Comments
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events on February 22, 2008
Sorry about the comments bug… When I moved my website just a few days ago I failed to update one thing so the link to make comments was working. No wonder it was quiet. 🙂
Business
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on February 21, 2008
Well, my wife is thinking about starting up a business… There’s definitely a market and the concept makes sense to me. In the past, she had sold craft items (specifically faux sealing wax) but had been somewhat limited since she was essentially just buying in bulk and repackaging for individual sales. Not many other people were selling assorted sticks in small quantities so there was a small market. However, it’s a somewhat unusual item and it was hard since margins were so low. There were other sellers and since most of the labor was making a post on eBay with the item, it was hard to justify very much markup.
The new concept is better… Diapers, nursing accessories, and other stuff that babies excrete gross stuff on! Yes, that’s right. It’s apparently quite the thing. In addition to making them, you can also embroider and customize them! This is all very new to me, but at the same time the results are impressive. In my opinion, one of the good things about this is that it takes a professional (i.e. expensive) embroidery machine to do a good job on this. Because of this, there’s at least a somewhat high-entry into the market. We’ve now invested in that and hope to have some success.
The next step (and the really fun step) is to make a website to sell these items on. Something fairly secure and “check-out” friendly but still with a personal, small-shop feel.
I think a good name would be “Ye Olde Smelle Diaper” but the wife has other ideas… Your name ideas here! My wife promises to spend as much time considering the name that you suggest as she considered the name I suggested.
Whole Disk Encryption Insecure
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness, Ranting & Ravings on February 21, 2008
Hmm… well this is kind of a blow for the security departments that have been relying on this. My “work” (notice the parentheses) laptop has whole disk encryption and it’s terrible. For some reason it usually (like 4 out of 5 times) does not ask me for my password anymore (and it really does seem random) and it takes noticeably longer to do anything on the machine (which is why I barely use it and didn’t even take it with me this trip). Now it’s revealed that it apparently doesn’t even really protect anything!
So much for “corporate security”.
A Useful Widget At Last!
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness on February 13, 2008
I like the idea of widgets in OS X and the way Dashboard works. However, other than the calculator I don’t find myself using them very much. But I finally found a Dashboard widget that really is handy. It’s a tool that lets you track packages from a variety of places (Amazon, UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.). You enter the tracking tag a nice little widget is created. It will change status and will also integrate with Growl to give you notifications (so you don’t have to always look at Dashboard to notice a change).
Here’s a screenshot.
And a link to the author’s (very nice) website. Any widgets that any of my readers use and find useful?
Multi-Function Printers that Work
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness, Ranting & Ravings on February 10, 2008
I’ve been looking for a multi-function (print, scan, copy, fax) printer for the last few months. I’ve been really disappointed with what I’ve found.
What I want to be able to do is the following:
- Print documents from any modern operating system across the network
- Scan documents/pictures from an auto-document feeder or a flatbed and in some way have this data end up on whatever system on the network I want
- Copy documents/pictures by standing at the printer unit itself
- Receive faxes and send faxes from anywhere on the network
I know that there are problems with some of these — specifically Scanning and Faxing. I see multiple issues with these:
- Storage (where does the scanned or faxed document get stored physically?)
- Notification (even if a fax is stored, how does a user know when it arrives?)
- Configuration (the above should ideally be accomplished without configuring anything on the end-systems)
I see a solution but I’ve not found a sub $1000 printer that accomplishes it. Some of the high-end “counter-top”-sized systems (that run $10,000 and above) have something similar but are usually way overblown.
- Storage would be provided by flash memory (something as simple as 1-16GB Compact Flash card).
- Sharing of this storage would be accomplished by using a Samba server running on an embedded Linux kernel (similar to the sort of functionality that currently exists on home routers).
- Samba shares would be exposed to Linux, Mac, and Windows systems by using something like Avahi (or whatever the Linux version of ZeroConf is that works best at the time). Bonjour could be used on the client end if you’re running Apple to easily see these auto-configured shares but it would have to be installed specially on Windows clients.
- Notification could be accomplished via email. If a simple SMTP setup is configured once on the printer unit itself, it could automatically route emails to a specific user, multiple users, or different groups depending on the fax number used or other variables. There are many other alternatives using things like the XMPP or even SMS for notification.
- Configuration — as mentioned this would work like magic on a Mac and slightly less magically (and unfortunately much less beautifully) on a Windows PC. Any system on the network could access recently scanned or faxed documents or perhaps be only restricted by a username/password (heck — even tie it into an LDAP server if you’ve get centralized directory services). Basically, this largely gets rid of the need for client software other than just the printer driver itself. In reality, I’m not clear why we even need a specialized print driver when a web interface (again, hosted on the device) could likely provide any custom features (software-based maintenance, looking at the queue, etc.)
So why isn’t it out there?
Am I Missing Something?
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events on February 7, 2008
You’ve seen Ron Paul’s support. Now there’s a fund-raising “money bomb” for the Republican Party (which allows you to donate to McCain, Romney, or Huckabee). It’s at http://www.february7.org/. Here’s the dazzling results as of 6:44am PST:
Microsoft’s Dark Plan
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on February 7, 2008
I rarely quote things verbatim from elsewhere on the Internet but I found a comment in one of this morning’s Slashdot posts quite amusing…
Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. To my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: ‘Do not worry, it is unharmed.’ After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: ‘Take a close look at it.’ To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:
4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F5320746F 2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67207468656D20 616C6C20616E6420696E20746865206461726B6E6573732062696E64207468656D
‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:’
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
From Slashdot (unfortunately by an Anonymous Coward so I can’t credit the individual)
Are you doing your part…
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events on February 1, 2008
…to support a brighter future?
VPS Hosting
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events on January 30, 2008
So I had been looking for a new VPS host… I’ve used GoDaddy for a while and although it was decent a few years ago because of it’s pointy-clicky Plesk interface, I’ve since found that it’s easier to maintain it myself at the command line. I’m still running Fedora Core 2 and in order to upgrade, it’s really painful. Back in the day, there were packages that I could install but now my only real option is to upgrade the OS entirely (which involves backing up, wiping, and restoring). Seems easier to move to a Gentoo-based VPS, save a few shekels, and get better performance. I also previously only used my server for hosting simple LAMP web sites. I’d like to move towards not only Apache/MySQL/PHP but also Ruby on Rails, Subversion, Trac, and other things.
So, my two main options were VPSLink in Seattle, WA and Slicehost in St. Louis, MO. These were chosen somewhat arbitrarily based off of reviews (mostly “personal” type reviews from blogs).
I purchased a 1GB RAM VPS for a month from VPSLink and a 3 month 512MB RAM VPS from SliceHost. Prices for equivalent products are very close but SliceHost does require a minimum of 3 months.
First off, I noticed that my ping time is obviously pretty good to the Seattle based VPSLink. I get 30-40ms response. I get 50-60ms response from SliceHost. Now, I remote into a server in the D.C. area and try again. Now I get a response time of 90-100ms for VPSLink and 30-40ms for SliceHost. This seems to make sense since SliceHost is more centrally located. Since my website traffic is fairly evenly spread across the U.S. (only rarely overseas) this seems to be a plus for SliceHost.
I like the SliceHost management interface. It’s a “developer” type interface that’s very simple but very fast and gives me a lot of flexibility. I don’t like the VPSLink interface. It’s annoying and (as I just noticed tonight — doesn’t always seem to be exactly running). Most of the features are similar but I do feel like I can really control things better with SliceHost. For starters, the VPSLink is dog-slow compared to SliceHost and also has separate sections for billing, support, management, etc. It’s a pain to deal with. SliceHost is essentially one page with tabs. And it has more features like the rescue mode (mentioned below).
Well, the VPS with VPSLink is FAST. I do an emerge –sync && emerge world and I get the entire Gentoo installation updated quickly. However, now things seem a little odd and it seems like something’s caused a memory leak. Rather than chase it down, I do a reboot instead. Whoops — mistake. Gentoo (configured in a Xen environment) has a known bug which causes some problems. A trivial fix but I need to boot with a Live CD or something similar. And my server is in a data center in Seattle somewhere. Hmmm… I contact tech support — do they offer a Live CD equivalent boot? They do not. SliceHost does. This is a big deal overall. Especially with Gentoo, I have a bad habit of goofing something up and breaking my boot process. Since I’ve always dealt with locally stored boxes, it’s just a minor annoyance to have to connect a monitor and keyboard to the system and resolve the issue. However, the only fix VPSLink offers is “rebuild the box”. So if I break the boot process, I lose ALL data on the box. Ouch.
So, after one month of using SliceHost and not really being excited about rebuilding my VPSLink box AGAIN, I’ve canceled VPSLink and have begun to migrate all websites from my old Fedora Core 2 server to the new SliceHost Gentoo. It seems stable, fast, and reliable and if I do make a mess of things I’m confident I can get it back up and running without too much pain.
Over the last week I’ve spent FAR too much time trying to resolve little things like successfully getting non-Roman characters into the MySQL database (it’s odd the way the Gentoo MySQL USE flags work), getting Apache updated and still having PHP work, resolving a mess of library dependencies (I got to use revdep-rebuild — yay!) and also playing with Jails and getting an SSH account setup that chroot’s it to it’s web page root. All fun stuff but time consuming. I love Gentoo though — it’s not always the cleanest but it seems like you’re never “stuck”. Or at least that’s been my experience.
StackOverflow
