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| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
Thu, 29 Sep 2005
[15:57] the calendar plugin
I got the calendar plugin working once I got access to the error logs! It seems that it likes to create a file called $plugin_state_dir/.calendar.cache and as I (an ordinary user) own that directory, the web services (running as the ordinary web services user) can't write to the directory. So, if you're gettint a 500 Internal Server Error just by having the calendar plugin in the $plugin_dir, that's why!
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
[15:28] File formats and so called "standards"
Last week I kicked back into "Job Huntin Mode" so I've been sprinkling resumes around like confetti. For various reasons my distributable resume is in PDF format.
By way of response I've had several requests for my resume to be re-sent in "standard Word Format". There are a myriad of reasons why I'd prefer not to do that and the majority of them are covered in a very nice rant/article entilted MS Word is {Not} a document exchange format.
Basically I have two options:
- Stand up for my ethics and not transform my OpenOffice.org work of art into a nasty Word document. This saves me from having to rejig the formatting because I know it doesn't quite translate and then having to keep multiple copies in sync.
- Spinelessly bow to public pressure and Save As .doc
My suspicions are that these so called "databases" are nothing more than macros that merrily trip through Word documents filling in arrays with keywords as they go. This leads me to the thought that if I HAVE to play the game, maybe I can be a little sneaky about it. If it's all as stupid as I think it is (and various articles I've browsed this evening lead me to the conclusion that it is) then a few headers/footers full of white on white 2 point text along the lines of:
CCNA CCIE MCP MCSA A+ LCP RHCE CCSE CCEA Network+ Security+ CUE CISA CCP CLP MCSE CNE ...Should get me to the shortlist for pretty much EVERY job! I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet.
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[03:00] I've turned the lights out...
...but I'll leave a candle on the windowsill.
I didn't feel like sleeping last night so I stayed up and got the new blog off the ground. It's butt-ugly at the moment (lets face it, so is this one) but functional (enough) so all new posts will be over there from now on. I've downloaded an XML feed of everything from this blog and it will magically reappear as soon as I write a script to blosxomify it.
Pertinent details: The new blog is back at the old address: blog.kynan.org, assuming I manage to avoid bollocksing it up somehow - I'm still covered in tomato from my last little adventure (although Andrew assures me it was all self-inflicted pain and, on further investigation, I think he's right).
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Modblog team for providing me with a more than adequate service considering I paid £0 for it (that's approximately $A14.27). I'm leaving because I prefer the level of control one has hosting ones-self and the little quirks associated with being hosted here (the odd RSS feed, the dissapearing 's, the intermittent blackouts) can be more than a little annoying at times :)
I AM going to miss the ability to post via the web but I've started working on a python based cgi system for adding/modifying blog posts via HTTP - if it works I'll post it somewhere. I'm sure someones done this already but it wasn't the top hit when I very briefly looked last night so I've started and damned if I'm stopping now!
...and like that he was gone....
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[02:00] I've turned the lights out...
Date: 9/29/05 at 10:00AM
...but I'll leave a candle on the windowsill.
I didn't feel like sleeping last night so I stayed up and got the new blog off the ground. It's butt-ugly at the moment (lets face it, so is this one) but functional (enough) so all new posts will be over there from now on. I've downloaded an XML feed of everything from this blog and it will magically reappear as soon as I write a script to blosxomify it.
Pertinent details: The new blog is back at the old address: blog.kynan.org, assuming I manage to avoid bollocksing it up somehow - I'm still covered in tomato from my last little adventure (although Andrew assures me it was all self-inflicted pain and, on further investigation, I think he's right).
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Modblog team for providing me with a more than adequate service considering I paid £0 for it (that's approximately $A14.27). I'm leaving because I prefer the level of control one has hosting ones-self and the little quirks associated with being hosted here (the odd RSS feed, the disappearing 's, the intermittent blackouts) can be more than a little annoying at times :)
I AM going to miss the ability to post via the web but I've started working on a python based cgi system for adding/modifying blog posts via HTTP - if it works I'll post it somewhere. I'm sure someones done this already but it wasn't the top hit when I very briefly looked last night so I've started and damned if I'm stopping now!
...and like that he was gone....
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Wed, 28 Sep 2005
[16:16] I'm back
OK, I've had enough for tonight. I was going to make the calendar work and do all kinds of funkiness but...I wanna go to bed - for now I will settle with just getting the timezone plugin working. It's been a long and emotionally fraught day (someone I know has a bit of a needle phobia) and now that I've called all the rellies I'm spent. Tomorrow, CSS, calendars and, oh yeah, work :P
Coming soon:
- Rant about resumes and their format
- No, I think I busted your mail
- The magic of keyhole surgery and some 'citing photographs!!
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[15:47] Please do NOT adjust your set...I always look like this
That's right folks, I'm back on the air from home again, hoorah!
There's more to come but right now I'm just setting up Blosxom, it's already quite late and I've had a hard afternoon so if I don't get back to finishing this post tonight the news in brief:
- Shonas operation is pencilled in as provisionally succesful. She still has both legs and an exciting little jar of cartilage to put on the mantlepiece! She's in overnight for observation and should be home in time to cook me dinner tomorrow ;)
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Tue, 27 Sep 2005
[09:29] Imagine I'm in stocks and you have a rotten tomato
Date: 9/27/05 at 5:29PM
Well, I'm all moved over to Andrews place now ('cept for this blog). I moved the mail over on Sunday night and, due to my misreading of the virtual mail setup page, I toasted Andrews sendmail config for a few hours. I am still feeling extremely contrite about this and not just a little bit stupid. I promised Andrew a public flagellation so, here it is:
T'was Sunday night when I sat down to make my changes. I added my standard fully qualified e-mail address as the default address to deliver mail to (by my reading the field was for a catch-all account) and tried to send a test message. I got an error message and the error was pretty obvious (in hindsight) as to the cause of the problem:
SMTP protocol diagnostic: 554 5.0.0 rewrite: excessive recursion (max 50), ruleset canonify
I didn't think anything of it at the time, I just thunk "Oh, Andrews got a sendmail problem" and sent him a message saying so, for some reason the dots didn't connect between me making mail changes and sendmail barfing everywhere. It was late, I went to bed.
About two or three in the morning I woke up and a thought popped into my head - "I wonder if I caused that error by trying to deliver mail to myself back to myself", unfortunately I didn't get up and do anything about it (although I suspect that by then Andrew had fixed the "Operator Error" as he put it, back in his timezone). I got up in the morning and saw the explanation e-mail and felt like a particularly foolish, clueless dick (oops, there goes the PG rating).
So there you go, I'm a dunderhead and I'm really pissed that I didn't get up and go fix it when I realised what I'd done. Beating up on other peoples servers, even without malicious intent, is a Bad Thing.
I'm sorry Andrew, I've learned from my mistakes and will be moving to Tibet shortly to ponder my bunglings in a computerless cave with a gentleman by the name of Ransel Rinpoche who has promised, as an aid to contemplation, to flog me mercilessly for the next 50 years.
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Thu, 22 Sep 2005
[07:16] More Terminal Services Excitement
Date: 9/22/05 at 3:16PM
It seems that from Windows 2003 up there is support for the /console switch to mstsc.exe. This is cool because you don't have to worry about getting a third party tool like VNC or Dameware to see what the hell is going on on the desktop if you're doing remote installs and all goes quiet...
Syntax is easy:
mstsc /v:SERVERNAME /console
I would LOVE to know how they came to choose v as the server name parameter!
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Tue, 20 Sep 2005
[23:28] Opera Runs Free
Date: 9/21/05 at 7:28AM
Well, in a somewhat interesting move the Opera web browser has had all of the advertising and licensing fees removed! It is now another free browser. It seems they intend to make money through premium support, which to be honest doesn't look that premium - 24 hour guaranteed e-mail response in English only. I think that's a token offering, the forums will provide better response I think. I suspect the real money spinner is their continued licensing of their quite extensive mobile platform. I listened to a podcast interview recently with the head of Opera, Jon S. von Tetzchner, who explained the secret behind their quick response to new platforms was that their whole app was based on vanilla C++. There are no OS APIs used on any platform so porting is a relatively painless process.
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Sun, 18 Sep 2005
[02:12] It's Official - Touching Wood Does SOD ALL
Date: 9/18/05 at 10:12AM
I mentioned last week that my new bike was going great guns and that "Touch Wood" everything was going to be OK now. So on Wednesday I notice that something is wrong. It feels like I've buckled the wheel and that the wheel is rubbing on the frame but when I watch the wheel it ISN'T rubbing on the frame - I've had enough buckled wheels to know exactly what that feels like too. I finally located the problem on Saturday when I accompanied Shona and Sam on a walk home. I was trundling the bike along in front of me with the front wheel up in the air, giving me an new and exciting perspective on the undercarriage of my bike. I could see that the innermost gear wheel was what was rubbing on the frame! Basically the whole pedal assembly was trying to exit stage left and was dragging the cluster into the frame - given time it could have sawed its way out!
So there you have it folks, I've done it again. Somehow I managed to break the bottom bracket which is basically the bit that holds the pedal crankshafts in the frame and lets them spin so you can get that exciting pedalling action going. Once again, I've not been involved in any hardcore adventure mountain biking and I've not even had a prang. My spider-senses are tingling and they tell me.....cheap bikes are constructed from cheap parts! On the bright side, I rocked up at Decathlon bright and early and was second in line for repairs - they fixed me up with a new one (£45 parts and labour) for free in an hour and as an extra bonus I seem to have had a break and gear checkup too! I think I see why the workshop is ALWAYS packed when I go there - they must get hundreds of returns a week.
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Wed, 14 Sep 2005
[00:41] Dark In Here Isn't It
Date: 9/14/05 at 8:41AM
The advantages to working on a laptop is that when the power goes out - you don't lose your work! I think that it might be a pretty good idea to stick some kind of battery/capacitor arrangement into the power supply unit of all computers just to keep them running for 5 minutes when the power drops - a mini UPS I guess. I think most of the people around me would agree that this would be also be a good thing!
On a slightly more paranoid note, the cause of things like mass power outages (I know of three separate buildings that all blinked out for a minute there) are more than a little worrying these days....
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Tue, 13 Sep 2005
[07:37] The Move
Date: 9/13/05 at 3:37PM
First off, many thanks to everyone who offered to take over hosting for me - much appreciated! Next up, special thanks to Mr Pollock for providing the offer I have decided to run with! I've moved the static content over and the DNS changes were made today to point to my new digital home. The blog however will live here for a few more weeks while I re-learn blosxom. I don't anticipate that being particularly hard but I don't see any time being available in which to move the data from here and re-format it and make the blog look as astoundingly nice and professional as it does at the moment :)
On an entirely unrelated note, I think that this is probably one of the more interesting ways to start a book:
So that ignorant, thick-lipped, evil whorehopping editor phones me up and says, Does the word contract mean anything to you, Jerusalem?
I was having a mildly paranoid day, mostly due to the fact that the mad priest lady from over the river had taken to nailing weasels to my front door again.
Contract? You'll never get a city hitman up the mountain to me -- you bastards die if there's actual oxygen in the air.
I can in no way recommend this book, which is by the way, "Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street" by Warren Ellis as this is all I know of it - I saw that mentioned on another blog and thought it was cool - the style reminds me very much of the great and, sadly, late Hunter S. Thompson. I suspect the structure rather than the content is the only similarity but one never knows.
Over and out...*click*
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Mon, 12 Sep 2005
[08:02] My Bike, my NEW Bike
Date: 9/12/05 at 4:02PM
I'm sure everyone remembers how I got a bike a few weeks ago (you better - there's a test at the end). Well, the story developed but as work is going through one of those "Your life is mine, MINE, MIIIIIINE MUHAHAHAHAHAHA" phases at the moment I haven't had a chance to write about it. As I sit here at work at 1900 I find I now have some "spare" time, so here goes:
Well, in what ended up being a stunning surprise to absolutely no-one, I broke it (especially my father who, being used to such things, just laughed at me). I don't know what it is with me and, well everything pretty much! Generally things just fall apart in my hands. I refuse to believe that I am the only one to get one of those bikes and ride it so hard that it just disintegrated under the pressure. I'm not morbidly obese and I was being careful (I'm not even going to qualify that with a "for me" - I was actually riding normally). I've gone through a large number of bikes in my past so I know that I can be a little rough (I managed to actually detach the frame from the forks on one - it just snapped whilst I was riding home. Took me a while to work out what happened, I heard the SNAP but the brake and gear cables held the whole thing together so I couldn't actually see a problem - when I got on and pedalled the pedals were scraping on the ground but it wasn't until I got home that I worked out WHY, but I digress)...ummmm, yeah, so, on with the story:
I actually broke it the week I got it - I described the disintegration of the whole gear assembly but I was willing to live with that, when the rear wheel bearing started to give out (this is within four days of purchase folks) I decided I better take it back to the shop and let them do a post-mortem. I took it back on Saturday - exactly one week after it left the store on its maiden voyage. They were, non-plussed, shall we say. The blokes exact words were "You've had this how long?". He took it out the back and after about five minutes I sorta peeked around the corner - three people were standing around it all with their hands on their hips, heads a'shaking. He came back and told me that they could swap it for me or refund my money which I thought was pretty cool. I decided that I didn't want another piece of poop bike (anyone spot the cunning plan here?) and asked if I could perhaps upgrade to something not constructed entirely of tinfoil and my erstwhile assistant said "Yup" so I requested a parade of the next crappiest bikes. I got the option of a mountain bike or a commuter bike, both with front suspension, I'm not real keen on suspension but I had no choice so I test rode them both. I decided on the commuter because by god that was one DAMN comfy seat - the seat on the original bike and the one on the mountain bike were both ass-reamers, to put it bluntly. So, BEHOLD MY NEW BIKE:
This little beauty is a Decathlon Riverside 3, constructed especially for riding alongside rivers - luckily I have to go over the Thames every morning so it's OK.
Now, as I write this it is a day over two weeks since I got the new bike and so far (touch wood, touch wood, touch wood) it has behaved perfectly. It is insanely more comfy than the old one, the bell actually works (the old one was constructed of tinfoil and just crumpled when you tonked it with the little hammer) and you can even change gears!!
In another two weeks it will have paid itself off and I will be in credit to the tune of £70, huzzah!
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Fri, 09 Sep 2005
[02:51] The Magic Of Being Called Kynan
Date: 9/9/05 at 10:51AM
I get this a LOT but recently a large number of people have had reason to e-mail me. An e-mail was sent listing me as the contact like this:
"Please contact kynan.dent@blahblahblah". I have so far received the following exciting permutations of my name:
- Kenan
- Keenan
- Kenean
- Kyan
- Kyiran (I think this is my favourite)
- Kynana
- Kyran
- Kent??!?
Normally I am very forgiving of people and their attempts to get my name right, I've been called Ceinwen, Cyan, Conan and someone once went so far as so say "look, Kynans' too hard to say, I'm going to call you Simon" and I let them get away with it - English phonetics are painfully incomprehensible to a lot of people; however, if you have to write/type the name as part of the e-mail address, or even if you just copied and pasted it, SURELY your eyes passed over the letters....how can they still sod it up so badly. These aren't even typos, r and n are nowhere near each other (unless these people are morbidly obese and require special dialing wands to type or something).
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Wed, 07 Sep 2005
[02:26] Windows Command Shell Shenanigans
Date: 9/7/05 at 10:26AM
I've been writing a lot of Windows Command Shell scripts recently (can't use WSH because it's not on all the boxes and NT 4 is lowest common denominator) and I ran into a bit of a gotcha with FOR loops. This may not be a gotcha if you are new to programming and actually read the documentation (although in MY defense this doesn't appear to be mentioned in the FOR /? help). So anyway, I expected a FOR loop to behave in a rational Unix shell style fashion. Let me illustrate the problem, here is a functional snippet of code:
1 @ECHO OFF
2 SET THING=w00t
3 FOR %%G in (a b c) DO (SET THING=%THING%,%%G)
4 ECHO %THING%
I'd expect the output to be this:
C:>test_for.cmd
woot,a,b,c
What you actually get is this:
C:>test_for.cmd
woot,c
This is because the command interpreter scans the whole FOR statement in before the iteration begins and resolves any variables that aren't updated by the FOR loop itself so what starts out as:
FOR %%G in (a b c) DO (SET THING=%THING%,%%G)
actually gets run as
FOR %%G in (a b c) DO (SET THING=w00t,%%G)
To get around this you have to use the Windows Command Shell version of procedures. The working version looks like this:
1 @ECHO OFF
2 SET THING=w00t
3 FOR %%G IN (a b c) DO (CALL :GUTS_OF_FOR %%G)
4 ECHO %THING%
5 GOTO EOF
6
7 :GUTS_OF_FOR
8 SET THING=%THING%,%1
9 GOTO :EOF
10
11 :EOF
The command GOTO :EOF DOESN'T actually do what you'd expect, ie GOTO :EOF, it signals to the interpreter that the procedure has completed and that the script should resume at the point where the procedure was called. No, really...
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Tue, 06 Sep 2005
[02:08] Lotus Notes Login Dialog
Date: 9/6/05 at 10:08AM
I don't know if anyone out there is (or has been) subjected to the interesting experience that is Lotus Notes. Currently I am being forced to use it, amongst a bevy of other Groupware solutions - why have one when you can have MANY!!! Anyway, below is the login dialog for Notes (6.5):
Normally is doesn't say CENSORED across the bottom but everything else you can see is "normal". That bloody keyring has been annoying me for a while. After you type in four characters every new character prompts the keychain to morph. Below are some examples:
I asked a Notesy friend of mine why this is and he gave me this answer:
I think it's supposed to throw off anyone watching you type in your password. That's what a guy told me when I was on a lotus course. dunno if it's true.
I found myself doubting the veracity of the aforementioned "guy on a lotus course" so I did a little digging...it appears that these images are displayed and changed by running the characters you've entered through an algorithm so that the sequence of pictures generated whilst you type your password is unique (in the same way that your password hash is 'unique'). This is meant to aid in the detection of a spoofed login dialog, allegedly. You're meant to take particular note of the keychain image that is present when you finish typing your password and if it changes from normal then panic or something. An unconfirmed report I found in Google Groups suggests that this was requested by the CIA and/or NSA whom are both allegedly Notes users (apparently Notes is preferred because there are less viruses targeting it).
I initially doubted that this works or provides any useful functionality because it is mostly post-departure barn door bolting. Why? No-one has mentioned this to me, the Notes user, nor to ANYONE in the room whom I've asked whom are all Notes users. What's more - the bloke I orignally asked has several Lotus certifications AND was on a Lotus course when he tried to find out about it. If no-one, including Lotus community developers, knows what the hell it is I doubt that it's really going to help much :)
Also, this is a keylogger they're trying to thwart, any semi-decent keylogger isn't waiting for you to hit enter or press OK before logging/sending the keys - they're logged as you type. All you're doing with this functionality is identifying that your system has been compromised - this isn't bad per se but it IS the last level of defense against external attackers. However, on further reflection this is a useful feature if you've got internal attackers (ie employees) as they don't need to circumvent firewalls and mail filters to get trojans onto the system - they can use USB/Floppy/Internal Mail.
Just in case you're interested, I tracked the authorative answer down at the IBM RedBooks repository. The document in question is the Lotus Security Handbook and the section I've reproduced below is "6.1.4 - Notes passwords" from page 220:
Anti-spoofing password dialog box
To defeat dictionary or brute force attacks on ID file passwords and to reduce the
risk of password capture, Notes employs an anti-spoofing password dialog box.
This was introduced in R4 and has been retained in version 6 of Notes.
If a user enters an incorrect password, Notes waits for several seconds before
allowing them to try again. This delay increases with each incorrect attempt to a
maximum of thirty seconds. The delay feature makes it difficult to try many
passwords in rapid succession in the hope of guessing the right combination.
The anti-spoofing aspect of the Notes password dialog box resides in the
changing pattern to the left of the password input text field.
In R4 and R5, this was a set of four Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols. In version 6,
these hieroglyphics have been replaced by a picture of a key ring, with the
attached objects (such as keys, flashlight, pocket knife, and so forth) changing
after the fifth character is typed in.
These dynamic symbols make it more difficult to substitute a false dialog box that
captures passwords in place of the Notes Password dialog box. Users should be
made aware of the particularities of this dialog box and of the fact that the
symbols change as they enter their passwords. If they notice that the symbols do
not change or are not present, they should stop entering their password and click
Cancel. As well, they should memorize the last image after they’ve typed their
password because the algorithm behind the symbols will always compute to the
same symbol in the end. (However, the algorithm is complicated enough that it is
not easy to sort out the password just by looking at the symbols and the way they
change).
So there you go! I don't know about the "click Cancel" advice - I'd be inclined to say leave it the hell alone and call IT Support pronto - Cancel could self destruct or something and like I said before, they keys are already logged (more than likely) anyway.
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Fri, 02 Sep 2005
[00:11] Duh!
Date: 9/2/05 at 8:11AM
So I'm on the phone to someone and they're asking for hostnames. I looked at the hostname required and automatically switched to the Phonetic Alphabet. Here's how the conversation went:
Me: Sierra Two Foxtrot
Them: Can you say that in English now
Me: !?
Me: Umm, ess two eff
Them: ess two ess
Me: Ahh, no, ess two EFF - Foxtrot
Them: Oh, I wondered where that Foxtrot came from
Me: *bangs head on monitor*
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Thu, 01 Sep 2005
[08:59] Why I LOVE My New House: Reason 723
Date: 9/1/05 at 4:59PM
There are several really good things about my current domicile. I would like to share with you some of the bad things though ('cause they're MUCH more fun). Here is a sign that recently appeared in the lift:
 | Now, there are several points to consider when looking at this sign. Let us examine what I consider the two main points:
|
Below is an example of the impact this has had on the local lift urinating society:
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