In the meantime, here’s a funny video.

In keeping with the Creative Commons license (and spirit) of this website, as well as to respect the original author’s request, you can download the theme to this website which is based on Lucian Marin’s Journalist theme here:

• JournalistModified.zip

The big differences are that H2 looks different than H3, some font changes and spacing issue fixes (Helvetica, *swoon*), making the title at the top a different color, and there are some PHP hacks to remove the footer element from every item so that the main page looks cleaner.

One of the greatest things about this blog just happened again today – the troll commenter who randomly finds me via Google, then writes something idiotic, usually with bad Youtube’ish grammar. Now you may be confused – usually these comments make authors feel lousy, and question why they should be trying to help people who just come back with insults. Not me. I love every minute of it.

Why?

Because I’ve found the best thing to do to flame comments – use my Admin powers to edit them to be of the polar opposite opinion. I’m a “dumbass American?” Now I’m a “totally awesome guy”. Apologies, praise, and all sorts of positive feedback on my blog entries show up when the trolls come out. The best part is, the original commenter becomes absolutely fucking furious and posts way more negative comments, which I promptly edit again to say even nicer things about me. There’s no way I can lose here, it’s great!

Now, for those of you thinking that I’m an anti-free-speech asshole, I always am willing to leave comments up that disagree with me – I’ll never change that. Blogs without dissenting comments lose their value, as a means of generating discussion on a topic. If you’re intent on leaving nonsense on my blog however, I will almost certainly be enjoying myself that day….

I’ve been too lazy to do anything with respect to writing code, making blog entries, or doing anything else other than work and consume various media; this isn’t very good for me, and as an aside I think my childhood enthusiasm for programming has finally been exhausted. That surely isn’t good for me, seeing as how I’m only 24 years old. When did this get to be a chore to me? Anyhow, here’s the last ten quotes I added to my sigquotes file. If I’ve Emailed you at work, you’ve probably seen some of them, as I use Fortune and eruby to put them into my signature.

• “Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
• “Never mistake a clear view for a short distance” – Paul Saffo
• “This is where I am great. I am great at being very, very stubborn and ignoring all sorts of reasons why you should change your goal, reasons that many other people will be susceptible to. Many people want to be on the winning side. I didnt give a damn about that. I wanted to be on the side that was right, and even if I didnt win, at least I was going to give it a good try.” – RMS
• “We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.” – Herman Melville
• “Narrowness of experience leads to narrowness of imagination.” – Rob Pike
• Mamihlapinatapai (n.):
  1. A look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start; “ending up mutually at a loss as to what to do about each other.”
• “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.” – John A. Shedd
• “If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.” – Zen Koan
• “If you destroy a bridge, be sure you can swim.” – African Proverb
• “Only a fool fights in a burning house.” – Old Klingon Proverb

Ulrike Stoll: Na ja, du kannst mich ja vom Büro aus anrufen, wenn es etwas Wichtiges ist

paul.betts@gmail.com/Home: Na ja, du kannst mich ja vom Büro aus anrufen, wenn es etwas Wichtiges ist
de2en@bot.talk.google.com: Well, you can call me from the office of Justice if it is something important

Me: “The Office of Justice” – Awesome

(PS – that doesn’t *actually* say “Office of Justice” in German)

Your keys are teh pwn3d

I’m sure everyone who uses SSH has heard by now, but you need to change your SSH keys if you are using Debian/Ubuntu (or took a key from said OS like I did). If you’re thinking that it’s not a big deal, you’re gonna get put in the hurt locker – the only source of entropy in those keys are the PID of the process that created them. That means, there are only 32768 keys; it takes a hacker ~20 mins to break into any server he wants.

If all of your machines are Debian-based, the best thing for you to do is to just delete all the entries in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys until you can regenerate them and patch all of your systems.

In miscellaneous news

• We’re finishing up the beta for my super-cool project at work today – so far my clever attempt to sneak Ruby/Python through the backdoor at WinSE is turning out wonderfully, mwa ha ha.
• Summer finally seems like it’s here, it’s nice to be done with the crappy weather. I need to find a cool bike so that I can start riding to work. Days like this make me wish I had a dog to walk, that’d be nice too

In Rainbows – Radiohead

Just as you take my hand
Just as you write my number down
Just as the drinks arrive
Just as they play your favourite song
As your bad mood disappears
No longer wound up like a spring
Before you’ve had too much
Come back in focus again

Listening to this album uncompressed through good speakers is fucking amazing. Radiohead >> *

our eyes are closed, america
there are souls in the boots of the soldiers, america
fuck your yellow ribbon; you want to support our troops,
you bring them home, and you hold them tight
when they get here.

- Andrea Gibson, For Eli

PS: Click the link, it’s an MP3 and it will blow your fucking mind

Super handy for creating any sort of presentation, website, or any other sort of visual design, I found this the other day: The Flickr Color Selector. For example, here’s an image that (kind of) matches the background of this website:

Grab Hold! by Jannes Pockele, under the Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license.

Even though this doesn’t really match, with some deft Photoshoppery, I’m sure you can get some decent results. Make sure that the image is licensed properly for reuse and editing, and if you use the image on a public site, don’t be like certain multinational corporations, and make sure to ask the author first about it, even though you’re not obligated to legally.