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Latest News and Blog Posts from Wayne “Pendragon” Owens.
Weekend Wanderings
This weekend was a throwback to the early days of this blog. In fact before this blog even existed, back when the halls of livejournal echoed with the insane ramblings of the staff at the Insane Asylum, When “The Mentalist” was a code word for “I need Help” and not the name of a rather good TV show, When most solutions could be found after the call of “Quick! to the Venn Diagram”, way back when…..
I had an appointment to meet up with planetpete that was several months in the organising. Well The original meet up date had been several months ago, but due to one thing and another, and general crapness of blokes to organise things it had taken months to come to happen, but happen it did. The plan was simple. “Meet at a pub half way between his & mine at 8:30″. The simple plans are often the best.
So I spend the afternoon being very productive, teaching my 11yr old niece to play Fable II for me and work as blacksmith/woodcutter to make me lots of money. And at about 4ish get a text from MrAx saying he was up in the area for a one night flyover and was anything going on. “Hey, kill two birds with one stone!” So I dragged him along with me to the meeting (It helped he offered to drive so I could drink).
The night started interestingly. 1st We got lost. Well not really lost just diverted by a closed roundabout, then drove round in circles on the longest trip to cover the shortest distance as my directions were ignored. 2nd When we got to the pub, MrAx decided to drive into a low stone wall, breaking the top stone off. 3rd The original drinks we ordered were canceled as they barrel ran out (after barmaid had filled two pint glasses with foam).
Luckily things picked up from there. The replacement drinks were a very nice ale suggested by the nice barmaid. Planetpete and nellsworld turned up, and much random junk was talked, interrupted occasional by nellsworlds titters and exclamations of “Those cows are getting it On!” More drinks followed, then it was time to say goodbye and head back into Wrexham for more drinks, and live music.
The Music was BAD, very very BAD. So the plans changed into a wander around the pubs of Wrexham trying to find one playing rock music. This was an impossible task, which did lead to one interesting moment as I bumped into my eldest nephew who was wandering about in bright red shorts, and a very yellow t-shirt on. Who then spent ages trying to explain he was not dressed like that because he wanted to, but was out on his girlfriends 18th birthday night out and they were all dressed as lifeguards. I think he had been drinking lots, as he had already told me this plan earlier in the day when i saw him.
The quest for a pub playing decent music, or no music at all failed, the plans changed to drinking at mine while watching “Lesbian Vampire Killers“..
Much reminiscing, old sk00l quotes and jokes, and mentions of old friends….
Final Words
So dear readers, consider the good old days of your life, and try to keep in touch with old friends. Its easier to let friendships slip away in these busy days, but the effort in keeping them pays back a million times more.
Laptop Problems
I recently decided to remove windows off my home laptop, and like the techie I am, I decided to do this without checking for driver compatibility. I just jumped right in with the install (OK I will admit since my laptop has a hidden partition with a drive image on I did have a fall back to get it factory reset!)
Install 1. (opensolaris)
I’ve never really used this OS before, and it looks good so I fancied giving it a try. I also had recently been given a 8Gig USB pen that’s both a Live Version & Install Disk. So the installation was done, and it worked pretty good with just a few bits of hardware not compatible. Unfortunately one of the bit was the wireless (which is an important part of a laptop.) Now it did very helpfully inform me i could get the windows drivers and do some magic with them to make a wrapper driver which may work. It seemed a bit much work for an OS i am not really familiar with. So the project was put on a back burner with a future plan of dual booting with opensolaris.
Install 2. (Ubuntu)
OK. thinks I… The Laptop version of Old Faithful. So I grab a spare disk thats lying around and install ubuntu, after all it does seem to handle all drivers fine. Ok, make that all drivers bar acer weird propriety wireless devices. The best it could offer me was an unstable beta that may or may not work. At this point I gave up. I may be a geek & Linux Lover, but i’ll keep windowz on the laptop and make sure when I upgrade it, I get a *nix friendly one.
Install 3. (windows XP)
Reboot the laptop, wait for the acer logo to popup and hit ALT F10…. Nothing… Ok I missed, reboot ALT F10…. Nothing… WTF? “Arggghhhhh!!” of course, the new OS’s I’d installed had overwritten the acer MBR removing the ALT F10 recovery flag. “That’s no problem!” I had sensibly burnt off the recovery disks when I first got my Laptop. So Reboot with recovery disks in, and watch as it ghosts a copy of my main partition back onto the hard drive. “YES!“… Done.
Now. I like the ALT F10 ability. Its quite handy, and saves you having to hunt out where you stored your recovery media. So I wanted it back. Its bloody handy. Luckily you have everything you need (bar one bit of software) to reclaim your acer MBR.This is what you do.
- Download PartEdit32 (free software) and use this to change the hidden flag of your hidden partition. In my case it was changing the type flag from 12 (hidden) to 07 (normal)
- Reboot so the machine comes up with the partition visible
- Go to the recovery partition and find the directory with the following files in it (mine was the root folder) files: mbrwdos.exe trmbr.bin
- From command/DOS prompt type “mbrwrdos.exe install rtmbr.bin“
- Reboot. Your ALT F10 will now work again, and you do not have to reset the hidden flag on the partition as the MBR will do that for you.
And you should be all back and running again.
Now for days of microsoft updates!!!!
Attack of the Deadly Dancers
This weekend I had a meeting with a representative of a local troupe of Belly Dancers (OI! get your mind out the gutter, I was not booking them for a private showing!) I was there in the guise of a possible “consultant“.
Now I can imagine lots of good consultant roles in relationship to belly dancing, for example :- Checking things shimmy as they are supposed to, Making sure the costumes do not cover too much up, and a load of other sexist stuff I could come up with but will resist, (Which considering the consultant request is a wise choice).
The consultant role they wanted from me was that of “Escrima Instructor.” Yes teaching them Filipino Martial Art Stick Fighting. This was not due to my first thought of keeping the viewers back, or dealing with any amorous fans. NO! they are considering incorporating it into their dance routine. Apparently there is a school of belly dance that uses sticks as part of the show, and these girls decided if they were going to do that then they should do it somewhat special.
So as a conscientious kind of instructor, If I agree to teach these girls escrima then i really need to know roughly what kind of styles they need to learn. So I believe some research is needed. For this reason I may be slow replying to people for the next week or so as I force myself to watch hours of videos of scantily clad women shimmy and dance. Its a hard life but someone has to do it!
Hackers Are People Too
Hug a Hacker
I’ve just finished watching the Documentary “Hackers are people Too” A documentary made by Hackers, about Hackers to try and correct the “misrepresentation” the Hacker community gets from the Press & Hollywood.
All in all it was not a bad small documentary at about forty minutes long. I think it could have shown a bit more, and answered a few more questions, and laid some things to rest, but overall it was not too bad.
They mentioned that as a community we are more tolerant of race, age, religion, looks, Since most meet up online for years before ever meeting in real life, so friendships are made purely by personality and intelligence. The statement reminded me of the old “Hackers Manifesto” by The Mentor, and I thought I’d post it on here as a reminder of the old days.
WO
Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…
Damn kids. They’re all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…
Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.
I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I’m a smart ass.. Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found. “This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…
You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud.
- We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.
- We explore… and you call us criminals.
- We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals.
- We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals.
- You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
Care In The Community – AKA Death of the Asylum
Will the last inmate released please turn off the lights & electric shock chair!
The inmates at the Insane Asylum have just returned to their cells from a meeting with the Governor. At this meeting it was mentioned that due to the current world recession, state of the UK’s economy, and the lack of incoming money, the Insane Asylum may have to drop to a 4 day week. With the inmates being let out on the 5Th day.
There are a couple of obvious problems with this plan, like the fact we are a service provider whose customers get upset when they cant get support at the weekend (let alone a three day wait).
The main problem I foresee is a catch 24 spiral to death problem. Let me explain.
To cope with the 1/5th cut in salary most the inmates will have to take a second job, (Or work on their own!). “What’s the problem with that?” I hear you ask. Well given the fact the Inmates are IT bods, then any second job, or cash in hand job will be in the IT industry. SO jobs we hear of that would normally be sent to the Asylum to be done may end up being done by ourselves. Then you have the fact that the area we work in, any second job would end up being for competitors or customers direct.
So the more work we do to make up the lost wage will cut down on jobs sent to the asylum, so it makes less money, meaning a 3 day week? so we have to do more work to cover loss wage, meaning even less for company, 2 day week, spiral… spiral…….
For example. take our development department. Which of our customers will pay say £60/hour for dev work when they can have same guy, using same machine do it on his second job rate of £20/hour?
so, as stated at the start of this post…. Will the last inmate released please turn off the lights!
I Sometimes wish for my own Spy Satellite
Yesterday I made my way back to work after a weeks holiday (Why do you always need a holiday to recover from a holiday?) As i traveled along my normal commute, I was hit with a closed road & diversion. Now this is a bit of a tricky one as the closed road is a rather busy road that carries a vast amount of traffic up towards the north wales coast, and has trucks going back and too almost constantly. The diversion sent this heavy traffic through Bwlchgwyn (A place advertising itself as the highest village in Wales) For those of you who have never been there I should point out this is a small village situated on the top of a mountain, and has very small roads between its buildings. Roads that due to parked vehicles are just wide enough for a single car to drive along as long as there is no oncoming traffic. “Great!” says I, “This is going to annoy me for weeks!“.
That was yesterday.
Today the commute included a load of new road signs. in bright yellow, and placed every 50 yards for the length of the diversion. These signs said simply “DO NOT TRUST YOUR SATNAV”
Now, I agree this is a valid warning from the government, You cant have people going about listening to voices coming out of small box’s, how does the box know which way to go? it hasn’t even got any eyes? And what if the person in the box is rubbish at reading maps? you could end up anywhere, Or it could try and tell you to turn and drive off the end of a cliff. But I digress.
Now for the signs to have been placed, and the amount placed you know there had to be at least several incidents. All I can think off is several trucks (since cars are more maneuverable) must have been sent on the diversion, and their satnav’s must have realised they were on a different road, and tried to recalculate them back to the road they should be on. The only way to do this would be to direct them down streets not designed for traffic bigger than horses, or the small horse drawn cart. roads where you have no chance to turn around on. Now these roads will go to the road the trafic should be traveling along, but wait! that roads closed so can not be used.
So I figure there was a lot of trucks or larger vehicles trapped on small side roads yesterday, causing chaos, and possible emergency rescue. I would love to have watched it on my Spy Satellite, If only I had one.
I Swear They Are Testing Me!
I read a book many, many years ago. It was one of the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, Either second foundation, or foundation and earth, I forget which. (I did read them all in order straight after each other, so the actual books blurred into one story). Anyway, In this book the empire wants to find the second foundation people who they suspect of controlling everyone’s choices. So they send out one of their guys in a state of the art spaceship to go find them. The ship had a thinking brain as its computer, and what the pilot did not know was they suspected him of being one of the advanced second foundation people, and had given him a broken ship so if he was able to fly it, then it proved he was one of the people with advanced minds…
Some days I feel like that pilot. I swear they are testing me! Let me explain. I was given a new project, out the blue, with a deadline of a week. And I mean deadline since the Governor was setting it up at the customers site in exactly one week. (OK. that’s partial hindsight as I was only told the deadline at hometime the day before he was due to install the system!).
So, Whats the project?
Right, What is needed is to integrate the LDAP address book on grandstream phones with the LDAP address book on a kerio email server. Simple!
Do I have the necessary tools?
Like what?
Do I have a Grandstream phone with LDAP capability?
Err no, you don’t. There is a fellow inmate at the other side of the building who has one. You could do a bit of code work, walk over to his desk, test the phone, walk back to your room and check the code? Oh, I should mention He is one of the phone support guys, so he is on the phone all day long, so you may have to wait until he’s not using the phone before getting a quick test!
Right, Do I have an account on a kerio server so i have an address book i can use for testing?
Don’t be silly, Kerio accounts cost money, so no account to test with!
Do I at least have documentation on the phones? details on how it talks to the LDAP server? format it needs responses in.
No documentation at all, No information, The only person with that knowledge is not working on this project so You’ll just have to find it all out yourself. Oh, you do have the web address of a script someone else has written. Did I mention that?
No you did not. So I have an example script that does what I need to do, so I can work from that? That’s not too bad!
Oh. You have a link to a script. I should say it does not work on any account based LDAP server so falls over if you try using it on a Keri server. And even if it did work, it does not do what you need it to do since its a script to make an xml address book to import into older phones, so a)does not work, b)Not what you want.
So. Just to summarise. I have been asked to develop a system where a phone talks directly to a kerio email server and auto populates the address book? and has the search functionality built in? I have no phone to test with or see how it works, No account with an address book, No documentation, And only a broken script that doesn’t even do what I need? Great!!!!
You forgot less than a week to finish it and get it tested!
I’ll just go out back and shoot myself now!
Pleasuredome rest home for the mentally unstable.
Some nostalgia found on the old Pleasuredome website (c)99
The sign on the gate said
Pleasuredome rest home for the mentally unstable.
Wheels crunched on the gravel path. An old man in an armored wheelchair rolled past, pointing his plastic pulse rifle at invisible aliens and grinning widely. He turned the corner and vanished into a clump of bushes with a cry of “We’re in the pipe 5 by 5!” The visitors walked on.
In the center of the lawn, an old man bounced happily on a double bed in the middle of a small lake. Several nurses were trying to persuade him to come back to shore, but he ignored them, staring longingly at the clouds.
At the edge of the lake, another old man with a grey mustache sat cheerfully in a model hovercraft. He waved at the visitors and offered them one of a number of toy rubber eels which shared the craft with him, but the visitors declined and hurried on.
Further on, a group of old women had set up camp around an oak tree, in which sat a rather worried looking old man. Several of the women were shouting for him to come down and be hugged, but he refused. One of the women, who for some reason had twin Supersoakers strapped to her zimmerframe, was hurling abuse and sarcastic remarks. The visitors took a slight detour to avoid them, and almost ran into an old man with long grey hair who was ignoring all attempts to persuade him to leave his computer and come eat.
Nearer to the house, more and more of the old people were sprawled on the lawn, staring at the screens of various laptop computers. Several power outlets had been set up at convenient intervals on the lawn. One or two of the old folks noticed the visitors and giggled insanely at some private joke.
At last the visitors reached their objective. A tall old man sat hunched over his computer near a clump of willow trees. His gnarled and arthritic old hands tapped patiently on the keyboard. The visitors stood behind him at a respectful distance. Over his shoulder they could make out a login time of 20 years.
One of the visitors coughed politely. “Mr. Rodney?” he asked. The fingers stopped, and the old man turned his head slightly. “Yes?” he asked, at length. The visitor cleared his throat. “Our..er, rooms have been deleted.” he mumbled. Rodney frowned. “You came all the way out here to tell me that?” he asked, puzzled. He turned back to his screen and discovered he had been idle for almost a week. He sighed, and shouted across the lawn to an elderly couple sat facing each other over their laptops.
“Tref!”
The man turned. “What?” he shouted back. Rodney nodded slowly at the visitors. It took almost a minute. “Are you coding something?” he shouted. Tref looked guilty for a minute. Rodney sighed. “Pack it in, would you?” he asked. Tref muttered something and went back to his screen. Rodney grinned and glanced at the visitors. They smiled and thanked him. He waved them away and went back to his mysterious twelve windowed screen.
The visitors returned swiftly the way they had came. Already the sun was setting, and many of the residents had been taken indoors, although several had only just come out, and were sneaking around the long shadows, hissing at people. The man on the bed had been lured to shore with a piece of cheese, and several nurses were struggling to push the hovercraft and its grinning occupant towards the house.
The group of women under the tree had vanished, but the old man remained perched in the branches, warily eying the ground. A little man with streaks of ginger in his long grey hair tottered past, shouting something about a friend list of six hundred.
They reached the gate. Far off, the sound of bickering Welsh voices could be heard. An old man ran past, pursued by another with two blocks of polystyrene in his hands. A third man, wrapped in newspaper, stumbled after them. Gradually the lawn emptied, and only the occasional frustrated cry of “Laaaaaaaaaag!” broke the evenings silence.
The visitors stepped through the gate, and back into the real world. Behind them, the gate clanged shut, metal locks clicking into place. The faint humming of an electric fence could be heard. They got in their car slowly, and paused to glance back. Then the driver started the engine, and they screeched off at full speed, into the gathering night.
It’s all over the front page, you give me road rage
This post should be read to the theme tune of Road Rage by Catatonia.
You could be taking it easy on yourself
Road Rage by Catatonia
You should be making it easy on yourself
Cause you and I know,
It’s all over the front page, you give me road rage
Some mornings I really wish they hurry up inventing the personal teleporter.
So once again the temperature is stupidly hot, with the possibility of outbreaks of “Dave Syndrome“, and its time for the long commute over the welsh mountains to work. Now having to drive a long distance in this heat is not a nice experience in a car where the only a/c is opening the windows. So I did not start off with high expectations, and what little I had did not last long.
Irritant 1) Animals
I do not know if its the heat affecting them, or if there’s some big conspiracy in the animal kingdom to get me for some past upset, whatever the reason they are not behaving as you would expect them to. I first noticed this “oddness” when leaving my drive and as I pulled onto the road there was a huge fat pigeon standing in the middle of the road blocking it. So being Nice, I slowly drove up to it so it would fly away. Nothing! It just stood there watching me, as I had to maneuver around it since I did not want my car splattered with dead animal (It took ages to clean off the badger entrails). After the pigeon there was a rabbit, followed a bit later by a squirrel, then a baby rabbit, another squirrel, and finally a cat.
Irritant 2) Cars
Whats going on? Today there are something like one billion extra cars on the road (Give or take a car). They are everywhere, Why? If it was Friday I’d say there were all taking the day off work to go away for the weekend to enjoy the heat. Yet here they all are! Junctions I normally just slow down for and get to turn instantly, I’m now stuck parked at for several minutes waiting for a gap in the traffic so i can pull into, Roundabouts are a similar problem. There’s also the knock on affect of slowness, since the roads are so full.
Irritant 3) Diversions.. (AKA Pointless Diversions)
This is also an irritant over stupidness and pointless red tape. On my route to work there is a junction I have to take. Its a simple T-Junction with a small filer road to make it easier for traffic to flow onto the road speeding it all up. Now they are currently doing some road repairs on this filter road, leaving the main junction clear. Yet, and this really is a good example of red tape. The filter road is closed, With loads of “Road Closed” signs, and “Diversion” signs. Now the turning for the junction is about 10 yards from the turning onto the filter road. This means the sign saying there is a diversion is next to the sign saying “<=- Diversion“. Then when you turn you have another 10 yards before you hit the sign saying “Diversion Ends“. The three of them are so close together you can jump from one to the other to the first in a small triangle. WHY?
Irritant 4) Road Works
Why? For the love of the Gods, Why? as soon as we get hot weather does every builder on the planet start doing work on roads, or on building close to roads causing traffic lights, or the road to be restricted to one lane? Is there a Memo that goes out? are they in the pay of petrol stations to waste our petrol by making us constantly stuck waiting to pass?
Irritant 5) JCB Diggers
OK. I don’t really have to say anything about these, it says it all, They are Big Yellow travel at 5 miles an hour and make overtaking on country lanes impossible, and tend to only drive during rush hour commute times…
So on another day where they claim “Its the hottest recorded day!” (I’m sure they only have records going back one week), I’m stuck inside a metal box slowly cooking on my long commute to work, All I need is some idiot to cut me up, or start tailgateing me and we’re having a bit of road rage!!
Mail Filter Madness – Part 2
Sometimes when you come up with a new project to work on you jump right in without fully considering all the possible side projects you will need to work on to get the main project working.
For example:-
Step one of my Server Side Mail Filters SSMF was to create a SPAM folder. All my domains have a catchall email address where all those emails sent to address not existing end up. this is mainly for people who spell my name wrong, or use weird formats that they are used to.. firstname.surname@ initial.surname@ etc… Or for those rare occasions when I use a new email address for a project/webpage and forget to actually create the email box :0( (Rare but does happen)
So my plan is to have a SPAM folder on my main map box, and all unknown mails automatically be dumped in there for me to check at some later point. Now while setting up this default basic rule in exim I had the brilliant idea to not just place them in all together in a SPAM folder but to further split them into .SPAM.DOMAIN_NAME this way i can see which domains are getting hit hardest, and easily hunt out mislaid emails.
“What a brilliant simple idea!”
Well yes! and at the same time No! You see, delivering the emails into separate folders is easy, and took no time at all to set up. Now the smarter amongst you will have already spotted my problem with this. “Did you spot it?, No? Never mind. Let me explain” Every time an email comes in for a new domain name, it will create a new subfolder in the SPAM folder and deliver the email there, This is good apart from the fact with IMAP email clients you only see the folder you are subscribed to, which means I will not see the new folder or any emails it contains unless :-
1) I pre create all possible subfolders ready
2) I check every so often for new folders and then subscribe to any new ones.
I considered these two time consuming options and after deep consideration I stood up and declared “I AM GEEK! I do not use the options available to mere users, I make my own options, I choose option 3!”
So, Time for a quick Side project to create option 3. A self subscribing mail script. A simple find command piped through cut, sed creates a list of folders which is then outputted to overwrite the courierimapsubscribed file, get this script to run every so often in the cron and as soon as a new folder is created, your subscribed to it.
Now back to the main project.