This leather pouch joins me on all my travels. Despite popular belief, it does not hold plant remains of a questionable legality, but instead carries what tea I’m inclined to treat myself to during the current spell of vagrancy. Current contents are kukicha, green tea, and a mix of loose leaf herbal from Mountain Rose – Peppermint, Chamomile, Gotu Kola, Mugwort, Damiana, Rosemary, Rose Petals, and Stevia, if we’re naming names.
Judge rules defendant can’t be forced to divulge PGP passphrase
A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination. Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords" used with the Alienware laptop. "Compelling Boucher to enter the password forces him to produce evidence that could be used to incriminate him," the judge wrote in an order dated November 29 that went unnoticed until this week. "Producing the password, as if it were a key to a locked container, forces Boucher to produce the contents of his laptop."
Steampunk: a history that wasn’t quite. At once both Victorian and Dystopic. A world filled by brass gears, pin-stripe suits, and a steam powered Deus ex Machina.
I’ve been familiar with steampunk as both a literary spin-off of cyberpunk and as a modding community, but only recently – through SteamPunk Magazine – come into it’s aberration as a subculture.
This third issue of SteamPunk Magazine is my first. I found it to be a most delightful mixture of short-fiction, interviews, tutorials, and rants. My preferred rant was My Machine, My Comrade by a one Prof. Calamity, in which he sees steampunk as “seeking[ing] to liberate the machine from simply existing as an instrument of work, while at the same time not elevating mechanical forms above all else… Steampunk seeks to find a relationship with the world of gears, steel, and steam that allows machines to not only co-inhabit our world but to be partners in our journey.” My favorite fiction was Margaret P. Killjoy’s Yena of Angeline in “Sandstorms by Gaslight” which (very much like mine own fiction) seems to go nowhere. It has no direction, and does not leave its reader with a sense of anything being accomplished, which makes it a disappointing first read. But, again and again, I find my mind wandering back to the world that Killjoy crafted and the characters that inhabit them. Ant that, I think, is some element of praise.
A SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse is a survival manual of sorts, covering basic aspects of shelter, water, and food. It should provide nothing new to the established crazy and serves as no replacement to In the Wake (or any of the works listed in the Guide’s Appendix B), though features thoughts on reclaiming urban resources that are lacking in other guides. But, like In the Wake, it is available as a free download, thus nullifying any excuse to not peruse the contents and keep it as a handy reference. I purchased it partly to support SteamPunk Magazine, but mostly for Colin Foran’s artwork, which provides a wonderful backdrop to the gritty subject of post-Civilization apocalyptic survival. Beyond comparisons to other manuals for outliving Civilization, my main criticism is that of the style of writing. Writers in the Victorian era were much more liberal than us in their use of capitalization, but there was a system. When I read those works, I feel the capitalization adds a certain emotion to the writing. Being a SteamPunk’s Guide, the author of this work (by happenstance, the same Margaret Killjoy whom I praised above) attempted to duplicate this capitalization, but failed. Whether there was or was not a system, it feels arbitrary, and detracts from the overall work. The Guide does present an attempt to emulate that era’s vocabulary, and I think does a good job of that – combining a sense of Victorian grace with modern punk and a bit of wit, for an agreeable solution of steampunk.
I’ve been inspired by the Unclutterer Flickr pool, of late. After discovering an over-due power bill buried under the liter on my desk, I decided it might be time for a cleaning.
One uncovers a number of artifacts from amidst the numerous papers. Writings of Hakim Bey, a copy of the the Canon of the Roman Catholic Mass, WPA attacks, The Laws of Manu, a not-yet-expired Montana fishing license (or “conservation license”, as they would have), crypto algorithm discussions, lockpicking guides, a zine about bikes, a song book for an Ocarina, those fake press badges I got in Bangkok, satellite photos of UPS’ local warehouse (I don’t even remember why I have those)…
It still needs work, but the space has improved, and it does a deal of good for the mind.
The weekend before last my digital camera failed miserably during an attempted balancing trick on my handlebars: it fell and busted both the lens and the mechanism that opens and closes it. Luckily, it was only a point-and-click Canon PowerShot SD450 – I’ve never been able to afford or justify a dSLR with my infantile skill. (Somebody want to buy me a Nikon D80? I’ll love you long time.) So, I replaced it with a Canon PowerShot SD1000 – basically the upgrade to my old SD450 – which arrived today.
And what image should I snap to test out the new device? Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my short time on Flickr, it’s that all the cool kids take pictures of their Moleskine journals. I thought I’d succumb to the meme and join the crowd.
Thoughtcrime Prevention Act of 2007 (H. R. 1955 and S. 1959)
The Congress finds the following: ... The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.
Maybe they meant to say Newscorp? Disney? TimeWarner? General Electric? Viacom? CBS?
Every Saturday morning, the first thing I do upon waking is go for run. After coming back and showering, I break-fast with this oatmeal, which I find to be mighty tasty.
All ingredients I acquire from the bulk section of my local food co-op (except the honey, which comes from the farmer’s market). Everything, of course, is organic.
(For me, this makes one serving. Your mileage may vary.)
So, things are looking a little different around here, no? I’ve had this design floating around in the grey-matter for a spell, but I didn’t think I’d start on it for a while yet.
Then I got bored.
I whipped it up last night and today. A lot quicker than I thought. There’s still a few tweaks I want to make, but it looks so much better than the last one, I decided to put it up before it was polished.
The design is very CSS heavy – though “heavy” might not be the right descriptor, as the whole thing is rather quite light in terms of size. CSS dependent. How’s that? The last few visions of this site have been CSS dependent, but in this one – inspired in large part by CSS Zen Garden – I’ve done my best to take out all styling from the pages and put it in the stylesheet. Of course, there’s probably a bit of legacy styling lurking here-and-there in various old blog posts. Let me know if you stumble on any.
The design has been tested in Firefox on both OS X and Ubuntu, as well as Safari in OS X. Let me know if you stumble upon any bugs, unless you’re using IE. Actually, if you’re using IE and want to send in a screenshot, I’d be curious to see how the site renders.
I’m sure someone will be curious about the stripes. I put them in there as a joke and placeholder till I figured out what I wanted to do with the background, but hell if they don’t look halfway decent. (It always ends up with me that some of the best design features start as jokes are bugs.) So, for now, they stay.
For years, I’ve always added the target attribute to links going off-site. And for a while less, I’ve wished that I hadn’t – I believe that where a link opens should be left up to the user – but never had the motivation to stop or, more importantly, go back and edit all the old links.
Till now.
Instead of the Transitional doctype, I want to validate my pages with XHTML 1.0 Strict, in which the target attribute is deprecated. Google had the answer, in the form of Lorelle’s guide on search and replacing in WP databases. It’s quite simple, even for one with database-fu as weak as mine. Just login to your database via phpMyAdmin, hit the SQL button on the upper left and enter your query.
Lorelle’s sample is:
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE ( post_content, 'Item to replace here', 'Replacement text here');
I had to change my table, which is still named from my b2/cafelog days, and so executed this:
UPDATE b2posts SET post_content = REPLACE ( post_content, 'target="_blank"', '');
Shiny!
Cyclists, skinny tires, streetcar rails: not a good mix - Seattle Times
New streetcar tracks on Seattle’s Westlake Avenue have turned into a trap for bicyclists.
The tires on a standard road bike are narrower than the 1 3/4 inch groove that holds a streetcar wheel. If a bicycle veers into that gap, it can easily get stuck, pitching the rider onto the street. … Despite the goal of Mayor Greg Nickels to triple bicycle use, the new streetcar line includes long stretches of track in the curb lanes of Westlake Avenue, where bicyclists normally ride. Many riders have adapted by riding on sidewalks, to the left of the tracks – or in the left lane, which aggravates motorists.
Obviously, I agree. Though I don’t see an issue with just switching to the left lane. It may be an annoyance to those in motorized vehicles, but, honestly, that’s their problem. If they can afford to buy a car, buy insurance, buy gas, and maintain their car, surely they can afford to slow down a bit and let us pass.
Bruce Schneir’s recent admission that he keeps his passwords in his wallet has been making rounds throughout the ‘Net. I respect his opinion, but I must admit, the idea surprises me. I suppose it makes sense, since my wallet already holds other bits of precious of an equal value, but it seems to go against my natural paranoia. I do sometimes write new passwords down and carry them on me until I memorize them, but then I incinerate the piece of paper it was written on. And when I write the password, I do it on a piece of paper placed on a hard surface, so as to not unintentionally leave an impression on a notepad. Too paranoid? Maybe.
What if I encrypted the passwords with Solitaire and carried the cyphertext with me. Still too paranoid?
For the past two months, I’ve been attending Unbridled Martial Arts – or, as I refer to it, Fight Club. It’s a mixed martial arts club, mixed gender and of various skill levels. There is no belt-system, or ranking of any kind. Tuesday and Thursday nights are stand-up fighting, which draw from the likes of muay-thai, kickboxing, judo, American boxing, and karate. Wednesday nights are weapons and grappling. The weapons training is escrima, with the weapons themselves being escrima sticks and knives. Grappling draws from wrestling, Jujutsu, judo, Shamrok submission fighting, and Israeli self-defense.
There are no contracts, so class sizes vary. Usually attendance at the stand-up fighting class is around 16, and weapons/grappling about half of that.
Rob is the only instructor (though he sometimes draws on other students to assist). He’s a great teacher, and somehow manages to split his attention throughout the class’s various skill levels. During my first few sessions, I always felt that he gave full attention to us noobs, and now, I feel like he gives his attention to those of us slightly more experienced, even when we have a batch of beginners joining the class.
All the instruction is focused on real-world street self-defense. There are very few flashy moves. I believe one could become a more effective fighter by studying a classic art, such as Aikido, for an extended period of time, but what’s taught in Fight Club is skill enough to make one sufficient in a short period of time.
As the Macbooks don’t come with PCMCIA or Express card slots, I’m unable to use my old Proxim card for less than savory acts of wireless piracy. I haven’t been able to find any USB wifi dongles that please me, so I decided to go another route.
The DD-WRT project is alternative firmware that turns your supported consumer wireless AP into an untamed beast. More to the point, it allows the AP to act as a repeater – hijacking a current signal, boosting it, and rebroadcasting. For the hardware, I bartered for a Linksys WRT54GL (v1.1) at the Bay of E. The device is supported, and has two RP-TNC jacks, allowing me to replace the default antennas with two of my uncommonly large spikes.
Despite the labyrinth of convoluted, contradictory information that is the DD-WRT wiki, installation was quite simple. First, I reset the router to factory defaults through the web interface. It was new out of the box, so I imagine already set to factory defaults, but who knows. The wiki suggests the first flash of the WRT54GL be with the mini firmware, but, after that, it can be flashed to any other version. So, I downloaded both dd-wrt.v23_sp2_mini.zip and dd-wrt.v23_sp2_standard.zip. The wiki also claims that Firefox may fubar the upgrade and suggests using IE in its stead. Not having access to IE, I went to flash dd-wrt.v23_mini_generic.bin through the web interface using Safari, which promptly failed. The router’s default firmware was in no way damaged, so I went to do the same thing again in Firefox (2.0.0.11), which worked without a hitch. Giving no explanation as to why, the wiki suggests that after one arrives at the “Upgrade Successful” screen, one should wait for the esoteric count of 5 minutes before hitting continue (perhaps while chanting some manner of incantation). I did this (minus the chanting), hit continue, and was greeted by a login prompt. The default user/pass of root/admin didn’t work, so I held down the reset switch on the back of the router for 30 seconds (leaving the power cord plugged in), after which the router booted up, accepted the root/admin login, and all was shiny. After that, I upgraded to the standard firmware without note, and quickly realized that I actually needed the v24 beta firmware. So, I grabbed dd-wrt.v24_std_generic.bin, upgraded to that (again without problem), and was finally ready to turn it into a repeater.
To set it up, I first changed the router’s IP to 192.168.69.1, so that it was on a different subnet than my target. Next, under Wireless Basic Settings, I changed the mode to Repeater, entered the target SSID, and changed the wireless channel to Auto, leaving all the other settings on their defaults. After saving those settings, I added a virtual interface with my own SSID and made sure it was set to Bridged. Then, after saving that, I followed the wiki’s advice to go to the Security tab, uncheck everything under Block WAN Requests and disabled the firewall. That was it. The router had a WAN IP displayed in the upper right hand corner, indicating that it was working.
Note that up till here, I was doing everything on the router through a wired connection, which was strongly urged in many places and seemed wise to me. At this point, I unplugged the cat5, turned on my Airport, connected to my new AP, and was online immediately.
Even after last night’s few flakes, I didn’t believe the forecaster’s call for snow this weekend. It seems much too early. But this morning I awoke to a good inch on the ground, and snow still falling (though it’s getting a bit wet, now in the afternoon).
The Farmer’s Market is dwindling, about a quarter of its usual size. Most vendors have retreated to the covered areas.
