Wed, 31 Oct 2001
XEmacs and other // at 23:59
It rained heavily again last night, so this morning the cycle track was covered in mud and crap and Gardiners Creek was flowing strongly. In the last few days I've seen so many birds that I thought I'd keep a list of them somewhere.
Sneaky. Not sure when this happened, but TRAMP stopped working
sometime recently. A bit of digging and I've found that the format of
its filenames has changed from /r:host:/path/file to
/[host]/path/file.
I've ordered Joey's birthday present—finally—but I'm not writing down what it is in case she reads here. :-)
Tue, 30 Oct 2001
A little bit of Bureaucracy // at 23:59
Why do organisations make it so hard to change my address?
The Winesociety: I couldn't login to their website for some reason. After calling them, it turns out that my email address had been chopped off at 28 characters. That was updated, then when I successfully logged in I found that I must provide them with my date of birth as proof that I'm over 18. The fact that they have already given me a membership seems to be irrelevant!
St George Bank: Everyone hates banks by definition. After spending 15 minutes on hold last night I gave up in disgust and called again this morning. The address change I put through a month ago, together with the phone-access number, appears to have vanished. This morning I managed to get my address changed (again). I guess I just wait another month to see whether it worked this time.
Mon, 29 Oct 2001
Toys… // at 23:59
- [http://www.iriver.com/english/]
- an iRiver MP3 player?
- [http://www.steves-digicams.com/]
- or a digital camera?
Sun, 28 Oct 2001
Just MLP // at 23:59
- [http://www.slowfood.com/]
- Mentioned on RRR's food show, about local groups resisting the globalisation of foods and food sources. eg Nestlé, McDonalds
Grabbed a whole pile of references to do with Java and Jini after I finally got around to reading some more of Core Jini.
Thu, 25 Oct 2001
Ride to work, avoid idiots…. // at 23:59
Another day riding to work, another day watching the aftermath of Melbourne's motorists driving into each other.
MLP
- [http://www.netbeans.org/]
- NetBeans — Java IDE
- [http://www.adm.monash.edu.au/magpie/archives/monpix]
- MonPix — Monash online pictures archive. Not easy to search, or at least, I can't find things by the search terms I choose, but it does have some interesting material accumulated at the University.
Wed, 24 Oct 2001
Thu, 18 Oct 2001
Wed, 17 Oct 2001
Recommendations, food 'n music // at 23:59
the list of places that I've had excellent meals at.
- [http://www.gillmusic.com/]
- Andy Gill Music. I came across this website while searching for a Gang of Four's Love Like Anthrax. Its been in the back of my mind this last week, a joke in poor taste.
Sun, 14 Oct 2001
Fri, 12 Oct 2001
Another day // at 23:59
Last night was spent at a Billy Bragg concert. I've always liked his music, but never been a huge fan, some of his political rants seem too simplistic, too one-eyed. I was surprised though, in concert he was quite humerous, played really well despite the acoustics of the Melbourne Town Hall, and delivered three encores to a very appreciative audience.
I just found a quote that I think sums up my thoughts on a huge proportion of the email that I receive, and regrettably, on some of the email that I send:
Look at the culture of email. It's alright to slap people around via email; it's alright to send careless, half-decipherable messages for no good reason; it's alright to contribute wholesale and without any thoughtful hesitation to the message overload of your fellows; it's alright to fire off responses without having read the message you are responding to. Use email as vacuously and irresponsibly as you wish...
My latest photos have returned from Kodak, unlike the last lot, they are of a decent quality and the scans are bearable. Obvious conclusion, Kodak knows how to develop and scan films, one-hour photo processing shops do not!
Thu, 11 Oct 2001
Links and noise // at 23:59
Another useful Novell TID:
- 10053872
- NW5 GUI using XWindows
- [http://www.pandromeda.com/]
- MojoWorld — artificial world. Just another bit of MLP from slashdot.
Should I have another rant about motorists yabbering on their mobile phones and not watching where they're driving? Probably not, its all getting a bit depressing. I was amazed at the guy who drove alongside me for 15km yesterday, sitting in the right-hand lane, holding the phone to his ear and talking the entire way!
Maybe I could rant about the constant chatter and background noise in our open plan office, but that wouldn't get me anywhere either.
Wed, 10 Oct 2001
Mon, 08 Oct 2001
More of the same // at 23:59
More on Melbourne's drivers... Or should that be “Moron; Melbourne's
Drivers. There just seems to be something about the mentality of
smokers that can't conceive of the idea that dumping a lit cigarette
out the window of a moving car is firstly littering, and secondly,
bloody dangerous to the motorcyclist behind who cops a facefull of it.
Congratulations to the lady driving RAV4 Vic. rego QPF-206, you get
the idiot of the day award. On second thoughts, congratulations to
the Victorian EPA for having a downloadable litter report form.
NT security, and a good reason to not give people the ability to boot your locked down workstations from a floppy disk. An article, and the tool — linNT.zip — referenced to reset Administrator passwords after booting from Linux.
I've dropped off my latest film to be developed. I think I've learnt my lesson after the last fiasco, so I've sent this one off to Kodak.
- [http://www.counterpane.com/]
- someone reminded me of this today. I urge everyone to read Bruce Schneier's special issue regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sat, 06 Oct 2001
Tourists for the day // at 23:59
Bacon and Eggs for breakfast, good company. Now if only my parents had good coffee, it would be perfect!
Spent the morning in Bungendore, visiting one of my favourite shops/galleries, the Bungendore Wood Works Gallery. If only we had the money to buy the pieces that we like... and the mansion to display them!
A quick visit to a winery that I've been meaning to go to for years, Lark Hill didn't have any larks in evidence. If there were any, they'd been blown into the ocean by the wind over the vines. Its only 2km from my parents' house, so after eight years it was about time to visit and sample its wares!
Then donning our disguises, Joey and I drove around Canberrra for the afternoon pretending to be tourists. There was an icy cold wind howling through the trees, so sitting in the car in the sunny spots was quite enjoyable. Felt bizarre to be visiting places I hadn't seen for years, we drove up the street where I lived from 1969 to 1983 to look at the house, so many things the same, but also some changes. The huge old gum tree was cut down, the garden turned from a semi-jungle to a flat english-style lawn.
From the top of Black Mountain we leant into the wind and laughed at the fiction coming from the security staff. According to the security staff there is an incredible danger of dishes and aerials dropping like autumn leaves from the tower, while there seems to be no problem with the general public walking past equally high buildings in the center of any city. Here is my somewhat cynical version: Prior to building the Telecom Tower, the trees around the carpark were trimmed down, and dotted around the place were sundial thingies pointing to places of interest, the view from the top was excellent and many tourists and locals drove up there to look around. Once the tower was opened you could wander around its base for free, roughly two stories off the ground, or pay an entry fee to go up to the observation deck to see the sites. Simultanously, the trees were allowed to grow up and block the view from ground level. A little while later the base was cordoned off, citing “safey reasons”. The more cynical might wonder how many tourists were making use of the free view. Now there is a sign stating that the entire concourse is a hard-hat area (which must be a pain for the staff there), all except for the entrance way where paying tourists come in!
Thu, 04 Oct 2001
Antivirus evaluation // at 23:59
Quiet day evaluation CA's eTrust anti-virus software. Unfortunately it seems to all rely on a vast infrastructure of Microsoft Windows networking, manual entry of usercodes, and manual duplication of the organizational structure already present in the NDS.
Wed, 03 Oct 2001
A meeting of minds // at 23:59
It had to happen eventually... I was halfway home, flying along the Gardiners Creek bike path and I met Marko coming the other way. Luckily we were both on the left hand side, unlike some of the riders I meet each day — Marko's a remarkably solid lad, I'd hate to hit him head-on at the speed we were both going.
Went to see a movie last night, The Bank. Lots of laughs throughout and it certainly touched a common feeling of anti-bank sentiment in the Australian public. Famous quote “I just don't like banks.”
- [http://www.crikey.com.au/]
- A bit of activism, some interesting reads, the odd rant.
Distributed Computing: book on the Grid by Kesselman and Ian Foster.
I thought I'd put this lot in a couple of days ago when something about the NSA Secure Linux popped up on slashdot. Random OS links:
- [http://www.nsa.gov/selinux]
- SeLinux — NSA's Security Enhanced Linux
- [http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/fluke/html/flask.html]
- Flask — Flux Advanced Security Kernel
- [http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit]
- OSKit — a framework and a set of 34 component libraries oriented to operating systems
- [http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux]
- Flux — The Flux Research Group works in software systems
Tue, 02 Oct 2001
MLP // at 23:59
- [http://www.ucch.org/peds-www/is/cscott.html]
- Cory L. Scott — Microsoft NT security information.
- [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/winlog/]
- Windows NT Event Logging — the Oreilly book. Must add it to the list of books to get.
- [http://www.intersectalliance.com/projects/WinNTConfig/index.html]
- WindowNT Config — step-by-step approach to locking down Microsoft operating systems.
- [http://www.intersectalliance.com/projects/Win2kConfig/]
- Windows2000 Config — step-by-step approach to locking down Microsoft operating systems.
Mon, 01 Oct 2001
Post house-moving // at 23:59
I ache all over! As Marko said during part two of the War Against the Mattress, if we did this a couple more times we'd get really fit. As it is, two days of furniture and box moving, then unpacking and repacking bookcases, has left me feeling several hundred years old.
I would add a reference to the café where we had an excellent steak dinner last night, but for some reason I can't even find them in the Telstra white pages, or in citysearch. Maybe I've imagined the whole thing? Does Saratoga really exist? Ah, maybe if I'd remembered that it was called Saragossa I'd have had more luck...
MLP
A couple of pages about the Daleks:
- [http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/grahamwalters/dalek_fr.htm]
- Dalek Extermination Page
- [http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mimrie/dalek/daleka.htm]
- Dalek Resource WebHome
