Tue, 14 Mar 2006
Hiatus!
I'm not going to be about much until May. The site'll be pretty quiet and
don't expect much in the way of email or phone replies.
Dean
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Posted: 2006/03/14 12:21 | /unixdaemon | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Thu, 09 Mar 2006
Live Clipboard - Bring it on!
It's an evolution rather than a revolution but Ray
Ozzies introduction to Live Clipboard over at spaces.msn.com is an
interesting read. The Live
Clipboard Screencasts are also worth viewing.
What I find more interesting than the actual Live Clipboard stuff itself (which is pretty neat) is that Microsoft has noticed, and seems to like, Microformats... It might just be me but that seems odd.
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Posted: 2006/03/09 19:18 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Simon Willison's ETech JavaScript Tutorial
Simon never fails to impress as a speaker and his Javascript tutorial
is one of the most talked about sessions from this years Etech. Judging
by the quality of the JavaScript
tutorial material he's put up on his own site I can see why. Read the
PDF first and then go through the slides. They are well worth the time.
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Posted: 2006/03/09 19:12 | /misctech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Linda Smith - Wittiest Living Person
I'm behind on actual (non-slashdot covered) news again so it came as quite
a shock to find out that Linda Smith,
who never failed to amuse, passed away in February. Whether on TV or radio
she always raised a smile. Her death is a loss to all fans of good comedy.
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Posted: 2006/03/09 18:59 | /nottech | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Google Having Problems Recruiting?
Both Dave Cross
and Slashdot
have recently commented on Googles problems hiring engineers. I've been
quite surprised at how much effort I've seen them expend on it recently.
From a stall of overly enthusiastic people at FOSDEM, to speakers at UKUUG and the
Vint Cerf recruitment tour they're more than willing to throw resources at
the problem.
Just before Christmas I got an email from Google recruitment asking if I'd be interested in going for an interview, and you know what? I wasn't. I don't know why, but a job at Google just doesn't appeal to me. I have this, probably undeserved, image of them being very academic and elitist. It might just be the bits I've heard about their interviews and some of the questions but I can't seem to shake that preconception. And I don't fit that kind of environment. I'm self-taught, I've never had to learn the fastest way to reverse a string in place. If I ever needed to I can look it up. Ironically, I'd probably use Google.
Thinking about where not to work got me thinking about places I would like to work. In the IT industry there are very few big names that immediately leapt out, and the few that did were the obvious ones: IBM - they do *everything*. Microsoft - they are living in interesting times. Working with Don Box or Chris Sells would be amazing. Novell - but not in Netware or Groupwise, Yahoo! - in certain "exciting departments". Amazon - the web services or infrastructure teams could be challenging.
My last few jobs have been financially stable, it might be time to work at another startup, I've had long enough away to recover from the last couple :)
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Posted: 2006/03/09 18:48 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 08 Mar 2006
IRC Quotes From bash.org - Command Line Tool
One of my guilty pleasures is reading through IRC quotes. I hate to think how much time I've spent reading my way through bash.org and qdb.us. While playing with
Template::Extract today I found myself needing a simple,
structured site to experiment with. And it resulted in the bash_quotes command line
tool.
The script is pretty simple, if you call it without an argument it gets
the quotes from the "Latest" page. If you call 'bash_quotes
-r' then it'll fetch a random set. You can then run it numerous
times to fill any amount of spare time. Which may not be a good thing.
I'm quite impressed with Template::Extract, it's a very neat way of
extracting data from websites without doing a lot of state retention in
your own code.
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Posted: 2006/03/08 21:11 | /tools/commandline | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
LPI Exams - How do you learn best?
This years FOSDEM had some representatives from the LPI conducting exams. LPI also
did something similar at last years Linux Expo, and each time people seemed
to really like the chance to take the exams cheaply and discuss their
preparation with other candidates before the session. And then come out
bonded from the pressure :)
To me this seems to be a perfect opportunity for some group collaboration at a LUG level. The only question is how do people learn best?
After thinking about it for a while there are two ways of doing this that appeal to me. The first one is for the more advanced Linux users who just want the cert. Have a one day LPI cram (possibly on a Saturday as if it were a normal GLLUG) where people quiz each other on the different objectives and then do the exam the next day. If enough people are interested then it should be possible to get an LPI rep in to oversee the exam taking.
The downside to this is that the more advanced users, who this approach would target, don't typically come together to do things like this. From the people I've spoken to they'd be more interested in meeting up a couple of hours before the exam for some last minute chatting and then take the exam.
The second approach would be a longer term, and more suitable for people less... confident... with their skills. The group'd agree on a decent book (maybe LPI in a Nutshell 2nd Edition from O'Reilly) and then put together a rough time line, a mailing list and a (ew) wiki for people to discuss the topics, ask questions, share flashcards etc. and then study group through the objectives.
At a predetermined date get the LPI people in for an afternoon and have them conduct an exam locally. Possibly with the more advanced, self-study people, coming in for the discounted exams.
This wouldn't even have to be a single LUG thing. All the learning would be either in the privacy of your own home or on 'Net based resources (list and wiki). The only time your physical location would count is when the exams are to be taken. I assume the LPI people require a certain number of candidates before they'll send someone along. It's only in the idea stages for now but it does interest me.
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Posted: 2006/03/08 20:53 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
AppArmour Presentation - Done and Dusted!
With a mere two days notice the London Linux/Unix community managed to
pull together an impressive 22 people to see Crispin Cowan, chief
architect of AppArmor (and previously CTO and co-founder of Immunix)
present AppArmor.
The talk went down well, you can now get a video of the material from the FOSDEM AppArmor presentation and see for yourself, and afterwards the speaker came out to the pub and managed to keep a crowd entertained until the witching hour. I enjoyed it, from feedback the audience enjoyed it, and the speaker seemed to have a good time.
People to thank, for this one are: Fotango for providing a venue on short notice. Crispin for actually speaking and the audience for coming out on a cold night without much notice.
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Posted: 2006/03/08 20:49 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Know Thy Open Network ports
Which ports do your servers have open right now? How did you check?
Netstat? Are you really sure that it's doing the right thing? What the host
claims to be exporting isn't always the same as what other hosts on the
network see. When did your DNS server start exposing that TCP port? Has it
always been there?
I want a tool that keeps track of what ports a machine has open and shows me changes (and tracks when things change). It has to scan the whole port range from top to bottom and it needs to do UDP scans in under a couple of hours. Think of tripwire but for network ports. Changes have to be approved or they keep being flagged as suspicious. As a side effect it'll also show you when things go away. Hard to write? Not really. But why don't most of us already have it built and running?
It's also worth pointing out that this isn't the same role that programs like Nagios fill. You tell Nagios what to watch and it picks up changes in that limited scope. I want something to watch the whole (finite) port range and show me things I didn't think about.
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Posted: 2006/03/08 20:45 | /security | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 07 Mar 2006
London Perl Monger Tech Meet - March 23rd (2006)
After a previous false start I'm pleased to announce the
March London Perl Mongers technical meeting will actually be happening!
Presenting on the night are the two main speakers - Dave Cross : "What's Wrong With ORM?" Richard Jones : "OCaml for Perl Programmers" And a Cornish handful of quality lightning talks (5 minutes each) - Alistair McGlinchy : "Net::SNMP and Cisco" Leon Brocard : "Make real things with PDF::API2" Nicholas Clark : "The Perl Foundation, their money, and how to get it." Paul Hammond : "Introduction to JSON" Stig Brautaset : "Module::Build::Kwalitee" Tom Hukins : "Tracing code with Aspect.pm"
The tech meet will begin at 19:15 at the Fotango offices and should end about 20:30. After the talks we'll head for food and drink in one of the local pubs.
This is the first London PM tech meet in a fair while so it's also an ideal time to come along to your first meeting.
We've still got a couple of slots left, if you've got a perl related topic you'd like to speak on (especially if it's a lightning talk) drop me a note.
If you'd like to attend please sign up.
Details -
Times: Start at 19:15 on March 23rd, 2006.
End at 20:30. (hopefully the same night...)
Address: Fotango Ltd.
64 Ironmonger Row
London
EC1V 3QR
United Kingdom
Map
Directions
Signup page.
I hope to see some of you on the night.
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Posted: 2006/03/07 18:01 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sat, 04 Mar 2006
dean.wilson3@virgin.net - Gone!
If you want to contact me then please use the gmail address given on the About Me page. While
dean.wilson3@virgin.net was my main address for a number of years (about
seven) it's been getting less and less use over the last 18 months, I now
send all my mail via a different address, and it's finally time to put
it to sleep. It's gone as of the end of February.
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Posted: 2006/03/04 19:54 | /meta | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
