| Drumming and going deaf... 2006-08-20 13:18:45 ET |
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YOU MUST LASH OUT WITH EVERY LIMB... LIKE THE OCTOPUS WHO PLAYS THE DRUMS!
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| Some observations 2006-08-20 10:41:13 ET |
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OBSERVATION I
If you create an account in Linux (let's call it "Deckard") and when prompted to create a password and press enter without typing anything in until it accepts it then your non-existant password gets stored as a hash in the password file even though you've entered no password. Now when you try to log into the system as "Deckard" you get a password prompt. So you push enter and the system logs you in. If, on the other hand, you type in any password then the system won't allow you to login.
Now if you go into the password file and delete Deckard's password hash from the password file then save, logout, and then try to login again as Deckard locally you won't be prompted for a password! It'll just ask you for your username and then once you type in "Deckard" it'll log you right in....
BUT
if you try to login remotely as "Deckard" you'll get prompted for a password! And no matter what you type it won't let you in.
....
OBSERVATION II
When you start up gAIM, go into the Account manager, put in your account info, and then login it actually saves your Buddy List. This becomes a problem because gAIM doesn't update it. For example, you have two sets of groups on your Buddy List. Let's call this group "Friends" and "Co-workers." Now let's say that you have a co-worker named "Bob" and you're using the normal AIM client. You realize that Bob has now become a good friend of yours and so you move him from the "Co-workers" group to the "Friends" group. Then you go home and load up gAIM and... and you notice that your gAIM buddy list hasn't been updated to reflect the change! In fact gAIM rarely, if ever, updates your Buddy List. The way to update it is to remove your account from the gAIM client's account manager and then recreate it.
****
These 2 observations are probably already known but I only noticed them in the few past months.
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| Tin Foil 2006-07-09 09:47:56 ET |
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(Writing this in the 10 minutes that I have before I have to leave for the train.)
Everybody has a stereotype about something. Hell, one of the most common stereotypes around is the one where some loonie guy, bored, alone, crazy in a trailer park, makes a tin-foil hat to block out the government's mind control rays. And we all laugh and think to ourselves how it's ridiculous to think that the government is trying to control people's minds over the air or that tin foil would block out anything like that. We just think that and laugh. We never actually try it out. We don't make a tin foil hat, put it on, and wait to see what happens.
I have.
It started out as a joke. I found some instructions on the interner about how to make a hat out of a sheet of newspaper. So I made one. And then, as a joke, I made another one out of a sheet of newspaper lined with tin foil. And then I put it on.
I laughed about this for the first few hours of wearing the tin-foil hat. But after half a day had passed I had started noticing things. Strange, unusual things. Things started to double. To overlay on top of themselves as if the world was made out of two layers, one on top of the other, and the top layer had started to skew. Tracers would fill my vision as I walked through my house, moving my hands in front of my eyes, wondering what in the world was going on.
Then I started to hear the voices.
They didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere. No, instead I started hearing what was already there. Like when one hears the ticking of a clock only when one notices it. What I always thought was background noise was now revealed to be a reverie of voices spouting out strange commands and making weird sounds that seemed to compell me into certain motions and actions. But as my awareness of the voices grew stronger, their effect on my actions weakened with every passing minute.
I know now what the dogs bark at at night.
The voices kept gradually growing in volume and the new duality of the world seemed to begin to shake with the increased amplitude. Soon I could see through the skews of the world. I could see the white room on the other side of the view that was in front of me. The world was a mosquito net picture drawn over something completely different.
I could see beyond.
And then I noticed that it was time for me to go to bed. So I took the tin foil hat off and went to bed.
Everybody has a stereotype about something. Hell, one of the most common stereotypes around is the one where some loonie guy, bored, alone, crazy in a trailer park, makes a tin-foil hat to block out the government's mind control rays. And we all laugh and think to ourselves how it's ridiculous to think that the government is trying to control people's minds over the air or that tin foil would block out anything like that. We just think that and laugh. We never actually try it out. We don't make a tin foil hat, put it on, and wait to see what happens.
(And I'm off to catch my train. Maybe I'll rewrite this later. Whatevers.)
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| Bad news and good news. 2006-07-06 09:28:01 ET |
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So the bad news is that NYC will not break 90 degrees Farenheight at all this July! That effing sucks!
The good news is that the Sixth Hope ( http://www.hope.net ) is only 2 weeks away.
I've quit my job and am learning a bunch of stuff now.
Anyways, I got rid of Asterisk@HOME on one box here and installed Slackware 10.2 over it. Apparently Asterisk@HOME was using GRUB (Grand Unified Bootloader) and it didn't get properly wiped from the MBR of the drive so I booted into Damn Small Linux using a live-cd but couldn't install lilo off of it. Eventually I learned about chroot and it solved the problem.
So now I downloaded a new kernel for that machine. 2.6.17 which is the latest stable linux kernel (one of the reasons why I like Slackware is due to the fact that it uses vanilla kernels. By that I mean unchanged linux kernels. Other distros tend to mess with the kernels to do their own stuff.) Anyways, you can now use the system ram for the console vga scroll-back buffer! That means you can scroll higher than the usually allowed 8-16 screens.
Uhm..more updates later.
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