Wed, 29 Sep 2004
Round Robin Network Time Protocol
A little bit of online technology I've been using for the last couple of
months is the pool.NTP service
provided at (surprisingly) pool.ntp.org. NTP is used to keep your local system
clocks synchronised by using some of the bigger, more accurate clocks such as
atomic or radio clocks.
Traditionally you would add three or four server names/IP addresses to your NTP configuration file and the time would be pulled down and used, the downside to this included the need to ensure the remote servers were still available and the issue of being a burden as the teeming hordes of NTP clients hit the same servers again and again.
The pool.ntp.org servers get around this problem by using round-robin DNS to make both the client configuration easy and reduce the strain on the servers themselves. In the config file instead of adding different servers you add the same entry each time, in my case I add 'uk.pool.ntp.org', if you try pinging this name then each couple of tries you will receive the response from a different IP address. While this may not seem very helpful from the client side (you still have to add the config entries anyway, unless you use Debian :)) from a server operators perspective it helps spread the traffic, instead of the first few listed servers getting hit by everyone the round robin helps distribute the load.
If you've read this far then you probably run your own ntp client or server. If you use a client then change the config to use the pooled NTP, if you run a server then please consider adding yourself to the available servers.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/29 19:49 | /tools/online | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
/etc/release -- Consistency, never heard of it!
If you are working on a modern Unix machine (no, thats not an oxymoron)
then it's annoying difficult to determine the operating system name and
version running. Where you should just be able to type '/etc/release' and
get the relevant details you instead need to either guess or brute-force your
way through the possibilities. Debian stores this info in
'/etc/debian_version', Redhat in '/etc/redhat_release'. You know the world
is going to end when Solaris makes the most sense and puts this information
in '/etc/release'. Why is this better? Because it doesn't assume my scripts
know where they are running, they can determine that from the contents of
the file itself!
A warning to one and all, this is going to become my new crusade ;)
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/29 19:30 | /operatingsystems/linux | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 22 Sep 2004
Generating WSDL from Java Source
I had a
little rant on this subject a while ago about the practises of some
companies when it comes to evalling software. After some more digging I
found a solution I was happy to recommend for the task; webMethods Glue.
I had some trouble using the generated WSDL with a Perl SOAP::Lite server but it was nothing ten minutes fiddling didn't solve. While I've only looked at the java2wsdl converter that single component did exactly what I wanted.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/22 18:56 | /tools/commandline | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Running Multiple FireFox Versions Simultaneously
While testing a small FireFox plugin in both 0.9.3 and PR-1 I noticed a
small oddity. Open 0.9.3, leaving this window open try and open an instance
of PR-1. When both windows are open click on the Help menu, now select
'About Mozilla FireFox'. Both windows are version 0.9.3.
I'm note sure if this is a bug with FireFox opening new windows with a 'getobject' call rather than a 'create object' call (that is a serious over simplification! :)) and having an instance of the already running version returned or if it's something weird with my settings under the 'tabbed browser settings' plugin but it is odd and it caught me for a couple of minutes as I wondered how my plugin was already installed.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/22 18:48 | /tools/firefox | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Running Behind -- Again
If you are expecting an email, call or anything else from me this week
then there is a pretty good chance it ain't coming. I've come down with
the flu and I've been going to work, doing the minimum hours, coming home
and crashing out. What's that noise? Violins? For me? ;)
While I'm typing I'd like to note that my packetstorm feeds actually seem to be getting more users, any other time I'd be ecstatic but come on people move to the official ones so i can shut mine down.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/22 18:44 | /meta | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Mon, 20 Sep 2004
Pragmatic Project Automation Review
I finally got around to reading the very good Pragmatic Project Automation,
the short summary is that it's excellent for new Java coders, a good read
for new developers of .NET or dynamic languages, a useful but not critical
read for people with four/five years experience in delivering software and
working in small teams.
The review is now up on the London PM Reviews page and also, surprise surprise, on the Liverpool Java User Group. They asked if they could use, I said yes and lo it was uploaded :)
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/20 20:13 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 19 Sep 2004
Just Don't (3 of ?) - Set up a Website Without ServerAliases
Here is a rarity, something that annoys the hell out of me :). If you have
a website then your goal is to get people to view it, or at least it should
be if you're sane. So why the heck do so many site admins require me to
type in the 'www.' before I can view the site? All it needs is a
"ServerAlias domainname" in the Apache config; or what ever you IIS people
use instead. Your users can then access the site with a simple
http://domainname.tld and everything works fine. And I might actually use your
site and click on the damn adverts.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/19 21:23 | /justdont | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
IRC -- The Infinite Monkey Theory at Work
I've never been a huge IRC
person but I do like amusing quotes, if you get a bored five minutes it's
well worth having a sift through both Bash.org and QDB.us. The quality of the humour varies a lot
but some of it is good wholesome geek humour. And a lot of it isn't :)
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/19 09:51 | /sites | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Incomplete Ideas -- Knoppix, UML and CDs in books
If you're reading this site then there are pretty good odds you own a
number of tech books, take a look around your shelves and admire your
collection. Now think about the number of those books that include a CD,
next try and think of an included CD that was actually useful. Did you
think of any? If you did you are a better man than me.
One of the reasons CDs are seldom included in tech books is the shelf life of the book vs the software contained within. A book can sit on a shelf for years, by the time someone buys the book the software may not even run on the current kernel version of a *Nix box; this is more a Unix problem as Microsoft are actually good at ensuring backwards compatibility. The other downside here is that the contents of the CD are "added value" and are not part of everyones experience with the book.
I'm going to make a suggestion for an in-book CD that will actually ADD value to the book rather than just be an afterthought, and it's all made possible by the power of Linux. My fictional books title is NFS the complete guide, on the CD is a custom version of Knoppix that boots into a GUI and runs a UML instance in the background. The reader can then work through the book as usual but at any point they want to get hands on and understand more about what they are doing they drop in the CD, boot up and then have a client and a server, both mostly ready for use, that are configured to represent the ideal environment to test out the examples in the book. In this case one instance of the server would have NFS support compiled in to allow the reader to experiment with exporting mount points in a known working environment while the second would require a kernel compile to add NFS taking the user through the process step-by-step. Or the reader could do it the old way and set up their own test machines.
None of this requires any local modification to the local disk-drives or their contents. If the user wants to save files then they can either save to a USB key (which are insanely cheap these days) or to an online ftp/web/workplace server that will hold their files. The example given above is a simple one but the concept applies to a number of different book types, network service related books (DNS, DHCP) are ideal, another example would be a book on DNS, the CD could contain two servers to allow the reader to test out the information presented in the chapters on delegation or replication. More end user focused topics such as using OpenOffice could be done just as easily.
So what are the down-sides? More work for the people producing the books is the most obvious, assuming the user has a machine with enough grunt to drive the UMLs is a second. As the title stated this idea isn't complete but it's one I feel is worth watching, the technologies involved seem ideal for each other and open up a number of powerful options.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/19 00:01 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sat, 18 Sep 2004
Computer Equipment and Exchange Rates
I'd like to see the European Union spend some more time investigating
regional pricing. I'm in the market for a new monitor and I've seen a
number of people recommend the Dell 2001FP, it's a nice looking monitor
with a good spec. More importantly everyone who has bought one has
recommended it. This monitor looks pretty good and I considered buying one.
Being a diligent consumer I decided to do some pricing, for comparison
lets use the details at Dell 2001FP
UK and Dell 2001FP US.
The monitor from Dell US costs, in the sale, 809.10 USD. The monitor in the UK costs 650 GBP. Those numbers looked a little out to me so I used the excellent xe.com and found out that, at the current exchange rates, 809.10 USD is equivalent to 451.63 GBP, nearly a third cheaper than buying the monitor in Europe. Kiss my purchase goodbye.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/18 23:02 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Programming Ruby 2nd Edition
I do most of my small scripts and minor hacks in Perl, it's
powerful, cross-platform and it has CPAN. While I've spent some time investigating
other languages such as Python, Groovy and even sed and awk for certain
tasks, only one has held my interest; Ruby.
It was recently announced that the second edition of the Pragmatic Programmers Programming Ruby (the pickaxe book) is now available for preorder in PDF and dead tree formats. I've put my order in and if you're interested in getting things done quickly in a language that makes it extremely easy to write maintainable code I'd suggest you do the same. Don't just take my word for it, the first edition is freely available online, have a look for yourself. You can find the HTML version of the first edition of Programming Ruby at the other end of that link.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/18 21:57 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 08 Sep 2004
I've added a new entry to my miniprojects page, the getpageranks script (written in Perl) allows you to pass in a file containing URL's, one to a line with whitespace and comments allowed. Each entry in the file will then be checked with Google and the PageRank will be displayed.
Note: If an invalid URL is given the PageRank will be returned as zero, this makes it very difficult to determine which sites are invalid and which are just unpopular. Although you may consider them equivalent ;)
The getpageranks script itself is very short and should be easy to follow. For full usage instructions run the command with either -h or -u.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/08 23:50 | /perl | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Google::PageRank - About time.
Unless you run IE on Windows
with the Google toolbar installed it's always been difficult to determine
the PageRank of any given URL, while a FireFox/Mozilla extension was created it
was, from my experiences, very flaky. It also required manual use.
I was pleasantly surprised today to see a module called Google::PageRank hit my local CPAN mirror. I've had a quick play and it worked on all my test cases. Tool writers, start your engines!
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/08 22:10 | /perl | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Open Office - It's the little things
My current employer uses Adobe software to print PDFs from a number of
programs, Visio, Project, Word and Excel are prime examples. In a
valiant attempt to avoid giving Adobe more money we decided to have a look
elsewhere and see what was available for Windows users.
It didn't take long to notice OpenOffice, it has document compatibility with Word and Excel and integrated PDF printing; it's just not very good. Here is an example using Excel, you select the current worksheet and click the print PDF button. It prints all worksheets. You then start digging and select Tools - Options - Spreadsheet - Print - Print only selected sheets. This works for normal printing but not from the PDF button. This is where you look at Word in a new light.
You then do some googling and discover Print Single worksheet as PDF. Then comes the head scratching and the cursing. If you select File > Export as PDF you get to name the file AND THEN you can choose the worksheets to print. ARGH!
I'll skip the bit about OpenOffice not displaying the document styles properly and leave my few remaining hairs where they are.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/08 20:17 | /tools/gui | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 05 Sep 2004
I'm Not a Macintosh Man
Firstly I'm going to disclose the fact I have a Mac, it's an old G3
iBook which has three very important features, it's got good battery
life, weighs very little and has easy to install and use wireless. This
is what I call my convention computer and it gets taken to all the tech
events I attend; but thats about it.
I had a discussion with a couple of GLLUG members this weekend about laptops and the fact soon emerged that I'm not exactly fluent with the Macs GUI. While I'm a firm believer of investing time with your tools three main problems stop me from using my Mac seriously. In addition to the iBook I also own a couple of older Dell Latitudes, each of them runs Windows (2000 and currently a 2003 eval copy.) These machines bear the brunt of my working hours.
Firstly they have better keyboards, everything is in the right place and fits under my fingers, while I could learn the iBooks layout it's not worth the investment considering all the other machines I use on a daily basis (while providing support and similar circumstances) use a layout similar to the Dells; I'll also mention here that the G3 iBooks keyboard feels really flimsy. Rant: Never put the function key at the bottom left, that's where the Control key lives!
Secondly the OSX Finder sucks. I've used KDE, GNOME, OSX, Enlightenment etc and I always end up coming back to Windows Explorer, as a file manager its UI is better and it allows me to navigate with the keyboard, especially the arrow keys. The third reason, and this is the real killer for me at the moment, is the lack of virtualisation software. Running under Windows on X86 I have the excellent VMWare, the slightly less usable Virtual PC and if I'm running Linux the almost built in UML
While the Mac has Virtual PC (or at least the version of it Microsoft are willing to ship it is, in my opinion, the weakest of the three options available for Windows. I'll admit it, I'm a VMWare fan boy, I've used it at numerous companies and it just rocks on Linux or Windows. Once VMWare and UML get ported to the Mac, I can afford one with a decent keyboard and the Finder is actually enjoyable to work with I'll consider using an Apple laptop on a daily basis, until then I'm keeping an Intel Inside.
As a footnote I'm mightily surprised at the number of Free Software and OpenSource people that use OSX. It's a closed operating system, not to mention the fact that the owners are pretty good at getting look-a-like themes shutdown. If I'm going to use a closed propriety system I may as well keep my skills relevant to the 95% of the computer using world and stick with a Windows box.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/05 19:43 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sat, 04 Sep 2004
You Need to be a Little Crazy not to like this book
I've just finished reading You Need to Be a Little Crazy, a book that
puts the life and day to day activities of an entrepreneur under the
magnifying glass.
The book is a pretty balanced look at the type of people that set up a company under normal circumstances (not a bubble), the down-sides and potential risks are mentioned to deter the casual and uncommitted members of the audience while the author conveys the reasons he enjoys the challenge and tries again and again; even when everything goes wrong.
It's not a bad book and I'd give it 6/10 due to the fact it covers the topic in a much more realistic and less sugar coated way than many of the other books on the topic.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/04 13:46 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Thu, 02 Sep 2004
Packetstorm Security Official Feeds
For the last year or so I've been offering access to a set of RSS feeds for Packetstorm Security,
these feeds scrape the latest exploits, files and other similar
web-pages. While they were originally for my own benefit they became quite
popular and they have a good few hundred people watching them.
Unfortunately due to the fact the data is screen scraped from the HTML the feeds have proven to be an annoyance to me whenever the site changed its layout, which wasn't often enough for me to ditch them but it was often enough to lose me a couple of Friday nights, firstly I'd like to say thanks to all the people that emailed me letting me know they liked them and wanted them fixed and working. Secondly I'd like to point out that Packetstorm have now started to expose their own RSS Packetstorm Security feeds. The feeds can be found at the bottom of the linked to page.
I'll be leaving my feeds up for a couple of months and putting the occasional post in the feed pointing to the official ones, after that I'll be taking them off line. The feeds being produced from the Packetstorm databases should be more up to date and robust than mine could be.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/02 17:07 | /unixdaemon | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 01 Sep 2004
Friendster caught in the Chasm
Crossing the chasm
is possibly THE book to read on marketing and selling in tech start ups,
I've done three of them and it gets really disturbing to sit in the office
and say "Oh no, we're entering chapter two."; it really is that
insightful.
One of the basic premises from the book is that technical adoption follows a pattern, firstly you get innovators and early adopters. These are followed by the pragmatists, the conservatives and eventually the luddites. You may ask "How's this relevant to the title of this entry?" Friendster seems to be unaware of this books content but in a new and exciting way. Many times companies have floundered trying to get out of a niche market and grow but Friendster haven't even managed to make the obvious mistake, instead they alienated the innovators and early adopters.
Social software is a new and emerging technology, it's main champions are smart, literate people such as 'troutgirl' and the hordes of tech bloggers flinging enthusiasm and free PR at the existing services. Friendster seems to have missed the importance of this market and has shot itself in the foot before it even reached the edge of the chasm. If I could remember the details of my account I'd cancel it and never even miss it, for now I'll settle for writing this.
Note: I don't have an Amazon affiliate link so I make no money from that book link. Sometimes I'm dumb like that :)
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2004/09/01 20:09 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
