Blogs and Spam: The Next Revolution

    The first of many.

  6. "Goodbye, Boss"

    Everywhere you go in New Hampshire, you see the Old Man of the Mountain. A natural formation of rocks, formed thousands of years ago, his profile has watched over the White Mountains and been our state symbol for generations. Last Thursday, New Hampshire lost not only a monument, but a …

  7. DBMS Updates

    Today's gonna be a good day. I've already ranted on the physical pain I experience working with Visual Basic.NET/Access. Today, my prayers are being answered. PHP and Apache are swooping down like a sort of heavenly convoy, my shining light in the darkness that is Client/Server Database …

April

  1. Will Intern for Food

    Disillusionment is rearing its ugly head.

  2. FlexibleType

    Generate .htaccess rules with MovableType templates.

  3. Tracking Comments

    I don't comment on other blogs very often, but when I do I tend to have trouble keeping track of the conversations. MovableType's threadless comments are hard enough to read as it is without completely forgetting which blogs I've visited. Here's what I propose: since I'm already giving out my …

  4. Thin Client Update

    After an excruciating ten day long wait, I finally received all the parts for my new computer. After wrestling with a handicapped onboard bootrom, a harddrive that doesn't seem to be bootable, and some assorted NFS problems, everything seems to be in order. (Tip: make sure rpc.statd is running …

  5. SpamAssassin, Procmail, and Fetchmail, Oh My

    I followed Mark Pilgrim's lead and set up SpamAssassin tonight, with some help. I've actually been pretty lucky in the spam department, with one spam every couple days. Having a dummy account with aliases helps, plus I get to see exactly where people are getting my address from. Here's the …

  6. I Like 'em Thin

    Just placed the orders for my new thin client setup.

  7. Static Blogrolling

    Caching your blogroll.

March

  1. This is My Life

    I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this.

  2. Microsoft is Pain

    So I'm taking a client/server database course this quarter. Now, I'm no stranger to working with databases. I've done a few projects of varying size in MySQL and PHP, most of which I enjoyed thoroughly. (Yes, I'm a database weirdo. Sue me.) PHP's database access is straightforward and sensible …

  3. Of Indoor Swimming Pools

    Most people go through life not knowing what a soaking wet carpet sounds and feels like. This morning, my life was enriched. I saw the dark footprints on the carpet as soon as I woke up. I assumed there had been a spill of some sort, and thought about calling …

  4. Family Tech Support

    From "Family Tech Support," a recent story on Slashdot: For a month, my mother became really productive (mom's productivity is measured in forwarded joke emails), and then, abruptly, stopped being productive at all... I sent several emails which went unanswered... The next time I heard from her was on my …

  5. Spring has Sprung

    Everything but the weather, that is. Spring break has come to a close, and today is the first day of the last quarter of my junior year. I'm simply bursting with excitement. I've been playing around with the green stylesheet, and it's here for good this time. I made sure …

  6. OK, Real Quick...

    From an article on Kuro5hin.org: Music sales in Germany have been in decline for the last five years, dropping 11% last year, and German copyright holders seem to think digital copying might have something to do with it. As Gerd Gebhardt, president of Bundesverband Phono (Germany's RIAA), asked: "If …

  7. Bwerp Server Move

    Some of you may be experiencing problems with Bwerp.net at the moment. My provider is shuffling around some of their servers, and you may get a 503 Forbidden until your cache updates. Don't panic.

February

  1. Activism (or Lack Thereof)

    Between Ani DiFranco and one of my current professors, I've been hearing a lot about the terrible things done in the name of America. I've known for a long time that the US isn't the bastion of freedom and generosity that we're all led to believe. So much death and …

  2. Be Green

    I've created a new template for MovableType that matches the style of Bwerp, my main site (indeed, it uses the same stylesheet). Any comments? Do you like it? Is it hard to read? Does it look like crap in Browser X? Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

  3. Mmm.. Web Development

    Not terribly interesting to most of you.

  4. More Blog Ignoring

    I think I have more fun tweaking my MT templates than I do actually posting to my blog. Just not a whole lot to talk about, I guess. I do plan on doing useful things in the future, like dissecting cinnamon.nl and posting my findings, along with fixing up …

January

  1. Pings at last!

    Thank God Almighty, pings at last! Since this blog's inception, I haven't been able to automatically ping blo.gs and weblogs.com. MT would say it pinged, but I wouldn't show up on either site. I noticed that I was able to ping from another MT installation on the same …

  2. Making Plain Text Useful

    I've been taking class notes on my computer (and Palm m500) for quite some time now, but I'm always left with the question of how to format them so they're actually useful later. Plain text has formatting issues, and isn't easily malleable. HTML looks nice, but it's hard to write …

  3. Recommended Reading

    Guess it's a "freedom" kind of day. Here are a couple more things for yous guys to read: Now Corporations Claim The "Right To Lie" documents the increasing trend in corporations to claim the same human rights afforded to living, breathing people. I didn't know it, but corporations have only …

  4. Why ESR is an Anarchist

    I just read Eric S. Raymond's Why I Am An Anarchist. Here's a quote: ... A majority of the people themselves are too easily seduced into abandoning their own institutional protections against tyranny by the false promises and poisonous dreams of statist propaganda. I'd like to have a little more faith …

  5. Lonely, Lonely Blog

    For all you MacRITters, I've set up a new virtual host on my old iBook. The MacRIT Forum is now housed on the same server as this blog.

  6. Mapping the Blogsphere

    Here I go again, blogging about blogging. Anyway, I was browsing the recently updated blogs, as I am wont to do when I am bored, and I came across Peter Lindberg's blog. His latest post is about something new called GeoURL. Add a couple metatags to the front page of …

  7. Sticker Yer Blog

    You might have notice the new black and white badges on the left side of the main screen. They're so-called "blogstickers", and taste wonderful. Jen and I created the stickers you see here, but they have plenty on the site of various quality and chromatic variation. Through the wonders of …

  8. Welcome to China, Here's Your Firewall

    There's a new article over at Ars Technica by Johnny Brookheart entitled Put down the mouse, capitalist pigdog! The title's silly, but his letter is pretty well thought out. Worth the read.

2002

December

  1. You've Got to be Kidding..

    I doubt the people behind this are for real, but I sent them an e-mail anyway.

  2. Movie Night: Star Trek: Nemesis

    Spoilers ahead, so don't read on unless you've seen the movie.

  3. Movie Night: Hawk & Amélie

    A clinical review.

  4. Mmm, Vacation

    Sitting here in my old house, wearing flannel-lined khakis and my extremely orange topato hoodie, with my new keyboard in arm's reach. Life is good. Happy Holidays to everybody!

  5. I Hope My PC Forgives Me

    For the next five days, my Linux machine will sit somewhere between shutting down and starting up.

  6. You Are Being Lied To

    By whom? Anybody that justifies the loss of a few basic freedoms for so called "national security." Benjamin Franklin said it best: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." LewRockwell.com has an article by Nicholas Monahan, entitled Coffee …

  7. Making Windows Bearable

    I sort of stumbled across Cygwin the other day. It's by Red Hat, but I actually like it. Cygwin gives Windows users access to many of the tools included with most Linux distributions. It's comforting having native access to mutt, vim, bash, and ssh, on those occasions when I need …

  8. Palm Goodies

    As a follow-up to my last post, here's a catalog of some interesting apps I've found for my Palm m500.

  9. Productivity?

    Yeah, my productivity on the Palm m500 just went to Zero.

  10. Tim O'Reilly on Piracy

    Tim O'Reilly has a very well thought-out and informed article on piracy over at OpenP2P.com. He says many good things about the benefits of the P2P world and what has been labeled as "piracy", the desire for users to have immediate access to entertainment, books, and the like, and …

  11. Overheard

    Heard this one on the way home from class yesterday: My dad said, "How about you get a job on campus?" I said, "How about I saw your face off with a soldering iron?" My faith in my peers wanes more every day.

  12. Server Move

    In an effort to improve uptime, I have moved my Movable Type setup to my iBook. It should be up pretty much constantly, at the address pridian.rh.rit.edu. Pridian, for the curious, is a Latin adjective meaning "pertaining or belonging to the previous day." I think that loosely …

  13. What is "dotdotdot"?

    Origins.

  14. A Blog is Born

    Taking the plunge.