Fireside Chat
Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social
media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a
twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took
the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice
and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things
I've ever done for my mental health.
So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken
since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at
Fireside that I am human and not a bot.
It was the Astonishing
Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it
for one of their interactive live chats sometime.
[/musings]
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Take back your privacy
Recent surveys have found that 76% of [the most visited] websites in the
world cotain trackers from google and 24% contain trackers from
facebook. This has been reported by CNBC,
PC
World, The
Verge, Fortune,
and Breitbart.
Almost anywhere you go on the internet, they are following you, building
a profile on you, and selling that information, your information,
to the highest bidder. Even if you don't have a user account for google
or facebook "services," they've built a profile of you using this
surreptitiously collected data.
It turns out there are some steps one can take to prevent these
companies from following you wherever you go. It's not perfect, but it
helps a lot. First, don't use Chrome. Second, install ad-blocker plugins
for your browser. Third, use your firewall.
It turns out Google and Facebook are large enough that they have their
own Autonomous Systems (AS) composed of numerous subnets. Google owns AS
15169, while Facebook owns AS 32934. Using a little bit of shell, it's
relatively easy to look up all the subnets owned by these companies.
whois -h whois.radb.net -- '-i origin AS32934' | grep "^route:" | awk '{print $2;}'
whois -h whois.radb.net -- '-i origin AS15169' | grep "^route:" | awk '{print $2;}'
That's a lot of subnets. Because I have different operating systems on
different computers and still want to block traffic to and from
all those IP addresses, I've written some simple scripts to add
rules to various firewalls. I have scripts for IPFW on FreeBSD, IPTables on Linux, and the Windows Firewall that should work from XP SP3
through Windows 10. I've only tested it on Windows 7 and Windows 10, and
it worked in those.
All of these scripts can be found in this
directory. The IPFW and IPTables scripts are self-contained. For the
Windows command shell batch files, the *ips.txt files are also needed.
I have to say, the internet looks very different with these firewall
rules in place. There are noticeably fewer advertisements and pages load
faster. Embedded YouTube videos and Instagram photos don't appear.
Sometimes the frame disappears, sometimes you get a "failed to connect"
page appearing in a frame in the middle of a page. (Yes, these rules
block YouTube and Instagram; they are owned by google and facebook and
reside in the subnets owned by those companies.) On a relatively rare
occasion, I come across a site using some sort of javascript or css or
something hosted by a machine in one of those ASs and that will be
blocked. Sometimes the site handles that gracefully, sometimes it stops
being functional. A small price to take back your life.
Update: Twitter has trackers on a decent amount of sites out there too,
so I've added scripts to block Twitter's AS 13414 as well. Those scripts
are in the same directories as the others.
[/musings]
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New PGP Key!
So apparently Evil32 happened.
Approximately 24,000 PGP keys were generated that had collisions with
the 32-bit short IDs of existing keys. Then someone decided to use those
conflicting keys to generate revocation certificates and upload them to
the keyservers. Joy.
Though my old keys still work, they were affected by this mass
revocation of collsions. I have created a new key which can be found at
http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/mforde.asc.
On a related note, if anyone is interested in Key Signing Party, shoot
me an email. I haven't been to one of those since college.
[/musings]
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Merry Christmas
While the holidays are supposed to be a joyous time, I know and
understand how hard they can be for some people. If you're having a
rough time over the next week or so and need someone to talk to, feel
free to message me. If you're reading this blog, you likely know my
email address or phone number.
[/musings]
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Megapath sucks
Speakeasy was by far the best ISP I ever dealt with. Freindly, and above
all, knowledgeable. Since they have been purchased by
Megapath then merged into Global Capacity, their tech support has been,
frankly a bunch of idiots. Furthermore, their website routinely has
"Service failed" errors that prevent you from logging in, changing
passwords, and viewing account information.
Today, after being unable to log in to the website due to "service
failed" the tech support rep on the phoned didn't understand what a
subnet mask or gateway address were. Eventually I just got her to read
me "all three IP addresses" on the screen in front of her.
But at this point my only other option is Verizon. So I'm sticking with
Megapath.
[/musings]
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Found this sitting in a tarball of my old home directory...
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[/musings]
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Prince
I'll never forget the day I started liking Prince's music. I was with my
friend in his car headed somewhere. We were listening to K-Rock and they
had a "listener playlist" where for about an hour, all the music had
been selected by a listener and this listener was on the phone, talking
with the DJ about his selections and introducing songs.
The guy announced that the next song was from Prince. The DJ questioned
this selection and he said, "No, this dude can shred. Just listen."
And we laughed.
And we listened.
And Prince shredded.
[/musings]
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It's been a while...
It's been a while since I've had a substantial update here. I've been
busy living life leaving little time to be writing about it; at least
writing about it here.
Work has been quite busy for a while now. Lots of projects, lots of
deadlines, lots of extra hours. But there hasn't been any "mandatory
seven day work weeks" like I had at that one job, and there isn't that
expectation of "you can work from home so you are always expected to be
working" I had at the last job. Plus, the work is a lot more interesting
than anything I've done in years.
Bernstein was right: money doesn't motivate me, interesting problems and
the ability to tinker do.
Yesterday the DeLorean rolled over to 16,000 miles. That's still about
1,000 miles a year I'm putting on it. I'd like to keep the mileage low,
but she's just so much fun to drive. I've been asked by people at work
to bring Aisling next week for Bring Your Child to Work Day. Apparently
a lot of my co-workers have told their kids about the car and they want
to see it.
I ran my 29th half-marathon this past weekend. I'd like to get up to 32
this year. I'm also signed up for my 13th marathon this Autumn. I'm
considering running number 14 a few weeks later.
In addition to all of that taking up my time, I've also been
volunteering with the Youth Ministry at a church in my diocese. That's
been quite an amazing adventure. It's had a profound impact on my life
and has certainly helped at least a few teens. It's been an honor to do
the Lord's work. Maybe someday I'll publish some of the talks I've
given. The In His Image talk seems to have resonated with a lot
of people, certainly more so than some of the other talks.
I guess that sums things up for now.
[/musings]
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It was a good day...
So today I woke up and watched an episode of Star Trek while I did some
weight training and core work. Then I met my friend and her 5-month old
baby for breakfast. That baby is so cute, and so happy too.
After that I met another friend for a run in the Tourne where we met a
fox on the Red Trail. When I got home from the run, I turned my lawn
into an avant garde art installation and then took a shower.
I took Ailsing out for a drive and on the way home she rolled over to
15,000 miles. I've had the DeLorean for about five years now, so I'm
still averaging 1,000 miles per year. Not bad.
A large part of a tree fell and missed my house by about 18 inches. So
then I went and ran another Six miles during a National Weather Service
tornado watch.
Now I'm finishing up the day with a good movie and a glass of Monk's
Blood.
Today, I didn't even have to use my AK. It was a good day.
[/musings]
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Cast Yourself
"Cast yourself upon Him and be not afraid; He will not draw away and
let you fall. Cast yourself without fear, He will receive you and heal
you."
-- Saint Augustine, Confessions: Book 8, Chapter 11
[/musings]
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It's not stupid, it's advanced
I opened the Windows 10 settings app, not to be confused with the
control panel, and I selected "Windows Update." Next, I chose the
"Advanced Options" and was greeted with this mess. I hope the next build
fixes this problem, as well as the myriad of other issues plaguing the
current Windows 10 preview release.
[/musings]
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Initial Thoughts on Windows 10 -- UPDATED!
I'm done with Microsoft for any platform that is not a telephone.
Windows 10 attempts to "fix" the abomination that was windows 8 on the
desktop, but just makes things worse.
The "search" "app" that replaces the previous existing search feature
really only sends a query to bing. I'm looking for a file somewhere in a
subdirectory on my hard drive. I didn't want to search the web for
20141020*.txt. The UI looks like crap. Slapping a titlebar on top of the
"modern" "apps" does not make them usable on the desktop. The start
menu has returned, but it has never been this useless. And the ability
to revert to the "classic" start menu, the behavior introduced in
windows 95, and refined in win98 and Windows 2000, has been removed. I
shouldn't be surprised by that given that Windows 7 also lacked the
"classic" start menu. At least Windows 7 allowed a "Windows Classic"
theme for the rest of the UI.
Ever since Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, MS has been slowly and surely
trying to make things "easier." However, what they deem "easier" often
means removing features and behaviors I relied on to get work done.
Windows 10 continues this tradition.
I never really had a problem with Microsoft, I never avoided their
software for ideological reasons. I believe in using the right tool for
the job. Windows 10 is the wrong tool for any job.
UPDATE!!!
Using the Windows Update mechanism, MS pushed out a new build of Windows
10. This upgraded the installation from build 9841 to build 9860. After
a lengthy download, installation, and a very long reboot, I was able to
log in again, Only to be greeted by this:
And this lovely error when I tried to open the new "Notification
Center":
Now isn't that special?
[/musings]
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The Truth is Out There
Tonight, I had the great fortune of joining a person who means the
world to me at a book signing by Gillian Anderson and her co-author Jeff
Rovin. Jeff has ghost-written/co-written several novels for and with Tom
Clancy, and Gillian is AGENT DANA SCULLY!!!
Gillian indicated that she modeled the main character as someone she
would play in a cinematic version of the story, and Jeff mentions that,
while not required reading, the novel is a spiritual sequel to Edgar
Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of
Nantucket.
I'm going to put The Crytptonomicon on the back burner and put
Poe's work and this new novel, A Vision of Fire at the front of
my priority queue.
[/musings]
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Windows 8.1 in Virtual Box
I was attempting to run the Windows 8.1 Preview in a VM using
Sun's Oracle's Virtual Box on a Windows 7
host. I ran into a minor problem.
The OS wouldn't boot. I received an error stating:
Your computer needs to restart.
Please hold down the power button.
Error Code: 0x000000C4
Parameters:
[redacted]
Looking for the error code online led me to this
article describing the issue and a fix. The key to fixing this was
running the command:
"c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" setextradata "" VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1
The CMPXCHG16B is an instruction in 64-bit X86 processors that allows
for atomic operations on octal words.
[/musings]
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Happy Birthday
I'm starting to get used to celebrating my birthday at TBM concerts.
This year it was about a week prior to my birthday at a show on December
1 held at New York's Gramercy Theatre.
Along with the tickets, I had also purchased the "VIP package." This
package included an autographed poster signed by all members of the
band, a "VIP" laminate on a lanyard, and... the opportunity to meet the
band prior to the show!
You may be thinking, "But they stick around after shows and mingle with
their fans anyway," and "You've already met them a few times!" Both are
true. And even with this "VIP" package meet-and-greet, they still make
time for all their fans after the show. What this provided was a
somewhat quieter meeting in a more intimate setting.
In fact the meeting was in a small lounge beneath the concert hall. Dim
mood lighting, mirrors, and couches set the atmosphere. I spoke with
Rainbow, Michael, and Nate first. Rainbow informed me his name was
Michael also and made a joke about the "power of the three Mikes
lighting the room." After a bit, they started moving me to Chibi who was
sitting on a couch after injuring her knee during a show two nights
prior. She tried to walk to me, but I told her not to. She said, "I'll
meet you half way then."
I gave her a get well card, knowing she had had surgery on her vocal
chords about 8 weeks prior and recently injured her knee. Someone
decided we needed a photo of that and she gave me the card back so I
could give it back to her. I believe it was Owen who said, "Act natural
and hold it for 30 seconds!"
I asked Rainbow about writing "Unfamiliar" because both he and OE were
given credit in the liner notes. He said it was mostly OE; OE started it
and Rainbow had finished it. I said I wanted to thank them because it
was a song that had taken on some greater meaning to me and I relayed a
brief version of the story of the moment I recognized that. It turns
out "Unfamiliar" is one of Chibi's favorite songs too.
Every one of the bands that night were amazing. All, remarkably, were
performing as duos. Creature Feature was a real fun band to see. Their
music is heavily influenced by old horror movies which gives them a
dark yet fun sound.
Aesthetic Perfection put on a good performance. Their drummer is
amazing and fun to watch. They heavily synth-based and while there was a
dark tone to most of their songs, they still had fun and lightened
things up with a Fine Young Cannibals cover.
William Control was the only other act I had heard before the show
(Thanks Last.fm!). He was great live and I'd love to see him again. He
reminded me a little of Dommin in that Dean Martin meets Glen Danzig
sort of way.
The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs
from every album. For most of the set Chibi was sitting on a speaker
placed near center at the front of the stage, wearing a knee brace. She
stood up and moved around occasionally, but not much. At one point
Rainbow sat down on another speaker and stuck out one leg in a similar
fashion to how Chibi was seated and laughed a little. It was easy to
tell by their interaction here that Chibi and Rainbow are close.
If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:
- Night Shift
- Down
- Control
- Always
- Red Stars
- Video kid
- Lover's End
- Forever
- Pins and Needles
- Happy Birthday
- Alibis
- Calling
- In the Dark
- Sleep Walking
- Midnight
-- Encore --
- Leaving Tonight
- The Long Way Home
- Blue
The band did not leave the stage prior to the encore as they normally
would. Chibi said, "This is the part of the show where we say thank you
and leave and you clap and we come back out and play some more. But I'm
not going to walk down those stairs anymore than I have to, so do you
want to hear three more songs?"
[/musings]
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Signs of the Apocalypse
A friend told me this was from Glee. I found it amusing; thought I'd
share.
It's a fact that the book of Revelations predicted Twitter. It's one of
the seven signs of the apocalypse; Along with porn, unexplainable
weather anomalies, martian rovers, Barney Frank, the middle east and
MSNBC. It's like Kirk Cameron said, "It's never too late, until it's too
late."
[/musings]
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