Archive for the 'Programming' Category
Jumping on teh intarnets bandwagon, I’ve been playing around with laying some pipe, Yahoo! style. Iskold and MacManus have the best explanation as they draw a parallel between it and relational databases and just like those databases it can have a bit of a learning curve but it allows for some pretty powerful and nifty connections to be made once you get a hang of it.
Below is a screenshot of my Planets Pipe which mixes together Gnome, KDE, and Ubuntu sorted descending by date then by post title.
Squiggly lines abound!
As far as Pipes go this is pretty basic as it just folds the feeds of three sites together into one, the real power lies in using operators to chop up, drill into, and slice ‘n’ dice the data. For example, you could build a Pipe that feeds you info about a geographic location from photos on Flickr, listings on Craigslist and Freecycle, concert information from Pollstar, and events from Meetup. That’s the beauty of pipes is that it treats the Internet like a giant database and you can sort, query, and mix data to your hearts delight. As for myself, I am still getting my head around it and musing over what sort of data mash would have the greatest utility in my life.
What kind of pipe would you lay (using Yahoo! :-P)?
File this under: Bizarre. Firefox Bug 330884 brings us this sordid tale:
Basically, we share one computer but under separate Windows XP user accounts. We both use Mozilla Firefox — well, he used to use it more than I do but now we don’t really use it. The privacy flaw is this: when he went to log-in under his dating sites (jdate.com, swinglifestyle.com, adultfriendfinder.com, etc.), Mozilla promptly asks whether or not he’d like Firefox to save the passwords for him. He chose never, obviously. However, when he logged off his user account, and I logged onto my Windows XP account X amount of days later…I went into the Password Manager to change the saved password option from Never to Always and that’s when I saw all these other sites that had been selected as “Never Save Password.” Of course, those were sites I had never visited or could ever dream of visiting.
The moral of the story is you should use a different application for extra-marital browsing. Maybe something light like K-Meleon or just running Firefox from a thumb drive? Just a thought.
And yes, I do know that this is not a valid bug, she screwed up the set up of user accounts under XP.
via Reddit
It rolls of the tongue like I’m trying to curse in Cantonese, Jinzora! I was cursing the Jinz for the better part of the day as I attempted a clean upgrade from 2.0.1 to 2.3.7. Sure, it started out fine until the performance of the main page began sucking wind like a four pack a day, McDonald’s eating fool running a Turkey Day 5k. Being Jimmy-Too-Smart I decided the best thing would be to upgrade to the nightly build as it was supposed to address those very performance issues. Yeah.
In my infinite wisdom I figured a clean install would be the best bet so I cleaned out the old install, leaving the database intact as the installer gives the option to drop and re-create the tables. Perfect, right? Yeah. What ended up happening is that the installation choked when trying to re-create the tables, dropped them fine then just hit a wall. No big deal, I figure I can just SSH in and suck the jinzora.sql file in by hand and then start the install process over skipping the database part. Yeah.
So the jinzora.sql file had some issues. Turns out that MySQL didn’t like the DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 syntax in the slightest. Didn’t even like the syntax recommended in the MySQL user guide, something like DEFAULT CHARACTER SET = latin2. No problem, just replace all instances of DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 with nothing. Sucked in without any belly aching. Back to the install wizard and I’ll be streaming tunes in no time. Yeah.
Next problem is that the Jinzora index file won’t load nor will it error out, and yes I deleted the install.lock file. It just spins and spins and spins. Checking ps -aux shows that several Apache threads were spawned when I hit the page. Canceling the page load makes no difference. Restarting Apache seems to fix it except that hitting the page produces the same result. I opt at this point to walk away and get something to drink. Well, at least something thirst quenching.
Surprise! When I get back the index page loads fine and the install wizard comes up and I breeze through the options, making it successfully to the media import stage. So far so good as the wizard analyzes the directory and cheerfully tells me that there are 20267 files and the import will take approximately 32 minutes. Great! 33 minutes later I’m staring at the page reporting that 20267 files have been imported and it is 99% complete. Great! Hmm, wait should the page still be loading?
Choked. Now, I’ve got the repeat the steps of the last couple of paragraphs and this time I only import a small directory with some 78 files. After that I can get in and rescan the remaining media which goes off without a hitch except for the fact that live update with a collection greater than 100 is like watching ice sheets retreat in January. Easiest fix is to stop the page from loading, drop back to the shell and set live update to false, and when I hit the page again zing there it is. From start to finish, some 6 hours.
And that, folks, is how not to upgrade your Jinzora install.
Normally, I would tell you that it isn’t worth it but today I’m feeling gracious as I managed to finish that 98 box and the client tossed a little extra into the check. So here are a couple of simple rules to help you get by and keep your Windows PC operational and running clean.
- Update! Staying on top of security updates from Microsoft is one of the more important things you can do whether you are running XP SP2 or Windows 95. Just go to Windows Update and do it!
- Anti-Virus! This ranks up there with security fixes. Face it, Windows was not designed with security in mind and therefore is susceptible to any number of attack methods so get yourself some anti-virus software, keep it up to date, and please make sure you maintain the software contract as old definitions only protect you from old threats.
- Anti-Spyware! If you are one of those people that insists that IE does for them and there is no reason to grab Firefox or Opera or if you are one of those types that is a sucker for pop-ups that insist that your PC’s performance is lacking or what you really need are some casino games on your PC than you need packages like Spybot or Ad-Aware. Irregardless you should run these apps regularly just to be aware of what gets left on your PC after surfing.
- Software Firewall! First off, if you are on broadband you should be running behind a router and it doesn’t matter if there is only one PC, the protection is necessary. That said, software firewalls–packet filters actually–are a great way to prevent unauthorized applications from connecting in or out of your PC. Run one and keep the rules tight.
- Get Intimate! Get to know what processes should be running and what processes probably shouldn’t, Task Manager is a great tool for this as well as is Hijack This. Knowing what applications and services normally run can better assist you in troubleshooting a viral or malware outbreak as you’ll have a good idea of the number of apps and their relative footprints when your machine is healthy.
This is by no means comprehensive nor set in stone and it will not necessarily prevent problems nor will it necessarily fix them if you encounter them. I assume no responsibility for your irresponsibility.
So around 6 pm, after walking the dog, I figured I was ready to button things up. Things seemed to be running fine, drivers were all installed and I was preparing to start service packing the system when one little thing went amiss. First it started with secur32.dll is missing or corrupt. Just out of the blue that message pops while the system is idle at the desktop. So I hunt for the file and sure enough, missing. Alright, I’ll re-install it using SFC. I put it back and reboot only to be presented with “ATA66 BIOS driver not present” when the OS is strapping which leave me at the blinking cursor. No safe mode. Nothing. About all I can conjure up is a choking murmur of despair.
So here’s where it takes an odd turn. Thankfully, I still had the original hard drive, untouched and filled to the rim with rootkits, trojans, worms, and various other forms of malware so I swapped the drives and what do you know, the system boots. After some 8 hours of work I am right back to square one so I decide to go the Windows 2000 route, damn their kids games. After 2 hours of prepping the drive the system won’t boot, same error, “ATA66 BIOS driver not present”. By 9 pm I was defeated. Redmond had pounded that smirk off my face and left me a quivering bundle of skin and bones. I hate my life and curse myself for taking this job.
Resigned I slowly placed the original hard drive back into the cage and began anew cleaning out the first line of viruses by hand while in safe mode. Since the CD drive is disabled in safe-mode I need to book back to normal mode and copy McAfee off the disc. With only seconds to spare the copy is done when the system locks up with a kernel32 error. Thankfully, I can still boot to safe mode and am able to install and run McAfee. After 3 hours of scanning it only dredges up 100 viruses and assorted ad/malware, I expected more. With renewed confidence I reboot the machine into normal mode only to find that the network card is no longer operational. Again with the cursing of myself.
As the night creeps along past midnight, I uninstall the card then reboot. It detects it and installs the drivers but I am confronted with McAfee detecting a trojan at the same time. System locks up. Reboot. Card works. Another trojan. Re-scan. Nothing. Rescan again. I crawl into bed dreaming of what it would be like to slip Ubuntu about the tired shoulders of this poor PC.
Awake and not so refreshed at 5:30 am I shuffle back to the silicon demon I have now been wrangling for some 10 hours. So now my plan is to get the system operational and functional and hand it back to them at a reduced charge. For my own sanity, and Management’s, I think I’m going to take a break from fixing PCs for a bit. This experience has been harrowing, frustrating, ulcer inducing, and makes me wholly appreciate my Linux network. Windows is broken.
