October 2007 Archives

[Moozik: Catherine Wheel - Chrome]

Now we hear that these UK pioneers of clean energy are helping green the greatest of all British institutions, the pub. Working with major pub chain JD Wetherspoons, Solarcentury have provided their solar roofing tiles to the Kettleby Cross, a groundbreaking ‘green pub’ that also features a wind turbine (which looks from the picture to be the long-awaited Quite Revolution vertical axis turbine which we wrote about here), under floor cooling, and rainwater harvesting for flushing the toilets.

[Moozik: Ride - Vapour Trail]

Steve Nash, two time NBA most valuable player has amazing taste and shrewd judgment (ahem, well I would say that). Not just any old fan though, he has some higher goals.

Two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash has expressed an interest in becoming the owner of Tottenham Hotspur after having discussions with chairman Daniel Levy about investing in the club.

Nash, who plays for the Phoenix Suns and was named the league's best player in two of the last three seasons, told the New York Times: "I'd like to be an owner. It's something I could do for the rest of my life after my little window of popularity dies."

The 33-year-old is a lifelong Tottenham fan who has spoken of his joy at being allowed access to team training two summers ago. "Watching Spurs train was a complete dream come true for me," he said. "It was an excellent day and something I will never forget."

[Moozik: Killing Joke - Multitudes]

I particularly enjoyed I Give Up; his account of addiction. Notably amusing are those parts that deal with cigarettes (hitting yourself over the head with a parsnip), and cocaine (tapping yourself lightly on the head with a parsnip, only sillier).

I could very well be mistaken but I did seem to detect a subtlety in the way he classified substance abuse. It seemed the thought of being an alcoholic (he wasn't by the way) made him shudder whereas a coke habit was entirely different. If I can put words in his mouth for a second, a kind of: Oh good heavens, I was never a drunk, perish the thought. Now, I snorted coke on a regular basis, but that's far more respectable. I dunno, could be just me.

Anyway, I recommend you go have a read. I've certainly subscribed to his feed and eagerly await new posts.

[Moozik: Bloc Party - Like Eating Glass]

I was watching the CBS evening news tonight and as usual got treated to a never ending supply of drug commercials while waiting for Katie to come back on. Now, I usually do quite a good job of completely ignoring drug commercials but for some reason I paid attention to Veramyst.

It caught my eye because as the drug's benefits were being touted verbally, a little disclaimer ran across the bottom of the screen that said something to the affect of "The way Veramyst works is not entirely understood". I did a little double take to ensure I had read that correctly. I had. So, that's an approved medicine is it? Approved even though its manufacturer doesn't understand how it works? Nice. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course viewers were then treated to the usual side-effect warnings that are a staple of American drug commercials. Nosebleeds, nasal sores, and nasal fungal infections don't sound like an awful lot of fun to be honest but the two side-effects that really got my attention were the possibilities that glaucoma or cataracts may occur as a result of using Veramyst.

Great. My allergies and sinus problems have been nicely cleared up by this convenient nasal spray. Now to work on that whole blindness thing.

[Moozik: Project Pitchfork - The Longing]

I have a growing list of email annoyances that really needs a blog post of its own. Not annoyance with email itself, but the apparent inability for people to use it correctly. But until then, here's the latest example that made me roll my eyes and say out loud "please don't do that".

Please don't send an email to the entire company announcing that you will be on a "...badly needed vacaction...". While I'm sure you're very interesting and your vacation will be spectacular, I neither know who you are, or really actually care that you badly need a vacation. And please don't sign your email "Almost feeling the ocean breeze..." as you appear to be mocking me sir as I sit in my cube.

[Moozik: The Sisters Of Mercy - Something Fast]

Simultaneously making Americans and professional athletes the world over very proud, I give you Channing Crowder of the Miami Dolphins.

He admitted he did not know until now where London was - or that Londoners spoke English.

"I couldn't find London on a map if they didn't have the names of the countries," he said. "I swear to God. I don't know what nothing is. I know Italy looks like a boot. I learned that."

[Moozik: Die Krupps - The Machineries Of Joy]

[Moozik: Mind.In.A.Box - Change]

The only surprise is that it took so long.

Martin Jol has been sacked as manager of Spurs after three years in the job. Reports swept around White Hart Lane as Jol presided over Tottenham's 2-1 Uefa Cup defeat by Getafe, but the club only confirmed the news after the match.

[Moozik: Lords of Acid - Lessons In Love]

I just ate an actual Chocolate Digestive. In America. I have no actual photographic evidence of this feat taking place, you'll just have to take my word for it.

It's the little things in life. Yes, I'm that sad.

[Moozik: Killing Joke - Eighties]

Tonight's CBS news ran a story about President Bush touring the fire ravaged areas of California. As I was watching I couldn't help but think that it's a good thing all those firefighters were pulled off the front line to appear at the President's photo op. That's time well spent right there.

[Moozik: The Beloved - Your Love Takes Me Higher]

Every once in a while I read something that makes me realize there's a whole world out there that I'm blissfully unaware of. Today's example, thanks to kottke, underground coal fires. There has been an underground coal fire burning in Centralia, Pennsylvania since 1962.

Since the summer of 1962, a fire, fueled by rich anthracite coal deposits, has been burning beneath the mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Nonstop. You feel the heat in your feet. The smell of sulfur lingers in the air. The town, appropriately enough, resembles a “post-nuclear war wasteland.”

[Moozik: Fred - Mindblower (EP Version)]

I think Strawberry Perl is a great idea. You get the mingw GCC C/C++ compiler and dmake bundled so that module installations via the CPAN shell are possible. Yay. No more hateful ppm.

[Moozik: Dave Gahan - Kingdom]

The closed-circuit television camera lurking just down the street from the fast-food restaurant bellows menacingly at the first sign of danger to the flora, or a cast-off cigarette butt or fast-food wrapper, for that matter. "Pick it up," commands a booming voice from . . . where, exactly?

The CCTV cameras in Gloucester and several other British towns now come equipped with speakers, meaning Big Brother is not only watching, he's telling you what to do.

By some estimates, 4.2 million CCTV cameras, or one for every 15 people, quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, monitor the comings and goings of almost everyone -- an average person is caught on camera up to 300 times a day.

[Moozik: Covenant - Storm]

Net::SSH::Perl is well known for not being the easiest Perl module on the planet to install. This is in no small part due to one of its prerequisites Math::Pari. Every single time I've needed to install Net::SSH::Perl, Math::Pari never fails to give me a headache.

I finally got everything working on one of our Solaris 9 dev machines today and I swear I've never had a bigger grin - I was so relieved. The problem basically boiled down to fun and games in detecting the processor family from the Makefile.PL.

Creating libPARI/paricfg.h...
...Processor of family `sparcv9' detected
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
...Processor of family `sparcv9' detected
...I will use assembler build of type 'sparcv8_micro'.

Hmm assembler build type of sparcv8 on a sparcv9? Ok, I'll go with that ;-) Let's see what happens when we try and build it.

./pariinl.h: In function `gmul':
./pariinl.h:887: error: asm-specifier for variable `hiremainder' conflicts with asm clobber list
*** Error code 1
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `gen1.o'

Nice. I did find a very promising solution which at this point I was willing to try. And it worked like a charm.

make clean
perl Makefile.PL machine=none

Once the assembler build type auto-detection had been turned off with machine=none, everything compiled cleanly. All tests passed and Math::Pari installed like a charm.

I don't know who the Dave in question is who posted that snippet of goodness in the RT ticket, but I owe him a beer regardless.

[Moozik: Ayria - Horrible Dream]

I really don't think there could have been a worse start to the season do you? I'm not entirely sure who Martin Jol is trying to convince here.

Under-fire Tottenham boss Martin Jol says he can revive his side's fortunes, despite their dire start to the season. Poor defending cost Spurs dear in a 3-1 loss at Newcastle on Monday to leave Jol's side in the bottom three but he said: "Yes we lack a bit of leadership."

But it gets better.

Martin Jol's grip on the White Hart Lane manager's job seemed to weaken perceptively last night when Tottenham not only lost 3-1 at Newcastle but the Dutchman also appeared to suffer a breakdown in relations with Dimitar Berbatov.

The Bulgarian striker, Tottenham's outstanding player, began as a substitute after apparently being afflicted by a "slight injury" but took his seat on the bench with a face like thunder.

When Jol asked Berbatov to warm up in the second half, the striker seemed to refuse his manager's request on three occasions before eventually agreeing to replace Steed Malbranque.

[Moozik: Dave Gahan - Insoluble]

Eddie Izzard's Death Star Canteen sketch done in Lego stop motion.

[Moozik: Slowdive - Visions of La]

If you've been living in a cave, allow me to inform you that England are playing South Africa today in the Rugby World Cup final. Thanks to Dish Network pay per view, in approx 45 mins I will sitting down in front of my TV and I'll be glued to the screen.

[Moozik: Ayria - My Revenge On The World]

Back in January I mentioned that I was starting my first Terry Pratchett book. Of course, writing about it completely jinxed the whole thing. I read about four pages before getting sidetracked reading all kinds of other things.

The other day while looking for another book I stumbled across The Colour of Magic once again. So now I'm giving it another go and I'm determined that this time I'll finish it before even looking at another book. Could happen.

[Moozik: Girls Under Glass - Talk]

If this post shows up then I will consider the upgrade to MT 4.01 an early success. I notice right away that the javascript drop down menus inside the UI are much more responsive and less prone to sticking so that's one annoyance taken care of. Now to figure out why my search results page still looks all rather arsey.

Update: the search results page has now been fixed. For some reason, my $mt_install_dir/search_templates/default.tmpl file was replaced by an old version. This happened around the time I was having the problem with MT forcing me to upgrade my db schema.

Anyway, the fix is just to copy the $mt_install_dir/default_templates/search_results.mhtml file to $mt_install_dir/search_templates, rename it to default.tmpl and you acquire an uncle named Bob.

[Moozik: Editors - Bones]

They've released two albums so far, The Back Room back in 2005 and An End Has A Start earlier this year. I like them both. A lot. This week I'm totally fixed on An End Has A Start and when my last.fm weekly stats post next Monday, I'll be very surprised if Editors are not my most listened to artist this week.

Comparisons to other bands are inevitable. Interpol and Joy Division are two that immediately spring to mind. I was having a chat with an Interpol fan on last.fm the other day and he said "Aren't Interpol and Editors essentially the same band?". I can certainly see why someone would say that but I don't think that's an accurate comment by any means. Good bands both. Unique in their own way.

Today though, I'm all Editors, all the time. Current fave track? The title song from An End Has A Start.

[Moozik: Editors - An End Has A Start]

My fellow countrymen don't want to be left behind in this century's gold rush. No sir.

The UK is looking to claim sovereignty over a large area of the remote seabed off Antarctica.

The claim for an area around British Antarctica is one of a number being prepared by the Foreign Office, a spokeswoman said.

The move does signal Britain's willingness to join the current rush by countries to try to secure their potential oil and gas rights to seabeds should circumstances change.

[Moozik: Editors - An End Has A Start]

Warning, geeky post ahead. Not interested in network programming with Perl? Avert your eyes forthwith.

IO::Socket::SSL is lovely. Really.

This module is a true drop-in replacement for IO::Socket::INET that uses SSL to encrypt data before it is transferred to a remote server or client. IO::Socket::SSL supports all the extra features that one needs to write a full-featured SSL client or server application: multiple SSL contexts, cipher selection, certificate verification, and SSL version selection. As an extra bonus, it works perfectly with mod_perl.

The important thing to remember is that the initial socket must be opened as an INET socket and the SSL handshake/session happens after you fork().

my $server = IO::Socket::INET->new(
   Proto => 'tcp',
   LocalPort => '$port',
   Listen => 128,
   Reuse => 1
);

while (my $client = $server->accept()) {
   my $pid;
   unless (defined($pid = fork())) {
      $self->panic("Could not fork() - $!");
   }
   if ($pid == 0) {
      IO::Socket::SSL->start_ssl(
         $client,
         SSL_key_file => $the_key_file,
         SSL_cert_file => $the_cert_file,
         SSL_use_cert => 1,
         SSL_server => 1
      ) || do {
         $self->inform("SSL handshake failure: $SSL_ERROR");
         exit();
      };
      # your original code from here...
   }
}

[Moozik: Hope & Kirk - Copout]

Illegal wiretapping pre-9/11.

WASHINGTON -- Former Qwest Communications International Chief Executive Joseph Nacchio said the National Security Agency (NSA) approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11 attacks about an unidentified NSA program, according to court documents unsealed this week.

Nacchio, who is appealing a conviction for insider trading, also said the government withdrew a $200 million contract after Qwest refused to participate in an NSA program the company's top lawyer said was illegal.

Details about the alleged NSA program have been removed from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless-surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.

Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless-surveillance efforts.

[Moozik: Ayria - Disease]

It's late, so a quick quote from those fine chaps at The Guardian.

Somehow, against the odds, against the best team left in the tournament and with the sort of doggedness they have made their own, England have reached the World Cup final.

Today's edition, Tears For Fears - Mad World

I would imagine Roland cringes when he watches that.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Ice Machine (Live 1984)]

So, I did give Bionic Woman another chance last night. A slight improvement over last week although I can't help thinking that Katee Sackhoff is really the only redeeming feature of the show. I really want to know the story behind Sarah Corvus which unfortunately couldn't be any further from the case with Jamie Sommers. I dunno, it's not that I don't like Michelle Ryan, they just haven't made Jamie's story that interesting.

Last night's cringe worthy dialog:

Isiah Washington: I'm going to go analog on your ass.
Michelle Ryan: Bring it on bitch.

So, as with last week, I'm going to say that yes I'll give it another chance and watch next week. Assuming they haven't canceled it by then as I read yesterday that it's not exactly a ratings bonanza.

[Moozik: The Cure - Sinking]

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Puppets (Live 1984)]

Now, I'm a bit bloody stunned by all this. England were really quite poor in their early pool games and I honestly didn't expect them to get past the quarter-finals. And to beat the Aussies, who in my opinion were playing really well in the early games, is just the icing on the cake.

If you'd told me a couple of weeks ago that New Zealand wouldn't reach the semi-finals, I would have just laughed at you. In my mind, New Zealand were the outright tournament favorites. Just goes to show that even great teams have their off days. And in a World Cup, your off days really matter.

[Moozik: The Birthday Massacre - To Die For]

For the past couple of days every time I attempted to login to Movable Type I would be greeted with a "you've upgraded Movable Type, time to upgrade the database" screen. Which is odd seeing as I haven't upgraded and have long since removed mt-upgrade.cgi from my installation. My initial thought was that the box itself had somehow been compromised and/or a nasty security hole had been found in MT itself.

After my hosting provider confirmed that the box itself hadn't been compromised I spent a couple of hours last night examining the database and the installed files. I couldn't immediately spot anything wrong and it would appear that I'm not the only one having the problem. So against my better judgment, I continued with the "upgrade".

So, if everything comes crashing down around my ankles here in a little while, I'll only have myself to blame. I did wonder if this is one of the bugs they fixed in 4.01. But it would appear not.

Several users have reported the upgrade process being run and re-run somewhat randomly. We are still investigating. If anyone encounters this issue please, please, please report it so that we can gather as much information as possible about it. In the mean time, we have put defensive measures in place to keep this from affecting users.

[Moozik: Ride - Seagull]

Last week was the big week for new teevee and I'm now finally all caught up. Along with season 2 of Heroes, a few brand new shows have started. Do I like them and will I be watching them again?

Journeyman. Man travels back and forth through time, his actions in the past impact the future. I really quite like it so far, I certainly did watch it again this week and will do so next week. It's early days and I'm hoping they'll expand on a couple of key points. A preliminary thumbs up.

Life. Cop locked up for crime he didn't commit. Gets multi-million dollar settlement. Becomes cop again. Investigates those who originally framed him in his spare time. Liked it last week, liked it last night and I'll be watching again next week. Good to see Damian Lewis. Another preliminary thumbs up.

Bionic Woman. Last week was interesting in a I wonder where Eick will go with this way. I watched episode 2 last night with some enthusiasm. And that was my first mistake. I won't say that this week's episode was a trainwreck but it really wasn't very good. Appaling dialogue aside, there were huge big gaping parts of it made no sense at all. Didn't she already say she was in at the end of last week's episode? She can just wander into a top secret facility to tell her boss (again) that she wants the job? Redeeming feature: the TV in the teeth-brushing girl's house was showing BSG. Preliminary thumb neutral. I will watch next week in case it does get better as I really want to like it.

[Moozik: Cranes - Heaven Or Bliss]

When going through some old receipts the other night I stumbled across a receipt for a PC I bought back in Jan of 1998. At the time I remember thinking it was so cool and top of the line. Almost comical today though. So what did my $2513 buy me 9 years ago?

266MHz Pentium II Processor with MMX
Ultra ATA 8.4 GB Hard Drive
64MB SDRAM 2 DIMM
15" Color Monitor
STB, Velocity, AGP, 4MB Video
Iomega 100MB Internal Zip Drive
56K WinModem
Factory-loaded Windows 95

[Moozik: Fad Gadget - Wheels of Fortune]

I got bitten by this Firefox bug today. Of course it's on the day when I'm deploying SSL on one of our Apache servers. So troubleshooting my Apache config and SSL certificates was all for nothing. There's two hours of my life I'm never getting back.

[Moozik: Shriekback - Pretty Little Things]