Category: The slush pile

automating zoneedit updates

I don’t guess I need this anymore, since with Speakeasy I am on a static IP address. But in case it’s useful to anyone else . . . .

<makeconf.sh: this derives the current IP address assigned to a given interface and makes a template file.>
#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/home/paul/bin/zoneclient
rm www.tmp
ifconfig xl0 | grep "inet " | awk '{ print $2 }' > www.tmp
head -1 /etc/resolv.conf | awk '{print $2 }' >> www.tmp
www.tmp contains this:
72.1.134.183
paulbeard.org

If I was really clever (and needed it) I could start with the values in rc.conf, since a change to the external network interface — xl0 in my example — could mess things up. A little sed(1) magic would be helpful here.

Once I have learned the IP address assigned to me, I run this:
<zoneclient.sh>
#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/home/paul/bin/zoneclient
./makeconf.sh
./zoneclient.py --optfile ./optfile --acct ./acct

(See zoneclient’s usage message or docs for the contents of those files.)

zoneclient/zoneedit has been trouble-free so far (touch wood), and should work for anyone who has to work with a dynamically assigned address.
Continue reading “automating zoneedit updates”

primer on sed

The Tao of Mac – sed:

sed is the ancient UNIX “stream editor”, mastery of which is every UNIX newbie’s test of true geekness. I find it vastly preferable to the Perl behemoth for parsing simple files in embedded systems – or brain-dead semi-proprietary UNIX boxes that have nothing but the most basic userland components.

bookmarked for later reference


[composed and posted with ecto]

gloom and doom, part deux

Not what I would have expected from Steve Jobs, a reflection of how little I know about him. This is the conclusion of his speech: the whole thing is worth reading.

[IP] Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

I love the Whole Earth Catalogs: I have the first (in a reprint) and the Millennium version.


[composed and posted with ecto]

gloom and doom

Currently reading The Long Emergency. I have read more cheerful books. I knew it wasn’t going to be upbeat, but it’s plenty grim.

I found the earlier parts about the history of the oil economy to be pretty interesting. If the predictions are accurate about Peak Oil, we may find out the meaning of the Chinese proverb about living in “interesting times.”

The descriptions of the energy economy, of oil vs nuclear vs a variety of alternatives that really aren’t was informative, but the discussions of plagues, epidemics and large-scale die-offs are no fun.


[composed and posted with ecto]

Continue reading “gloom and doom”

pot, meet kettle

Wikipedia and the social construction of knowledge:

On Saturday, Dave Winer noticed that his name had been elided from the Wikipedia’s page about podcasting. He wrote:

How is Wikipedia going to prevent from this from happening again? That’s a serious issue. It’s not the first time it’s happened. This is why I’ve never been a strong advocate of Wikipedia. [Scripting News: People with erasers]

There is no way that Wikipedia can prevent such things from happening. But the mechanisms it has evolved to deal with them are fascinating and worthy of study.

But yet, Dave Winer has always felt fine about editing his own remarks as soon as someone calls him on anything. Note: not updating or refining his viewpoint, but tossing an earlier statement down the memory hole to spike someone else’s argument.

Sweet irony that he would be edited out of Wikipedia . . . .


[composed and posted with ecto]

ecto and WordPress 1.5.1.x at loggerheads

Kula support forum (ecto, 1001) :: View topic – category issue with WordPress 1.5.1:

I upgraded to WordPress 1.5.1 today, and, now, every time I make a post from ecto, the default WordPress category (ID 1 or “Uncategorized”, in my case) is automatically assigned to the post, even though it is not checked in the category list. I tried refreshing the cache and also recreating the account from scratch in ecto, but the problem still persists.

This was biting me as well. There were some suggested fixes, all having to do with commenting out two sections of xmlrpc.php. They didn’t seem to work: commenting out code is a bit simplistic in released software — it’s a debugging technique, not something you want to run with.

What does seem to work is testing for an existing category setting at post time, and setting it to the catchall (id 1) category if no other category has been chosen: otherwise, leave it alone. Since ecto can already check that the category != “”, things are OK again.

The fix is documented here.

[composed and posted with ecto]

manual update of WordPress 1.5.x to 1.5.1.2

WordPress › Development Blog › Security Update:

You can upgrade by overwriting your old 1.5 files or if you would like to apply the fix manually it is relatively simple:

Open the wp-includes/template-functions-category.php file in a text editor like Wordpad.
Go to around line 103 where it says get_the_category_by_ID.
Create a new line after that and paste in $cat_ID = (int) $cat_ID;

And then you can update version.php to match reality (or just so you don’t keep thinking you’re a step behind).

[composed and posted with ecto]

The revolution will be caffeinated

Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent:

I just finished speaking here in Copenhagen.

I misspoke at one point, saying that we needed to ‘teach’ people the right way to behave within virtual environments. That’s not what I meant to say. Rather, I wanted to use the Spectator example to lead a new conversation about building a new etiquette.

Read the presentation slides. I have long been a fan of the Spectator/Tatler style of journalis and offer my weak efforts here as an homage.

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job offered

My old pals at Waypath are on the move: they need a solid Python developer to help them in their quest to map the uncharted.

My Python skills are limited to being able to spell it: good intentions have led me to pick it up a few times, and even with the pleasant surprises of how simple it was to get things done, I found myself more often using the dog’s breakfast that is perl.

But if you or someone you know has what it takes, jump on this: wicked smart guys and plenty of challenges^Wopportunities in what they’re doing.

Python/LAMP Developer:

Waypath (www.waypath.com) is a blog discovery site with tools for search and contextual navigation that has been operating since 2002. Waypath is looking for an experienced, self-driven Python developer to further develop the capabilities of its spider (and some other things, too).

Primary tasks:
– identification and analysis of blog publishing tools
– development of parsing/extraction routines in Python
– integration (including testing!) of modular code into larger project

Secondary tasks:
– develop Web UI interfaces to internal REST in LAMP (PHP or Python)
– design/develop service-monitoring tools

Requirements:
– solid knowledge of HTML, XML, RSS, ATOM
– extensive Python experience, including XML parsing, threading, MySQLdb, and re
– examples of Python code and code documentation
– experience in full set of LAMP tools, with PHP or Python examples
– ability to configure, use, and maintain a full LAMP test environment
– demonstrable success in working without supervision on distributed projects (see below)
– own work environment (see below)
– strong communication skills

Interested?
Now playing: Turquoise Jewelry by Camper Van Beethoven from the album “Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart” | Get it

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