I’m beta testing version 2 of CLIGS (Cute Little Image Gallery System). The new version is a complete rewrite with a view to tidy code and scalability.
It also now supports theming, and the default theme has had a lot of attention to ensure usability. Give it a whirl.
Report any bugs or suggestions to me via e-mail. Or you can register and write your notes directly onto the WiKi.
I’ve just got off the phone with the chaps from LUG radio. They were chatting with me about the Everybody Loves Eric Raymond comic strip. 10 million geeks will hear it next Tuesday and rush to buy the tshirts I’m hocking on there. Or will be. By next week. Then I can retire at 26.
Anyway, it’s an amusing show so you should be listening to it whether I’m on it or not, so get downloading.
There is a new version of the The Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) on the horizon. Version 2.4, due to be released this month, has lots of cool new stuff:
See the Changelog for more geeky details. And some screen-shots.
Whilst closely watching the traffic to a server here at work (I had a good reason, I don’t just find it fun) (yes I do) I noticed a firewall batting away a bunch of incoming Microsoft Messenger Service NetrSendMessage. These are UDP packets destined for port 1026. The contents of the messages seem to be spyware and spam tricks. “Your system needs updating, click here to purchase the patch” etc.etc.
I’ve not come across this before, but it seems to be wide spread. In 2 hours I collected over a dozen to one particular host, all from different source IPs and nearly all with different messages and urls in them. Here are some excerpts, notice that as URLs aren’t clickable in message boxes they have to leave instructions to type the url in.
UPDATE: For all the non-techies, these messages are NOT the result of a virus or worm or anything like that. They are just network messages sent over the internet by scammers, a bit like spam. You can safely ignore them. If you want them to go away, install some firewall software or follow the instructions by Manimo to turn off the messaging service.
It turns out that xorg will use $HOME/xorg.conf if it finds it, rather than the default in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
I didn’t know this, and didn’t notice that it was telling me this in the logs. I’ve now wasted a bunch of time troubleshooting a font problem on Ubuntu where xorg couldn’t find my fonts and I was working from the WRONG CONFIG FILE. AGH!
Anyway, in other Ubuntu xorg related news, something changed in the latest Breezy upgrades that causes /dev/input/mice not to be created. Xorg then bombs on boot as that’s my core pointer. If you restart udev the device nodes get created fine. Not sure what this is yet.
I’ve not been posting much techie blog stuff recently. I’ll try to rectify the situation, starting with this entry.
My Gnome mail client, Evolution, uses Spamassassin as a junk mail filter. In my experience, with remote checks disabled, it is completely retarded. It seems to detect 0% of spam.
I rigged up Evolution to use Bogofilter instead (hey, Eric S. Raymond wrote it!). The result is a considerable jump in detected spams, and getting better with each new training.
Evolution isn’t really designed to use anything but Spamassassin as the junk mail filter, which I find odd. Especially considering how effective bogofilter is for me compared to it. I worked out a hack to get it going.
(more…)
Did he find a keyboard that does Russian? Or did he copy and paste from Wikipedia?
I did find a keyboard but I’m too lazy to write properly, so I copied and pasted.
Рщдн агсл Ш зкуыыув еру цкщтп лун сщьиштфешщтю!!!
We’re in a restaurant (ресторан) in Moscow. There is a computer built into every booth with which you order your food. When you’ve ordered it then let’s you browse the Internet for free. The menu ordering system uses Flash and if you right click and click “About Macromedia Flash…” it opens a new browser window and takes you to Macromedia; you don’t have to order anything to browse. The food looked great so we ordered anyway (there is a human element to the security system anyway. He’s sat at the door with a shaven head looking menacing).
I came across a squat toilet today but luckily I only needed the urinal. The whole squatting thing makes sense but is no doubt difficult the first few times. It’s the wiping that worries me: no toilet paper. Put it this way, left handed people have no friends in Russia.
On my way over to the park near where I work this lunchtime, I noticed something dart into the bushes. Stopping to look I noticed it was a mouse. Another mouse a few feet down was less self-concious and was gnawing on a nut or something. So I crouched down to watch. Living with four cats it’s rare to crouch down next to a mouse that hasn’t had all its limbs chewed off and its intestines spread around.
It was at this point, with me crouched next to the bushes close to the entrance at work, that my boss, and his boss, and some important visitors walked by. They later told me they just explained I did stuff with Linux security and the visitors understood completely.
They asked me later what I was up to, but I was worried that if I told them that they’d assume we had an infestation and call some professional rodent murders (as apposed to hobbyist rodent murders like our cats) so I lied. I told them I was checking for child wireless network hackers.
We put down pringle can traps.
I always thought my first computer was a Texas Instruments TI99 computer (cassette *and* cartridge loaded). It was with that I learnt how to code basic when I was 7 or 8 or something. Well after seeing The Journey Robot I realized that BigTrak was actually my first computer.
You could program BigTrak with up to 16 instructions before setting it off, and it would execute them. Say forward for 5 seconds, turn, forward for 10 seconds, fire phasers etc. (or something like that, I don’t remember it fully). I’d love to play with it again, but they are rather rare now I hear.
I had a call Sunday night reporting that some of the Internet servers at work were unreachable. We assumed that the storm had knocked out the power and the UPSes hadn’t done their job (or the power was out for too long). The site manager was unavailable so we had no other choice than to go in early the next morning, which we assumed would involve a quick power cycle or whatever.
It turned out that the storm had actually knocked out the air conditionong in one of the server rooms and for some reason the temperature alarms hadn’t worked. I’m told (by someone who arrive a bit before me and started opening doors and windows) that the thermometer read over 50 degrees Celcius. Some of the servers had detected the heat and shut themselves down (I think this happens around 70 degrees Celcius inside the computer). Some devices weren’t so clever and just stayed on, getting hotter and hotter.
So, rather than 10 minutes, we spent 2 hours waiting for things too cool enough to operate reliably. The air conditioning had died and we were awaiting an engineer for that, so we just had electric fans and windows. The heat was unbearable, in fact the wooden door frame was too hot to touch on first arrival.
That’s it. That’s the story. Sorry. No amusing punchline or “clever” observation.
Comic strip harrassment
My “weekly” comic strip Everybody loves Eric Raymond is still going, but I’m sometimes late because of the difficulties involved in producing high quality humour and because I’m lazy.
I’m currently over half a day late with this weeks strip and I’ve begun to get comments:
Scrotor: Leach - It’s WEDNESDAY, and guess what?I don’t know who this Scrotor is. My teachers at school used to call me by my surname too. It amuses me that now random geeks call me it too. Unless my old teachers read my comic.
I really should be getting on with the strip rather than yapping about it here. This week features a new character that I don’t have a body for yet so is appearing as a ghost. Actually, I could have easily got a body sorted but the ghost idea amuses me.
21/9/2005 Add Comment