a little update might be in order: quite a few years ago i first mentioned that i do like mdev and that hasn't changed. actually i like it much more nowadays, because i utterly detest systemd & co, its perpetrators and the mindset behind that pile of crap.
so here's what i have to share in the way of mdev-related, hopefully useful, stuff:
- my main mdev.conf config file
- a proper init script for mdev and for mdev as coldplugger once /usr is ready
- a tiny tool that reports just enough of a cdrom device's state to make automation pleasant
- a small cdrom automount agent
- a small bluetooth agent which starts the bluetooth stack if and when a BT device is added
- a small helper for accessing disks by label or id,
- a small rfkill agent which reacts to rf kill switch changes,
- and my old usb device automount helper
Recently I've experimented a little with twitter, but so far I'm not a big fan.
I really don't grok people claiming the 140 char limit to be 'liberating'; to me it's just one big annoyance: if I don't have to say anything then I tend to shut up - and if there is something noteworthy that I would indeed like to share, then it's quite unlikely to fit into that dinky straightjacket format. (It's pretty obvious that I'm not a big SMS user either.)
Most of what I've seen of twitter feels like looking at JPEGs with quality level 1; sure, you can recognize that there's something on that picture but its nowhere near intelligible and and it hurts my eyes.
On the other hand, I do see uses for this kind of sparrowy chirping; for example, as a platform for quick updates about local speed cameras and the like I think it's very good.
Ambivalence, thy name is az...
Update (Fri 20.10.2017 23:43):
nope, not for me. my twitter account is gone and i'm going back to literate communication.
the EFF is much too nice in wording their farewell letter; the register has an overview.
conny had her uni graduation ceremony yesterday.
very well done, dear daughter, "with distinction" despite
working a fulltime job! you should be proud - but don't take this as an excuse
to slack off totally now ;-)
both my place's front and back doors have extra insect screen doors, a vital feature in this part of the world.
but almost every time i open it, the screen door flies open and bangs against the bricks. noise, scratches, ugly torquing of the flimsy hinges, clearly undesirable, and i was getting very sick of this.
(aside: when i bought the place it had automatic door closers on the screen doors, but these were far worse than the problem they attempted to solve so i took them off.)
so, what would az do? as usual i found a simple, quick, workable and cheap solution that makes creative use of stuff i had around.
cut 3cm of leftover pipe insulation foam (which i had bought for a purpose entirely unlike the official one...), slice longitudinally, contact-glue to the bricks, done.
now the door has an unobtrusiveand spongy 'soft' limiter and if and when it gets too gungy i'll just scrape off the glue and glue on a fresh bit of foam.
/me likes.
the area: quite beautiful (the town: hopelessly overcrowded with tourists)
the occasion: conny and andrew getting married
the funniest thing: what the kiwis call their shopping carts
this is not quite the cipherpunk's creed...because there is no such jingoist thing. but still:
"this is my pgp key. there are many like it, but this one is mine. my key is my best friend. without me, my key is useless."
...except that there are assholes out there who spend time on engineering pgp short-id collisions.
so, this is my key, as is this really ancient one and also this work key (ignoring some revoked and expired old keys). my set of keys is of course also available on this very website.
but if you search the keyservers for keys with my email address or by short key id, then you'll find some very clashing crap that does not belong to me at all:
$ gpg --batch --search-keys --keyid-format short B963BD5F
...
4096 bit RSA key B963BD5F, created: 2014-06-16, expires: 2016-11-02 (revoked) (expired)
...
4096 bit RSA key B963BD5F, created: 2013-11-03, expires: 2019-07-02
$ gpg --batch --search-keys --keyid-format short 5B586291
...
1024 bit RSA key 5B586291, created: 2014-06-16 (revoked)
...
1024 bit RSA key 5B586291, created: 1996-08-03
$ gpg --batch --search-keys --keyid-format short 42BD645D
...
1024 bit DSA key 42BD645D, created: 1999-06-06, expires: 2015-09-11 (expired)
1024 bit RSA key 42BD645D, created: 2014-06-16, expires: 2015-09-10 (revoked) (expired)
in all three cases the key created on (or with the clock set to) 2014-06-16 is not mine, despite the short form of the key id matching mine. the long ids are different, just as expected.
morale: short key ids are passé, use the long ones and only the long ones.
morale 2: there's always some asshole somewhere who tries to wreck things just to wreck things.
das 'innenministerium' heisst auf ungarisch 'belügyminisztérium'.
weil einen braunen arsch zu haben ist wirklich das letzte.
das wählen in österreich ist ja meistens mehr eine übung zum arschauswischen; aber diesmal brauchts grad das besonders dringend.
i salute that 82 year old granny: hers is a perfect example of making things do what you actually /need/, completely ignoring what the ven$$or may have intended them for.
i though that i have to handle enough bullshit support stuff at work, but no; apparently you can never have enough of that kind of crap.
contrary to initial expectations ;-),
azquotes.com neither collects
nor presents any of az's quotes.
bummer. i'm clearly defunct in the notoriety department.
after 2.9 years half of them will have died.
i have two colo'd servers, each with two disks, hosted in a well cooled and ventilated datacenter, all four disks have had less than 75 load cycles, have never been hotter than 29 degrees celsius - but regardless of that nice environment, the barracudas suck.
the second out of my four Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 is dying, after a measly 2.9 years of constant operation. the first of the bloody things died precisely at the 2 year mark.
english is pretty inconsistent - but hold the presses: this can't be news to anybody.
this is pretty silly but fun, maybe even news: a few years after the austrians, the czech now also accept pastafarian traditional headgear!
this is pretty cool and not silly at all: the czech team of developers around Jan Mate (inf-it.com) have developed two pretty calendar and contacts web applications that talk calDAV and cardDAV - and it's all self-contained ECZEMAscript: you park it somewhere (not necessarily on a server), configure it a little and hey presto, it'll talk to your calendar server. even better: both CalDavZAP and CardDavMATE are open and free software under the (A)GPL. i use both occasionally (with my radicale server), works really well.
colanders off to these guys!
maybe it's the Mother Of All Rants? Well, maybe not - but he's got a very good point there (one that i totally share, not that anybody'd care about me): that unnecessary obscurity is a lousy design choice.
very much related: ESR's The Art of Unix Programming, which I used quite a lot when I was teaching - some of my students may even have gotten the point...
(I also like the nicely captured photo on this report...)
(source: somewhere in milano)
every time one of the local(ish) Big Bastards trumpets their advertising slogan 'we live in your world' my immediate response is "i wish you damn parasites STAYED OUT OF MY WORLD!".
*sigh*
at work i have to use an outbound mail server that requires smtp auth.
that's fine, except postfix expects that you save the password
in a file for sasl.
my paranoia level disagrees with passwords ending up on disk unencrypted, so
i decided to improve matters by convincing postfix to use the kernel keystore
for accessing passwords.
click here for the rest of the story...
I don't know why I'm so reluctant to document or write about trips; do and see and sponge up experiences and enjoy: yes, absolutely. photograph stuff and write up: not really. So it's no surprise that I've been back a full week already before writing this, and haven't got too many photos to show.
Anyway, to the story: this year I booked three weeks of vacation in
one go, with the aim to hit the roads and dirt tracks westwards and
see what I can see and wander around until I run out of time or
energy. One tentative aim or pivot point, so to speak was to be
Cameron Corner, where
the borders of Queensland, NSW and South Australia meet in one spot.
click here for the rest of the story...
...eingekastelter! lt. dem standard ist österreich "führend" beim haftstrafen-verhängen - leider negativ-führend.
"ob gross, ob klein, mir kastln alle ein!"
(klaro, das passiert natürlich nur denen die keinen Politischen Papa haben der's einem richtet. warum die bladen weniger wegen brutalität eingekastelt werden ist nicht ganz so klar.)
i've given up paragliding. sold 2/3 of my kit already (my somewhat-but-not-totally old and very little used glider is still for sale - my older-than-remembered but totally unused reserve is not for sale, as i don't know what to do with it).
i miss being in the air. a lot. i don't miss the perpetual worries and the feeling of utter helplessness - not if, but when - the moving masses of air take control out of your hands. i also don't miss not having become yet another data point in the PG accident statistics.
so, for now, that's it. flat earth. blue sky. me dreaming.
i hope to return, but if it happens it'll likely be in something more rigid than a paraglider.
hello, i'm az and i'm an old fart: i really
like graffiti -
i always have, since 1998 when i bought my first palm iii.
click here for the rest of the story...
The wind station has gone through its
third and hopefully final R&D iteration, and I think now it's alright - but
it was a bit of an odyssey to get to this point.
click here for the rest of the story...
Even its original perpetrator agrees.
I don't like my browser running code provided by strangers (who are very unlikely to have my best interests at heart).
On the other hand, having a site that works reasonably well with dinky screens is nice.
Combine those two sentiments with my love of tinkering, and it won't
come as a big surprise that I eventually did find a way to have both
responsive layout with a popup navigation menu, but without any JS (or
server-side magic).
click here for the rest of the story...
The Windows 10 announcement: certified hardware can lock out competing OSes means that it would become much easier and more common that the computer you've just bought does not boot anything but MS shiteware.
Beim Herumstöbern bin ich über diesen ÖBB-Unfallbericht gestolpert, und hab den sehr lustig gefunden.
(Den Italienern ist eine unbemannte ÖBB-Lok Richtung Villach "ausgekommen" und dem Bericht nach sind daraufhin alle kurz wie die kopflosen Hendln herumgelaufen.)
Der Bericht selbst ist wunderbar. Die Formulierungen sind eine wilde Mischung aus Altösterreichischem Amtsdeutsch, elendigen Abkz. u.dgl. - und sehr witzigen Nacherzählungen bzw. Übersetzungen der Zeugenaussagen.
Auf Seite 13 lässt sich da der Italienische Chef gscheit aus, und auf Seite 17 wird klargemacht dass zum "Energischen Auffordern" das mit den Armen wacheln ganz klar dazugehört.
Insgesamt sehr Österreichisch, das Ganze.
