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IPv6 @ comcast
Jan. 28th, 2010 02:04 pmI swear I'll start talking about something else soon. Or more likely, lapse back into protracted silence. Either way, you win.
Comcast just announced IPv6 trials. 2 trials in 2nd quarter this year: 6rd (v6 tunneled over v4), and native dual-stack. Then a trial of ds-lite (v4 tunneled over v6) in 3rd quarter. If you're a Comcast customer, you can volunteer to participate.
How did I find out? Someone at work saw it on Slashdot...
Comcast just announced IPv6 trials. 2 trials in 2nd quarter this year: 6rd (v6 tunneled over v4), and native dual-stack. Then a trial of ds-lite (v4 tunneled over v6) in 3rd quarter. If you're a Comcast customer, you can volunteer to participate.
How did I find out? Someone at work saw it on Slashdot...
more tech thoughts
Jan. 27th, 2010 09:33 pmAs previously noted, I released new software on Monday last week. The press release that was supposed to go out at the same time...still hasn't.
I gave a tech talk Thursday last week. The video that was supposed to be available by Friday...still isn't.
I have to admit I'm a bit conflicted about the technology. If the ISPs had been doing their job, they would have turned on IPv6 years ago, and we'd already be living in a dual-stack world. But there are costs associated with doing that (upgrading routers, upgrading home gateways, upgrading debugging and network management skills), and up til now, there's been no cost associated with not doing it. So it was pretty inevitable that we'd come to the run-in-circles-scream-and-shout stage before anything got done.
In my ideal world (which might still come to pass), we wouldn't need any kind of address-sharing technology (beyond the NAT we've already got. The network core (carrier networks, backbones, etc) could all go to IPv6 immediately. Servers should already be dual stack capable, if their providers would only provision them with v6. Many many end user devices could go dual stack or v6-only without users noticing. OTOH, my printer will never be v6-capable, but I'm not putting it on the global internet.
If it comes to the point where the carriers have to implement IPv4 address sharing, it will make everyone's life that much more complicated - users and providers both. We'll be ready for that eventuality, but it feels like we're doing the wrong thing for all the right reasons.
I gave a tech talk Thursday last week. The video that was supposed to be available by Friday...still isn't.
I have to admit I'm a bit conflicted about the technology. If the ISPs had been doing their job, they would have turned on IPv6 years ago, and we'd already be living in a dual-stack world. But there are costs associated with doing that (upgrading routers, upgrading home gateways, upgrading debugging and network management skills), and up til now, there's been no cost associated with not doing it. So it was pretty inevitable that we'd come to the run-in-circles-scream-and-shout stage before anything got done.
In my ideal world (which might still come to pass), we wouldn't need any kind of address-sharing technology (beyond the NAT we've already got. The network core (carrier networks, backbones, etc) could all go to IPv6 immediately. Servers should already be dual stack capable, if their providers would only provision them with v6. Many many end user devices could go dual stack or v6-only without users noticing. OTOH, my printer will never be v6-capable, but I'm not putting it on the global internet.
If it comes to the point where the carriers have to implement IPv4 address sharing, it will make everyone's life that much more complicated - users and providers both. We'll be ready for that eventuality, but it feels like we're doing the wrong thing for all the right reasons.
retro virus
Jan. 27th, 2010 02:04 pmToday's xkcd is apropos. My Windows box recently got fuxxored by malwarez ("Total PC Defender"). Twice. Scrubbed all traces of it, but the system still wasn't happy - random reboots while sitting idle, non-functional browsers. ClamWin antivirus didn't find anything. Finally ran three different malware scanners on the system - each found a different set of things (which doesn't really inspire me with confidence), but everything seems to be happy now. Fingers crossed.
I'm running Linux more for day-to-day stuff, but I still need Windows for things like Photoshop and InDesign; and OpenOffice frankly doesn't do a great job rendering Word documents.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd be wondering how much Microsoft has invested in the "security" industry.
I'm running Linux more for day-to-day stuff, but I still need Windows for things like Photoshop and InDesign; and OpenOffice frankly doesn't do a great job rendering Word documents.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd be wondering how much Microsoft has invested in the "security" industry.
my tech talk at google
Jan. 23rd, 2010 09:04 amI was hoping to get the url for the video before posting this, but that's probably not going to be available until Monday, oh well.
If anyone has been wondering what I've been up to lately (in addition to the Arisia Pocket Program and related works), I released a new software product on Monday. By "I", I mean I was the nominal tech lead and definite release engineer. By "new", I mean 1.0. By "software product", I mean this. By "Monday", I mean during Arisia; I did the release engineering Sunday night before going to parties, and I sent the announcement email from the bar Monday afternoon. (The press release was supposed to go out at the same time, might have gone out yesterday, might not have gone out yet, I don't know.)
Thursday (only somewhat coordinated with the release), at the invitation of Google, I gave a tech talk at their Cambridge office, which was googlecast to at least 4 other offices, and which will eventually be available on video.google. (I hadn't been there before, and was deeply amused to find them directly upstairs of Ambit Press, the people who have printed the Arisia souvenir book and pocket program for the past 5? years.) Anyway, only 4 people in the audience in Cambridge, but maybe a dozen in Oregon, 20ish in Mountain View, a few others elsewhere.
Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lyonesse for being my test audience, and helping me tweak the talk. Still, I hadn't given the talk all the way through, uninterrupted, so I didn't know how long it was going to take. Since I don't do a lot of presentations, I tend to rush through them, losing the audience along the way, and we end up staring blankly at each other. This time, I went a little over my hour, and the questions showed that they clearly understood the implications of what I was saying. So it might have been a little dumbed down, but I didn't know what kind of background to expect. I spent a while selling the problem, before selling the solution.
To save yourself waiting for the video, and to save yourself an hour of watching me babble, ( the gist of the argument is this )
Tried to post this last night, but "LiveJournal.com is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We'll be back as soon as we can!" for well over an hour, until I gave up and went to bed.
If anyone has been wondering what I've been up to lately (in addition to the Arisia Pocket Program and related works), I released a new software product on Monday. By "I", I mean I was the nominal tech lead and definite release engineer. By "new", I mean 1.0. By "software product", I mean this. By "Monday", I mean during Arisia; I did the release engineering Sunday night before going to parties, and I sent the announcement email from the bar Monday afternoon. (The press release was supposed to go out at the same time, might have gone out yesterday, might not have gone out yet, I don't know.)
Thursday (only somewhat coordinated with the release), at the invitation of Google, I gave a tech talk at their Cambridge office, which was googlecast to at least 4 other offices, and which will eventually be available on video.google. (I hadn't been there before, and was deeply amused to find them directly upstairs of Ambit Press, the people who have printed the Arisia souvenir book and pocket program for the past 5? years.) Anyway, only 4 people in the audience in Cambridge, but maybe a dozen in Oregon, 20ish in Mountain View, a few others elsewhere.
Many thanks to
lyonesse for being my test audience, and helping me tweak the talk. Still, I hadn't given the talk all the way through, uninterrupted, so I didn't know how long it was going to take. Since I don't do a lot of presentations, I tend to rush through them, losing the audience along the way, and we end up staring blankly at each other. This time, I went a little over my hour, and the questions showed that they clearly understood the implications of what I was saying. So it might have been a little dumbed down, but I didn't know what kind of background to expect. I spent a while selling the problem, before selling the solution.To save yourself waiting for the video, and to save yourself an hour of watching me babble, ( the gist of the argument is this )
Tried to post this last night, but "LiveJournal.com is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We'll be back as soon as we can!" for well over an hour, until I gave up and went to bed.
palm -> android
Mar. 15th, 2009 10:37 pmI finally drank the google kool-aid, and got a G1 (google phone).
My handset was old and basic, and the antenna was in danger of cracking and breaking off. But the thing that really pushed me over the edge was that my PDA went non-linear about a month ago - the digitizer is not accurately reporting the position of the stylus, and the problem is most acute at the bottom, in the graffiti area. Since I use a Fitaly keyboard, where precise positioning is critically important, it's bordering on useless to me now.
The thing is, after almost a decade on PalmOS devices, I have a lot of data I need to transfer to this device. For instance, for Calendar data, the Palm desktop will only export to .dba format, and Google calendar can't import that. The common advice is to use Yahoo calendar to import the .dba, and export to .csv, to import into Google calendar. However, Yahoo made a complete hash of it - it completely randomized the data, in a different way each time.
It astonishes me that a) Google calendar doesn't have a Palm import option, b) failing that, there isn't a simple app or perl script that will convert formats.
It would also be nice if I could export my Palm Address book. The Android Contacts manager only wants to import from the SIM card, and I only kept a handful of numbers on the phone itself.
Finally, I'm looking for a replacement for Handy Shopper - the app that immediately doubled the value of my Palm. There are plenty of shopping list apps for Android, and every one I've tried Sucks, in really egregious, unacceptable ways. I don't really want to have to become a UI developer, but it's going to be tough to live without this one.
My handset was old and basic, and the antenna was in danger of cracking and breaking off. But the thing that really pushed me over the edge was that my PDA went non-linear about a month ago - the digitizer is not accurately reporting the position of the stylus, and the problem is most acute at the bottom, in the graffiti area. Since I use a Fitaly keyboard, where precise positioning is critically important, it's bordering on useless to me now.
The thing is, after almost a decade on PalmOS devices, I have a lot of data I need to transfer to this device. For instance, for Calendar data, the Palm desktop will only export to .dba format, and Google calendar can't import that. The common advice is to use Yahoo calendar to import the .dba, and export to .csv, to import into Google calendar. However, Yahoo made a complete hash of it - it completely randomized the data, in a different way each time.
It astonishes me that a) Google calendar doesn't have a Palm import option, b) failing that, there isn't a simple app or perl script that will convert formats.
It would also be nice if I could export my Palm Address book. The Android Contacts manager only wants to import from the SIM card, and I only kept a handful of numbers on the phone itself.
Finally, I'm looking for a replacement for Handy Shopper - the app that immediately doubled the value of my Palm. There are plenty of shopping list apps for Android, and every one I've tried Sucks, in really egregious, unacceptable ways. I don't really want to have to become a UI developer, but it's going to be tough to live without this one.
(no subject)
Nov. 21st, 2006 12:38 amApproximately 4 people will appreciate this, but that's what LJ is for...
Cell tower covered with buzzards...
It's Rudy and the Minions!
(thanks to BoingBoing)
Cell tower covered with buzzards...
It's Rudy and the Minions!
(thanks to BoingBoing)
(no subject)
Jan. 29th, 2006 12:47 amTook advantage of yet another weekend of unseasonably warm weather, and went biking today. I'm usually such a weenie about cold-weather biking, because I don't have the appropriate cold-weather gear. But I've fallen under the influence of Rivendell, and I've come to realize that I don't need fleecy spandex and what-not; I can bike in jeans and a sweatshirt. Just like I used to do when I was a kid. How...liberating.
Anyway, the ride was great, except for a mile or so of UNPAVED, UNPLOWED road. The snow was packed down and all, but it was also soft, and my skinny tires were cutting through it and slipping all over the place. Where it wasn't snow, it was all mud and pot-holes, which were honestly much easier to negotiate. But other than that, great ride.
But it's time to make some mods to the bike. Out of my three downtube-shifter-double-chainring-6-gear bikes, this is the one I ride, and I love it except that it doesn't have enough low gears for effective hill climbing, and the rear shifter slips under load (like hill climbing). So I want Rivendell's "power ratchet" shifters, and I want to convert the double to triple. This means a new crankset, longer bottom bracket, probably a new front derailleur...
In other news, I spent way too much of the past week trying to rebuild my friend Dan's laptop. His hard drive was reporting imminent failure (they do a lot of self monitoring these days), and freezing up post-boot. I got a new hard drive and USB enclosure, but data transfer wasn't smooth. Knoppix does a great job of reading NTFS, and I've used it before to recover data off a drive with more severe problems than this. But it can't seem to write to NTFS file systems worth a damn. dd_rescue took 15 hours to copy a 40G disk, and ended up producing crap. In the end, I used a shareware windows app, and it performed flawlessly in about half an hour. If I knew then what I know now, I would have had it back to him last weekend. But he was still grateful enough to pay me in beer. Mmm, beer...
Anyway, the ride was great, except for a mile or so of UNPAVED, UNPLOWED road. The snow was packed down and all, but it was also soft, and my skinny tires were cutting through it and slipping all over the place. Where it wasn't snow, it was all mud and pot-holes, which were honestly much easier to negotiate. But other than that, great ride.
But it's time to make some mods to the bike. Out of my three downtube-shifter-double-chainring-6-gear bikes, this is the one I ride, and I love it except that it doesn't have enough low gears for effective hill climbing, and the rear shifter slips under load (like hill climbing). So I want Rivendell's "power ratchet" shifters, and I want to convert the double to triple. This means a new crankset, longer bottom bracket, probably a new front derailleur...
In other news, I spent way too much of the past week trying to rebuild my friend Dan's laptop. His hard drive was reporting imminent failure (they do a lot of self monitoring these days), and freezing up post-boot. I got a new hard drive and USB enclosure, but data transfer wasn't smooth. Knoppix does a great job of reading NTFS, and I've used it before to recover data off a drive with more severe problems than this. But it can't seem to write to NTFS file systems worth a damn. dd_rescue took 15 hours to copy a 40G disk, and ended up producing crap. In the end, I used a shareware windows app, and it performed flawlessly in about half an hour. If I knew then what I know now, I would have had it back to him last weekend. But he was still grateful enough to pay me in beer. Mmm, beer...
In the past three days, I've delivered to the printer the Arisia Souvenir Book and Program Guide. The PG is an insert into the book, with the long program item descriptions and participant bios. Really, it was Skip's project, but I had to take over at least the delivery, in order to ensure that it matched the style and production values of the book. So I was up all night, taking changes up until 7:30, delivered to the printer's ftp site at 7:45.
Between the two, I've gotten maybe 3 nights sleep over the last week, and I'm coming down with a sudden (but well-timed) cold right now.
Check it out.
I wouldn't ordinarily repeat something that I've linked to (albeit indirectly), but here is the workflow for the Program Guide:
Between the two, I've gotten maybe 3 nights sleep over the last week, and I'm coming down with a sudden (but well-timed) cold right now.
Check it out.
I wouldn't ordinarily repeat something that I've linked to (albeit indirectly), but here is the workflow for the Program Guide:
1. Jack runs a couple reports on Zambia, one for the program descriptions, one for the bios.
2. He saves them to disk, opens them in Excel, performs some manipulations to strip out the html, saves them as CSV, and mails them to Skip.
3. Skip runs the csv files through a TECO filter to convert the line breaks from naked carriage return (I'm guessing Jack's on a Mac), plus other unspecified manipulations.
4. He runs the output of that through a DCL filter for more perl-like manipulations. This creates a SQL/Access-like database on the VAX, from which he generates a pair of html files. (This database also generates the CSV files for the Pocket Program, and a (different?) CSV file for the Palm Schedule.) He posts the pair of html files on his website, and sends notification email.
5. I download the html, and hand-apply some corrections I know about. (I could have just run it through diff3|ed to merge changes. Oh well.)
6. I run the patched html through a perl filter to do further manipulations and corrections, some based on demoroniser, but many specific to the way I want the text formatted. This generates yet another pair of html files.
7. InDesign can't import html directly, so I open the html in Word and save it as doc. While I'm in there, I change all paragraph styles "Normal (Web)" to "Normal".
8. By this time, I've already set up the InDesign document, and specified how I want the styles "Normal", "Heading 3", and "Heading 4" to be formatted. The doc files are "linked" to the InDesign document, so if I update the doc, I just tell InDesign to re-link, and it re-imports the files in situ, with the InDesign formatting instead of the Word formatting.
9. Then I apply Eyeball Mark 1, and tweak the formatting of individual paragraphs as needed. When I'm reasonably satisfied, I export it as pdf, and post the pdf and the corrected html to my website.
10. For last-minute changes, I edit the "source" html (from Skip), and repeat steps 6-9. The actual time from editing the input html file to posting the pdf output is about 5 minutes.
Rube Goldberg would be proud.
map wanking
Oct. 14th, 2005 12:46 amFrancie recently got a shower curtain with a world map on it, which is a joy to behold, but it only took a couple minutes to start poking holes in it, as it were. So here I am, sitting on the toilet, armed with a globe, an atlas, the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, the CIA World Factbook, the World Gazetteer, the UN List of Member States, and Wikipedia (and a really crappy wireless connection, I might add), ( proof-reading the shower curtain )
There. You were warned. Give yourself extra points if you were compelled to get a map. Give yourself double-extra points if you didn't need a map.
There. You were warned. Give yourself extra points if you were compelled to get a map. Give yourself double-extra points if you didn't need a map.
