posts from 2007

  1. Has a half barrel of Sierra Nevada on tap in the basement.

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 29, 2007 - 1:47 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/29/13-47-00-has-a-half-barrel-of-sierra-nevada-on-tap-in-the-b/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/29/13-47-00-has-a-half-barrel-of-sierra-nevada-on-tap-in-the-b/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  2. Happy Birthday!

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 28, 2007 - 6:06 AM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/28/06-06-00-happy-birthday/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/28/06-06-00-happy-birthday/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  3. Dude, you’re an old man… happy last day of 27 😃

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 27, 2007 - 3:18 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/27/15-18-00-dude-youre-an-old-man/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/27/15-18-00-dude-youre-an-old-man/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  4. Dork - you’re not supposed to write on your own wall 😛
    Besides… eh, no thanks.

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 27, 2007 - 12:41 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/27/12-41-00-dork---youre-not-supposed-to-write-on-your-own-wal/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/27/12-41-00-dork---youre-not-supposed-to-write-on-your-own-wal/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  5. Hey whats up, how you been? you shoulda told me so i coulda go on the santa crawl with you we need to get all the cousins to go to do something

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 26, 2007 - 11:42 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/26/23-42-00-hey-whats-up-how-you-been-you-shoulda-told-me-so-i/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/26/23-42-00-hey-whats-up-how-you-been-you-shoulda-told-me-so-i/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  6. Has a very limited attention sp-oh hey lets go ride bikes

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 26, 2007 - 12:45 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/26/12-45-00-has-a-very-limited-attention-sp-oh-hey-lets-go-rid/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/26/12-45-00-has-a-very-limited-attention-sp-oh-hey-lets-go-rid/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  7. Staying classy.

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 19, 2007 - 5:40 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/19/17-40-00-staying-classy/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/19/17-40-00-staying-classy/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  8. Is web 3.1 for workgroups

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 18, 2007 - 6:09 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/18/18-09-00-is-web-3/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/18/18-09-00-is-web-3/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  9. -astic

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 18, 2007 - 6:05 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/18/18-05-00--astic/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/18/18-05-00--astic/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  10. vim google

    Ben: http://www.google.com/experimental/ you can now enable google vim like bindings on web searches via cookie the :v: something awful forums emote

    Grant: awesome

    Ben: you can join whichever experiment you want

    Ben: cool stuff

    Grant: very

    Grant: ok that rocks

    Ben: yea

    Grant: I already use the vim bindings in google reader

    Ben: one of the main reasons i liked it yea

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon December 18, 2007 - 5:43 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-12-17-vim-google/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-12-17-vim-google/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  11. Happy Hanukkah

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 15, 2007 - 7:07 AM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/15/07-07-00-happy-hanukkah/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/15/07-07-00-happy-hanukkah/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  12. Is in training all week

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 12, 2007 - 6:13 AM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/12/06-13-00-is-in-training-all-week/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/12/06-13-00-is-in-training-all-week/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  13. Is like water

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 07, 2007 - 6:52 AM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/07/06-52-00-is-like-water/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/07/06-52-00-is-like-water/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  14. More importantly, why didn’t you click yes!?

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 07, 2007 - 6:47 AM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/07/06-47-00-more-importantly-why-didnt-you-click-yes/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/07/06-47-00-more-importantly-why-didnt-you-click-yes/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  15. Why are you being viewed on “Are you interested?” :-p

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 06, 2007 - 6:09 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/06/18-09-00-why-are-you-being-viewed-on-are-you-interested--p/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/06/18-09-00-why-are-you-being-viewed-on-are-you-interested--p/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  16. Wow, welcome to the world of facebook!

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 06, 2007 - 1:19 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/06/13-19-00-wow-welcome-to-the-world-of-facebook/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/06/13-19-00-wow-welcome-to-the-world-of-facebook/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  17. The second disk of In Rainbows

    I’m enjoying the first track of In Rainbows, Mk 1, and it has a nice callback to the first disc over a gradual fade-in. Down Is The New Up has a nice start, and what could be more refreshing than a normal drum kit played by a human? It sounds great! The song builds and builds, string and piano interaction backing Thom nicely. The beat changes from a slow hip hop roll to kicks and snares together at the 3:03 mark and the strings and piano begin echoing with urgency. A crescendo is approaching as we approach 3:30 into the tune.

    At that point precisely, the guitars and bass completely fail even enter the track.

    Damnit.

    Update: It’s been a month, I love both releases and wouldn’t change a thing now.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon December 05, 2007 - 12:48 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-12-04-the-second-disk-of-in-rainbows/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-12-04-the-second-disk-of-in-rainbows/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  18. Yay I’m the first person to write on your wall!

    Posted on Facebook over 18 years agoon December 04, 2007 - 1:15 PM and archived here at /facebook/2007/12/04/13-15-00-yay-im-the-first-person-to-write-on-your-wall/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/facebook/2007/12/04/13-15-00-yay-im-the-first-person-to-write-on-your-wall/ in the Facebook collection in both HTML and markdown.

  19. The Hard Sell

    I just picked up 2 tickets for DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist’s current tour, called “The Hard Sell”.

    I’m seeing them at Sonar in Baltimore on Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 08:00 PM!

    A lot of the show is broken up in pieces on youtube if you want to preview it. I’m excited!

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon December 03, 2007 - 9:54 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-12-03-the-hard-sell/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-12-03-the-hard-sell/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  20. I keep going on about Tufte stuff.

    I find sparklines really really amazingly cool. I currently use them in my weekly reports for management thanks to some software from Bizzantz and a spreadsheet I kept all summer. I’m using the free version and will buy up once we decide on a license count and version that we need.

    a screenshot of a fake report I made full of sparklines
    Figure 1. a screenshot of a fake report I made full of sparklines.

    Pretty rad eh? I replaced the measured items of this example using photoshop, and it’s not as nice as it could be, but I can throw the real thing together in MS Word at the end of the week pretty quickly and send it up. I like it!

    Lessons learned so far:

    The first week I played with them I didn’t align them vertically, which made it less obvious that as the assholes stopped doing what they were asked to do that President Scroob got more complaints about them. It looks like too many of them were manning the radar, but who knows? Is there really a correlation between Druish / Jewish gags and gags involving Barf’s tail?

    Also, the first week I relied on the ‘sparklefont’ that Bizzantz uses to create the sparklines. It is awesome, but images translate a bit better from e-mail to e-mail to executive copy / paste, and so on.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon November 01, 2007 - 1:06 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-10-31-sparklines-and-data-trending/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-10-31-sparklines-and-data-trending/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  21. Conway's Law

    Tufte finds Conway’s law frequently rearing it’s ugly head. If you’ve worked on engineering projects, or taken over for someone else’s engineering project, you’ll recognize it immediately.

    Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.

    That can be reworded to encompass any design project, software engineering or otherwise. It also is evident when an engineering team is slowly recycled with new members. The designs of the original team will be deemed crufty and most engineers joining the team will want to clean-slate the entire thing. This isn’t practical, so bolt-on and secondary systems tend to emerge. Extending existing systems is an impossible ideal.

    Managers of engineering teams over this lifecycle must be understanding to guide this to fruitful ends.

    Emphasis mine below.

    Conway’s Law can be construed as humorous, to the extent that rigid organizations that are not willing to re-organize to generate an optimal design, can end up producing a sub-standard design that merely reflects the pre-existing organization.

    But the essence of Conway’s Law also applies to flexible organizations that are willing to re-organize to produce an optimal design.

    For example, consider a flexible company that is charged with designing a car, and the company does not yet have a car-design organization. The new car-design organization will probably consist of groups that correspond to the major components of a car: engine, body, transmission, interior, electrical, etc.

    The essence of Conway’s Law applies even in this re-organization situation: the components and interfaces of the resultant car mirror the engineering groups and their interfaces.

    And, significantly, any shortcoming with the interpersonal relationships between the engineering groups, may manifest itself in a shortcoming of the resultant design.

    Wikipedia offers a corollary

    In every organization there is one person who knows exactly what is going on at all times. This person must be fired.

    Sounds like management!

    Richard: If we had someone that knew exactly what was going on in all parts of UMBC, it’d be noteworthy, possibly worth a newspaper article in the student paper.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon October 20, 2007 - 6:34 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-10-20-conways-law/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-10-20-conways-law/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  22. Tufte - Presenting Data and Information

    I had the pleasure of attending a one day course on the presentation of data and information given by Edward Tufte in Washington DC.

    I already owned copies of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, as well as Envisioning Information, but with the course came bundled four of his books; the two above, as well as Visual Explanations, and his newest work, Beautiful Evidence.

    tufte's dog
    Figure 1. tufte's dog.

    I thoroughly enjoyed it and actually took notes!

    In addition to the general theme of data presentation, Tuft spoke to his personal interests in science, the history of data presentation, and philosophy.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon October 19, 2007 - 1:17 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-10-18-tufte-presenting-data-and-information/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-10-18-tufte-presenting-data-and-information/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  23. Eternal bash history

    Debian Administration has great advice for requesting that bash keep a history of all commands recorded. Add this to your .bashrc!

    export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%s " PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND ; }"'echo $$ $USER \ "$(history 1)" >> ~/.bash_eternal_history'

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon October 18, 2007 - 7:24 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-10-18-eternal-bash-history/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-10-18-eternal-bash-history/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  24. Damon Runyon and fall of the Republic

    I’m poking my way through The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century; a collection of short stories that looks a bit like an unabridged dictionary. I read Damon Runyon’s short story Sense of Humour while I was making dinner tonight. The characters made me think of Looney Toons’ Rocky and Mugsy, but I guess the inspiration went the other way 'round.

    Great stuff, and it looks like thanks to Google books you can read the entire story online.

    Over the weekend I finished Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, which Amazon says I bought on Jan. 1 of 2007. I have a pretty strong romantic fascination with the period covered in the last half of the book, thanks probably to Rufus J. Fears. Pompey, Cato, Cicero, Brutus, Crassus, Ceasar, Octavian, Marc Anthony and Cleopatra…

    I want to move on to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire but it’s not cheap, even used, to get the entire collection. I’ll keep looking. Exciting.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon September 21, 2007 - 4:18 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-09-20-damon-runyon-and-fall-of-the-republic/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-09-20-damon-runyon-and-fall-of-the-republic/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  25. [Seasonal|Harvest|Solstice] Family Gatherings

    While there is still time to debate it all: my wife and I are probably bailing on all the usual holidays this winter. How controversial is it to just not show up for Thanksgiving or Christmas? In our case each consists of five or six events each, some on the same day. We’ve been making the run of it all for ten years together.

    I’m not skipping Halloween and New Years parties of course, I believe in pumpkins and silly costumes, and I subscribe to the Gregorian calendar.

    We make a pretty mindful effort to host and attend dinners and the like with all the the in-laws and step-in-laws frequently. Work gives us a few days off a year and spending that time driving is not our idea of “fun”.

    Is that selfish?

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon September 18, 2007 - 2:27 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-09-17-seasonalharvestsolstice-family-gatherings/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-09-17-seasonalharvestsolstice-family-gatherings/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  26. Chevy Chase

    Chase did not enter medical school; instead he played drums for a time with the college band The Leather Canary, headed by school chums Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. At the time, Chase called the group “a bad jazz band,” but Becker and Fagen went on to success after they changed their band’s name to Steely Dan…

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon September 03, 2007 - 6:14 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-09-02-chevy-chase/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-09-02-chevy-chase/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  27. Making Plans for Nigel

    At work, Making Plans for Nigel came up on the ipod, which I blast through a Tivoli Model Two in our six-cube windowless office with the overhead flourescent’s off because we are all nerds.

    Queue it up and play along!

    We’re only making plans for nigel
    We only want what’s best for him
    We’re only making plans for nigel
    Nigel just needs this helping hand

    Awesome tune. I was probably tapping my toes, playing finger-drums on my desk.

    And if young nigel says he’s happy
    He must be happy
    He must be happy in his work

    I had to break out in a very exagerated and loud parody of the actual bridge accompaniment: “Iiiiiinnnnn hiiiiisssss worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk!!”

    More toe tapping…

    Again: “Iiiiiinnnnn hiiiiisssss worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk!!”

    Jeff joined in from the next cube over: “Eeeeeee-oooohhhhhhhhhhh!”

    Awesome, more finger-drumming.

    Then I remembered that I had dialed into a conference call about 10 minutes previously which was about to start. I checked to make sure I was muted.

    I wasn’t muted.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 31, 2007 - 7:21 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-31-making-plans-for-nigel/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-31-making-plans-for-nigel/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  28. Beer Labels

    We went down early January before the wedding to scope out the area and to meet with the folks at Weeping Radish. They just happened to not only be happy to provide us with kegs but also to print labels for a few custom cases.

    I procrastinated on submitting the designs until two days before the wedding, leaving no time to fix the spelling error that made it to the final. I fixed that and put them on flickr.

    The design is an improvement on my original design for the invitations:

    And everyone thought it turned out pretty well on the bottles. I still have a Maibock left, the rest is all gone!

    The printer helpfully color-matched the SURGEON GENERAL and other sidebar stuff for each label.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 31, 2007 - 3:46 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-31-beer-labels/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-31-beer-labels/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  29. The Tower

    An eight year old picture I took as part of a portfolio review requirement for UMBC. It’s the bell tower in Baker Park in Frederick, MD.

    I had no idea what I was doing. My dad’s Nikon happened to have film in it and happened to have been dialed in to shoot in the conditions, I just attempted to focus and push the shutter. I wonder if I could acheive this affect intentionally now. The composition is very rigid.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 28, 2007 - 1:02 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-27-the-tower/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-27-the-tower/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  30. The Throne

    In my basement:

    Note the seat is about mid-way between the floor and the 7’ ceiling.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 28, 2007 - 12:51 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-27-throne/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-27-throne/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  31. BUSTER-NO!

    Amanda wants a puppy in a few years. As much as I yell at my cat when he jumps on her cats with claws out, biting for their necks, it is nothing compared to the amount of yelling “NO!” it takes to poorly train a dog. I don’t know if I’m up to the challenge yet.

    They can be pretty damned cute though. That’s my Mom and Bill’s dog Buster. His name is actually Buster-no! I think, and they call him Buster for short.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 27, 2007 - 3:31 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-27-buster-no/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-27-buster-no/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  32. keep your eyes open

    A book of Fugazi photographs by Glen Friedman is available for pre-order for $30.

    Updated

    “keep” has asked for a review. Here goes:

    Keep Your Eyes Open’s official release date is September 3, 2007, 20 years after Fugazi’s first show. I received my copy early on the 14th of August. The finish and binding of the book is nicely executed.

    I’ve only seen Fugazi twice—once at Ft. Reno, and once at 9:30. The photographs captured by Glen Friedman, especially of the Ft. Reno shows, capture the energy that I remember of a Fugazi performance. I’m from the burbs. Seeing Fugazi in the District for a free show was a major event only possible for kids like us if we happened to be in the right time and place to hear about it. The band did not promote - a friend of a friend heard about the show that evening. All us happened to be working morning or day shifts at our crummy jobs and were able to leave in time to make it downtown for the show. The pictures in Keep Your Eyes Open had me looking at every face in the crowd.

    I was surprised how many press-kit looking portraits were in the collection. Most of the pictures are captioned with comments from the photographer. The motivations for the portraiture is very likely not for press kit materials but wasn’t otherwise explained save a caption that non-obvious DC locales were often goals of the Friedmen and Fugazi shoots before local shows. Why shoot at all before shows?

    My only other Fugazi experience was an all-proceeds-to-charity 9:30 show near the very end. Jerry Busher was on a second drum set, and Guy and Ian were electrified. My roommate and I were on stools stage-right at the bar remarking over and over again on the musical interaction between the two guitar players. It was amazing.

    I’m probably not a serious Fugazi fan. I love the music, the lyrics, and the energy. I liked that I could enjoy a show without the moshing and crowd surfing already going out of fashion. But I was young and late to the scene. I had a FUGAZI t-shirt that I picked up at a merch-booth at a Moody Blues show of all places, not knowing that the band didn’t “do” that sort of thing and that it was bullshit. I had another one styled after the Repeater artwork that I bought from a rock-T’s magazine. Wearing a FUGAZI shirt wasn’t that much different to me than wearing a NIN shirt or a Led Zeppelin shirt.

    I was approached twice by strangers about the shirts. In Bethany Beach a Vietnam veteran asked if I knew what fugazi meant. In Frederick, MD outside a store an older ex-punk approached to tell me that Ian MacKaye was an asshole, and that they’d worked together flipping burgers before Minor Threat formed and that Ian MacKaye was a sell-out-motherfucker.

    Only a band so set on their ideals and on their message can have that sort of effect on people. “Fugazi fans are pretentious assholes”. “The guys in the band are assholes”. Wait, what? “Fugazi sucks because they yell at people starting pits at their shows”. So?

    Back to the book, and the foreword written by a pretentious asshole Fugazi fan and one of Glen Friedman’s “favorite people on the planet”, Ian F. Svenonius. The introduction is not to my taste. I would like to think I can dig somewhat strange music writing; I enjoyed Paul Morely’s Words and Music for whatever that is worth. Svenonius gives us an essay in the format of an interview with a person with multiple personalities, in a DC coffee shop. Hip. Long. Not enlightening about the band to any fan; and not adding anything to the book. The man’s words about Fugazi carry to me the maturity of a young adult. Maybe I’m not getting some sort of slathered on irony? When a character in the interview describes avoiding early Fugazi shows because they were too popular, or finally going to a show but only due to laziness bothering to not listen to it from the bathroom of the club, I think: this is the kind of asshole I couldn’t stand in that fucking scene. This is the kind of douche that would swear off local groups as soon as conformists got into them. That’s the kind of dick I failed to avoid being, I’m sure. The ultimate poseur or the worst? I haven’t read anything else by Svenonius. I don’t know his relationship with Friedman or the band, or the community. I’m specifically reacting to the introduction of Keep Your Eyes Open.

    Friedman’s closing remarks are much more aligned with what one would expect for the introduction and would have served well in Svenonius’ place. I wish the textual content provided more insight into the group. I wish there was more than just name dropping Rites of Spring and other pre-Fugazi groups, which carried more of their sound forward into Fugazi than any of Ian’s previous bands; maybe I’m just a Guy-fan.

    The font used on the cover and in all of the captions works nicely. The same font (I think) is used in the body of the introduction and in the closing remarks. It is a poor selection in those formats and doesn’t work well with the page size or line length making for difficult reading.

    The book cost me thirty bucks. Is it a thirty dollar book? Definitely. It’s great. Don’t buy it to gain any insight into the band, buy it for the pictures. You can see more of Friedman’s work on his website.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 27, 2007 - 3:09 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-27-fugazi-keep-your-eyes-open/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-27-fugazi-keep-your-eyes-open/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  33. The Olympics

    The Hipster Olympics.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 26, 2007 - 4:54 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-26-the-olympics/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-26-the-olympics/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  34. DynDNS Mailhops will no longer send NDR's

    Emphasis mine.

    Dynamic Network Services, Incorporated has come to a difficult decision regarding the handling of locally-generated non-delivery reports (NDR), also known as “undeliverable mail” or “bounce” messages. DynDNS will no longer deliver locally-generated NDRs from any MailHop systems.

    It is through our operational experience that we believe that the exploitation of this behavior has begun to far exceed its original informational purposes. Specifically, spammers and other Internet-abusers are using this behavior to distribute spam, malware, and to otherwise cause troubles for e-mail systems It has become common for spammers to forge originating e-mail addresses and to then send large spam runs against different servers. When this happens, DynDNS sometimes receives these messages, which cannot be delivered or worse, get bounced back to the original forged sender, who now gets the spam in his or her inbox (a.k.a. spam blow back).

    We simply feel that this is not the right thing to do.

    I’ve been doing this for a few years for clients that used the spam filters I set up in front of their exchange servers. All sites should do this. RFC’s are not holy territory; they were designed by teams and committee’s operating under assumptions that do not at all match the internet infrastructure or user-base.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 25, 2007 - 12:33 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-24-dyndns-mailhops-will-no-longer-send-ndrs/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-24-dyndns-mailhops-will-no-longer-send-ndrs/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  35. DGM Live

    King Crimson (and more) live shows. Some at a price, some free.

    I’m listening to a show from 1982 that was a free download. Matte Kudasai I think is my current favorite tune of theirs, but I’m just getting around to getting into them.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 24, 2007 - 6:12 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-24-dgm-live/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-24-dgm-live/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  36. What the fuck do we know?

    We are adults, we don’t have to BLEEP.

    Wired news picked up an article from the Huffington Post (which is running a where-are-we-now update on a two-year-old Salon article about a stupid movie), bemoaning society’s slippery slide into psuedo-pscience…

    All of which, in my mind, goes a ways towards explaining the un- and pseudo-scientific thinking that seems to be on the rise in our culture. If we can’t trust studies, documentaries, talking heads, newspapers, the only thing we have left is our own experiences. Once upon a time, media of communication were tools to raise our eyes up from our individual experiences and focus on the larger concerns of a nation, a city, a cause. Now, all they do is leave us disgusted, pointing our eyes back down. It’s no wonder we don’t know any better.

    Maybe I’m an optimist, but I don’t see this trend. My experience tells me actually that people today are a bit savier than their forefathers. No we can’t all be at the level of specialists in every field. And knowledge from some fields, especially those contrary to common sense or one’s upbringing, tend to be resisted. By all of us.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 23, 2007 - 6:37 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-23-what-the-fuck-do-we-know/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-23-what-the-fuck-do-we-know/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  37. House Miscelany

    Ken and Erica had an old Kenwood combo amplifier to get rid of, I had a a home theater system powering my living room audio kitchen audio and and the TV powering the TV audio.

    Great upgrade, Amanda thinks it is ugly.

    Old 2004 Onkyo:

    New 1973 Kenwood:

    The Kenwood also has a Phono input, which will be great with the old Dual record player my dad gave me. I need to get some DeOxit to clean up all the pots and connections and it’ll be perfect.

    I’m going to move the home theater amp to the basement to go with the old PolkAudio loudspeakers my Uncle Tim gave me, pics when it gets set up.

    We also had new deadbolts put on the front and rear doors, my step-father Bill happens to lock-smith. It was neat to watch, here he is picking out tumblers so that the keys match:

    We also pulled up the carpet in the middle-upstairs bedroom.

    The hallway pine floor looks like this:

    Under the carpet we found completely unfinished pine:

    We can’t decide what we want to do with it as this room is around the bottom our list of priorities and pulling up the carpet was just an itch I wanted to scratch since doing it was free and relatively easy.

    Posted on Blog over 18 years agoon August 23, 2007 - 4:10 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-23-house-miscelany/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-23-house-miscelany/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  38. Coke Cans

    I knew I wasn’t the only person to dig the new coke can:

    I had a can collection in middle-school that got tossed in a move due to poor packing choice: I put them all in a large lawn bag instead of boxes. Guess what the movers thought. Into the trash went cans of coke, new coke, coke II (remember the roman numeral design?), coke classic, old pepsi logo and old diet pepsi logo cans, crystal pepsi cans and bottles, old mt. dew and mellow yellow logo cans, redskin bottles and cans of coke, and more I’m probably not remembering.

    Seeing coke cans evolve over time is neato, check it out.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon August 17, 2007 - 11:32 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-17-coke-cans/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-17-coke-cans/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  39. Haunted Armoire

    I love craigslist.

    (not my craigslist posting, no idea who posted it)

    My wife and I found an armoire in an alley behind our church last weekend. Being an antique lover, she immediately fell for it. It is from the late 19th century (she thinks), with intricately carved designs and six shelves. It’s made of walnut (that’s what she said). One of our friends said that it is extremely rare and we could sell it for several thousands.

    We were going to keep it but we now think the armoire is haunted. My wife found a message carved under one of the shelves about a pox and there’s a giant pentagram carved on the very bottom (out of view and doesn’t affect the overall look) with a bunch of latin words. Also, when we first got it, there were some red stains on the bottom shelf, but my wife cleaned them because she thought they were Kool-Aid or some sort of juice.

    Ever since we brought it into our house, she’s been really scared at night. One time, our lamp fell over (I think it was because of the wind) and our daughter came down with a little cold, but that’s all. She thinks we need to give it away to someone who can either deal with the “curse” or can make it holy again. I just wish I could keep it (because it is truly beautiful), but she won’t let me.

    Free to anyone who can come pick it up. I’ll also take a six pack if you got that.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon August 15, 2007 - 7:12 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-08-14-haunted-armoire/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-08-14-haunted-armoire/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  40. Threat Analysis

    Gerald Ford
    Figure 1. Gerald Ford.

    Wikipedia:

    Ford faced two assassination attempts during his presidency, occurring within three weeks of each other: while in Sacramento, California on September 5, 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, pointed a Colt 45-caliber handgun at Ford. As Fromme pulled the trigger, Larry Buendorf[70], a Secret Service agent, grabbed the gun and managed to insert the webbing of his thumb under the hammer, preventing the gun from firing. It was later found that, although the gun was loaded with four bullets, it was a semi-automatic pistol and the slide had not been pulled to place a bullet in the firing chamber, making it impossible for the gun to fire. Fromme was taken into custody; she was later convicted of attempted assassination of the President and was sentenced to life in prison.[71]

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon July 24, 2007 - 3:00 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-07-24-threat-analysis/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-07-24-threat-analysis/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  41. J-Roddy Walston and the Business @ Artscape

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon July 23, 2007 - 5:20 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-07-22-j-roddy-walston-and-the-business-artscape/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-07-22-j-roddy-walston-and-the-business-artscape/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  42. Baltimore Artscape 2007

    Artscape is this weekend in Bolton Hill.

    I’m going to definitely make the Saturday 5PM J Roddy Walston and The Business show, then maybe try to get over to the DJ booth for DJ Vadim, then back to the main stage for the Old 97’s

    Sunday Night, Sam Bush and Burning Spear are paying in the same timeslot.

    It’s about 5 miles from my house, we’ll be driving I guess.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon July 18, 2007 - 5:53 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-07-18-baltimore-artscape-2007/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-07-18-baltimore-artscape-2007/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  43. Fast-flux Service Networks

    Thorsten Holz of the German Honeynet Project has posted a very interesting article describing the methods used by botnet owners to hide command and control servers. I’ve seen much of it in the wild myself, confirming the techniques described in the whitepaper.

    Check it out.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon July 17, 2007 - 9:02 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-07-17-fast-flux-service-networks/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-07-17-fast-flux-service-networks/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  44. I am Obliged

    I am obliged to record the things that I am told, but I am certainly not required to believe them–this remark may be taken to apply to the whole of my account.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon July 11, 2007 - 5:42 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-07-10-i-am-obliged/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-07-10-i-am-obliged/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  45. Dictionary Attacks

    We’ve all been asked to use passwords that are more than just a word that could be found in the dictionary…

    Waiting for a conference call to start I took a look at a dictionary attack in a live packet capture I had running. In this case, the attacker is trying to log into an FTP server.

    [root@sensor-## active]# strings grant.20070628-104057.ftpscan.i.p.add.ress.lpc | grep -a PASS | grep -ao '[^ ]*$'

antagonism
antagonisms
antagonist
antagonistic
antagonistically
antagonists
antagonize
antagonized
antagonizes
antagonizing
antarctic
Antarctica
Antares
ante
anteater
anteaters
antecedent
antecedents
antedate
antelope
antelopes
antenna
antennae
antennas
anterior
anthem
anthems
anther
anthologies
anthology
Anthony
anthracite
anthropological
anthropologically
anthropologist
anthropologist
anthropologists
anthropology
anthropomorphic
anthropomorphically
anti
antibacterial
antibiotic
antibiotics

    And so on…

    The blank lines contained passwords that I’ve removed, some because I recognized them as real passwords for FTP users, some because they did not fit the pattern of starting with the letter ‘a’, suggesting that they were legitimate passwords of which I was not aware.

    I like that proper names are capitalized and that the signal/noise ratio causes outliers to jump off the screen. I dislike that the server is running IIS6, which has a good vulnerability history but completely lacks any configurability to react to this sort of attack.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 28, 2007 - 7:27 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-28-dictionary-attacks/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-28-dictionary-attacks/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  46. Petey News

    On Nat and Will’s dog Petey:

    Will: we bought Petey a stuffed Platypus that makes a weird squeek noise

    Will: when we gave it to him, he bit it and it made the noise, and he got all scared and confused

    Pictured above: Petey, scared of my camera.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 27, 2007 - 8:17 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-27-petey-news/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-27-petey-news/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  47. FREE - to a good home

    A large starbucks box on the kitchen table at work proclaimed in magic marker:

    FREE TO A GOOD HOME

    I peeked in the box to see what was being given away, expecting some vendor swag or gadgets. Inside was a dozen packages of decaffinated starbucks coffee.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 25, 2007 - 8:10 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-25-free-to-a-good-home/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-25-free-to-a-good-home/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  48. Moving Again (last time for a long time I promise!)

    From:

    We have a lot of practice, all in the last five years and not counting helping friends move:

    The big move is happening Saturday, starting early.

    We have rented a truck that is about half the length of a full 18-wheeler, and because of the size only comes in a manual transmission.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 23, 2007 - 4:53 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-23-moving-again-last-time-for-a-long-time-i-promise/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-23-moving-again-last-time-for-a-long-time-i-promise/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  49. There will always be doubters

    And sometimes, they are even right…

    Date: March 5, 1974
    To: Bob Metcalf and Dave Boggs
    From: R. T. Bachrach
    Location: PARC - Bldg. 31
    Organization: GSL - 44

    Subject: Comments on “Draft Ethernet Overview”

    I have read with dismay your presentation “Draft Ethernet Overview”. As I am sure you are aware, technically or conceptually there is nothing new in your proposal. Perhaps appropriately, you have chosen a coined jargon utilizing discredited scientific conceptual expression in which to frame your ideas. I find your analysis of the proposed interconnection lacking in technical credibility. Quantitative statistical analysis would show that your proposed system would be a failure. You have tried to adopt a scheme inappropriate to the intended engineering application. A random transmisstion scheme such as you propose, along with the quasi-de-randomizing hardware you invoke to patch the obvious deficiency, would place in fact an undo [sic] hardware, software, and scheduling problem on the individual stations.

    You should seriously reconsider your basic premises and formulate fully and logically all the parameters necessary to evaluate the system. Your transmission medium or environment is not quantum noise limited. Simple analysis shows that imposing a [P]oisson (i.e., random) statistics on message transmission drastically reduces the available effective bandwidth. Such a system is effective (reasonable) only in the limit of negligible average bit transmission rates. In fact you will want to maintain as high an effective transmission rate as possible. This requires a synchronized system. The fallacy in your conception is that the stations should be transmitting randomly. One possibility for a syncrhonized system would be time division multiplexing. You should seriously study how the telephone companies handle this problem. For example the A.T.T. long lines T2 buried microwave link multiplexes close to 10[^]7 - 6 KHz channels.

    Most importantly, you should fully define your engineering applications before proceeding further. You specify an undefined message packet length, a 1 mile or 1 mile diameter loop and 256 stations working at a 3 Mbs rate. What is the nature of the station? How many bits transmitted does an activity require and what is the expected average rate that the 256 stations will be seeking use of the bus in the comtemplated application? What is a tolerable dead time for a given station to acquire a full set of data? The worst case delay for your 1 mile loop is ~2 usec. What effect does this have on far station getting locked out, etc. . . .?

    RTB/Tk

    cc: W. K. English
    R. W. Taylor
    J. I. Elkind
    H. H. Hall

    [signed: Robert Bachrach]

    It is a lot easier to complain without offering solutions in a memo, or a blog comment, or a usenet or mailing list thread. For some reason, in conversation, the same behavior is obviously lame, annoying, counter-productive, etc…

    They are so fun to write though.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 21, 2007 - 4:16 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-21-there-will-always-be-doubters/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-21-there-will-always-be-doubters/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  50. Gimme Some Money

    American Express is using Spinal Tap’s first single in a commercial.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 20, 2007 - 5:01 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-19-gimme-some-money/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-19-gimme-some-money/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  51. Why even have Wikipedia anymore?

    Truthiness really jumped the shark with this compendium of knowledge and answers.

    The mind simply REELS.

    On logic:

    1. A young man approached me at a seminar and stated, ‘Well, I still believe in the big bang, and that we arrived here by chance random processes. I don’t believe in God.’ I answered him, ‘Well, then obviously your brain, and your thought processes, are also the product of randomness. So you don’t know whether it evolved the right way, or even what right would mean in that context. Young man, you don’t know if you’re making correct statements or even whether you’re asking me the right questions.’

    The young man looked at me and blurted out, ‘What was that book you recommended?’ He finally realized that his belief undercut its own foundations —such ‘reasoning’ destroys the very basis for reason.

    1. On another occasion, a man came to me after a seminar and said, ‘Actually, I’m an atheist. Because I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in absolutes, so I recognize that I can’t even be sure of reality.’ I responded, ‘Then how do you know you’re really here making this statement?’ ‘Good point,’ he replied. ‘What point?’ I asked. The man looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Maybe I should go home.’ I stated, ‘Maybe it won’t be there.’ ‘Good point,’ the man said. ‘What point?’ I replied.

    This man certainly got the message. If there is no God, ultimately, philosophically, how can one talk about reality? How can one even rationally believe that there is such a thing as truth, let alone decide what it is?

    WHAT THE FUCK!!??

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 16, 2007 - 11:26 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-16-why-even-have-wikipedia-anymore/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-16-why-even-have-wikipedia-anymore/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  52. From the Block

    Mashups? No, I want northern-skiffle covers of R&B; tunes.

    g-form - From the Block

    Brilliant.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 16, 2007 - 5:39 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-16-from-the-block/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-16-from-the-block/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  53. Bloomberg on Terrorism

    “There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life…. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.”

    How much?

    From the National Safety Council: The odds of getting struck by lightning in one’s lifetime are 1/80,000.

    The NWS suggests four factors necessary for recovery:

    • Supportive family/friends network.
    • Becoming your own advocate and learning as much as you can about this disability.
    • A physician willing to listen, read, learn and work with the survivor and their family.
    • A sense of humor.

    That’s great general advice, but they also put the lifetime odds at 1/5,000. What gives?

    This graphic listing the top causes of death helpfully points out that the odds of dying, the baseline, all causes combined, is 1/1, or 100%.

    I can’t find any consistant numbers on the terrorist attack odds, lifetime, per year, or otherwise. Most put the odds at over 1/1 million, or make assumptions like “if there was a shopping center attack every week, and you went shopping every other week” type hypotheticals.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 15, 2007 - 6:23 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-15-bloomberg-on-terrorism/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-15-bloomberg-on-terrorism/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  54. McSweeney's Sale

    Checking out McSweeney’s was on my some-day-maybe list for a few years, and I finally got around to buying The Better of McSweeney’s, Volume 1 in BWI airport this winter. Great stuff.

    I’ve since grabbed Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category and enjoyed it over two weeks at the beach for my weddinig and honeymoon.

    They are having a sale.

    As you may know, it’s been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney’s included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000—actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn’t hit right away, but it’s hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there’s really no way to absorb a loss that big.

    We are committed to getting through and past this difficult time, and we’re hoping you, the readers, who have from the start made McSweeney’s possible, will help us.

    Over the next week or so, we’ll be holding an inventory sell-off and rare-item auction, which we hope will make a dent in the losses we sustained. A few years ago, the indispensable comics publisher Fantagraphics, in similarly dire straits, held a similar sale, and it helped them greatly. We’re hoping to do the same.

    So if you’ve had your eye on anything we’ve produced, now would be a great time to take the plunge. For the next week or so, subscriptions are $5 off, new books are 30 percent off, and the entire backlist is 50 percent off. Please check out the store and enjoy the astounding savings, while knowing every purchase will help dig us out of a big hole.

    Do buy.

    OK, it’s only $5 off a regular four-book subscription, but that’s $12.50 a book, and each one is bound to be great.

    Bound.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 13, 2007 - 6:54 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-13-mcsweeneys-sale/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-13-mcsweeneys-sale/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  55. Month of Random Hashes

    Dear list,

    You asked for it, and we delivered! Due to the increased demand for more “Month of” projects, and the growing popularity of posting hashes to this list, we proudly present… THE MONTH OF RANDOM HASHES.

    Every day for the next month we will be providing a list of not one… not two… not three… not four… not five… not six… not seven… not eight… not nine… not ten… not eleven… not twelve… not thirteen… not fourteen… not fifteen… not sixteen… not seventeen… not eighteen… not nineteen… not twenty… not twenty-one… not twenty -two… not twenty-three… not twenty-four… not twenty-five… not twenty-six… not twenty-seven… not twenty-eight… not twenty-nine… not thirty… not thirty-one… not thirty-two… not thirty-three… not thirty-four… not thirty-five… not thirty-six… not thirty-seven… not thirty-eight… not thirty-nine… not forty… not forty-one… not forty-two… not forty-three… not forty-four… not forty-five… not forty-six… not forty-seven… not forty-eight… not forty-nine… not fifty… not fifty-one… not fifty-two… not fifty-three… not fifty-four… not fifty-five… not fifty-six… not fifty-seven… not fifty-eight… not fifty-nine… not sixty… not sixty-one… not sixty-two… not sixty-three… not sixty-four… not sixty-five… not sixty-six… not sixty-seven… not sixty-eight… not sixty-nine… not seventy… not seventy-one… not seventy-two… not seventy-three… not seventy-four… not seventy-five… not seventy-six… not seventy-seven… not seventy-eight… not seventy-nine… not eighty… not eighty-one… not eighty-two… not eighty-three… not eighty-four… not eighty-five… not eighty-six… not eighty-seven… not eighty-eight… not eighty-nine… not ninety… not ninety-one… not ninety-two… not ninety-three… not ninety-four… not ninety-five… not ninety-six… not ninety-seven… not ninety-eight…

    not even ninety-nine…

    but… ONE HUNDRED!

    To make the project even more successful, this number (100) only represents the number of random strings that hashes are generated for, and not the total number of hashes we provide daily! You will receive an md5sum, sha1sum, and sha256sum of all 100 random strings every day.

    That is THREE HUNDRED hashes. In your mailbox. Free. Every day.

    Stay tuned for more details!

    Brilliant.

    Here are the first three from today’s, to give you a taste.

    [ITEM #1]
    md5: 53da840b93b8a209fe273c0a6011a53b
    sha1: f23d002845794ab3f34b0bfc925b87017b1a4920
    sha256: 298c8122826de54d9753850fd7fd7dfbf2490b5784d76f48d166526be819e03a

    [ITEM #2]
    md5: bed4346e8662918e654ac4a85a9c08e8
    sha1: e62d1f28787b489c369471a70782575629fe34ce
    sha256: f591e1d99955eac3817a46b90768893ffdca3e8c3750ea19ec14e3974ea1e3f5

    [ITEM #3]
    md5: e366a12b2b67f78bc953f937c0969907
    sha1: 5f55786c9425a325f16c4000765227792c9b343a
    sha256: 9d8a54d1dc7c69ce991228baefe18b4543c80892a1904b810e32787ccb649a15

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 12, 2007 - 11:06 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-12-month-of-random-hashes/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-12-month-of-random-hashes/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  56. Creation Museum

    Ars visits the new creation museum.

    In popular mythology, the Ostrich is famous for hiding its head in the sand at the first sign of danger. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder is noted for his descriptions of the ostrich in his Naturalis Historia, where he describes the Ostrich and the fact that it hides its head in a bush.

    There have been no recorded observations of this behavior. A common counter-argument is that a species that displayed this behavior would not survive very long. Ostriches do deliberately swallow sand and pebbles to help grind up their food; seeing this from a distance may have caused some early observers to believe that their heads were buried in sand. Also, ostriches that are threatened but unable to run away may fall to the ground and stretch out their necks in an attempt to become less visible. The coloring of an ostrich’s neck is similar to sand and could give the illusion that the neck and head have been completely buried.[5]

    The Ostrich’s behavior is also mentioned in the Bible in God’s discourse to Job (Job 39.13-18). It is described as being joyfully proud of its small wings, but unwise and unmindful of the safety of its nest and harsh in the treatment of its offspring, even though it can put a horse to shame with its speed. Elsewhere, ostriches are mentioned as proverbial examples of bad parenting (see Arabian Ostrich for details).

    Idiotic or hilarious, I can’t decide.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 08, 2007 - 4:53 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-08-creation-museum/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-08-creation-museum/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  57. Shmoocon OLPC talk

    This has been available for a while but I forgot to link to it: The Shmoocon talks on the One Laptop per Child project. The discussion has a bit of an information security leaning to it given the audience, but it still packs content for people that don’t approach everything with a screwdriver and a tinfoil hat.

    It was neat watching the otherwise brilliant Dan Kaminsky seemingly miss the point during the Q&A.;

    Since I just poked at the guy, I should link to his talk too: Weaponizing Noam Chomsky, or Hacking with Pattern Languages, which I think was really really interesting, if slagged by professional pedant Toby Kohlenberg.

    I don’t have anything to make up for poking Toby, so I’ll probably end up being interviewd by him for a job or something similar.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 08, 2007 - 12:06 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-07-shmoocon-olpc-talk/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-07-shmoocon-olpc-talk/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  58. Plans this weekend - J-Roddy

    This Saturday. J Roddy Walston and The Business

    Ottobar. Doors open at 9pm/ Show at 10pm - ALL AGES

    I’m hoping to make it after my step-brother Pete’s wedding, which is that afternoon.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 07, 2007 - 9:40 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-07-plans-this-weekend-j-roddy/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-07-plans-this-weekend-j-roddy/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  59. Sgt. Pepper's

    Happy 40th Sgt. Peppers!

    In another innovation, non-US pressings of the album (in its original LP form that was later released on CD) end in an unusual way, beginning with a 15-kilohertz high-frequency tone (put on the album at Lennon’s suggestion and said to be “especially intended to annoy your dog”), followed by an endless loop of laughter and gibberish made by the runout groove looping back into itself…

    …most of the content of the runout groove is impossible to decipher, it is possible to distinguish a sped-up voice (possibly McCartney’s) reciting the phrase “never could see any other way”.

    Abbey Road > Let it Be > The White Album > Sgt. Pepper’s

    Surveyed as albums only. Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, and Revolver obviously have great tunes too.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 04, 2007 - 6:23 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-03-sgt-peppers/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-03-sgt-peppers/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  60. Gartner 2007

    Slightly last minute tickets to the Gartner IT Security Summit just fell in my lap.

    Know Security 3.0
    4-6 June 2007
    Washington, DC
    Marriott Wardman Park Hotel

    See you there!

    I know, I know. I’m still looking forward to it for various reasons.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 01, 2007 - 7:09 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-01-gartner-2007/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-01-gartner-2007/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  61. No-tech security

    Via funsec: Software controls at the Carson, CA treasurer’s office failed to prevent the installation of a keylogger on a laptop. Theives used the keylogger to acquire the username and password of an account able to make fund transfers, then transfered themselves half a million dollars.

    They were caught when the treasurer noticed it in the ledger.

    Since the incidents occurred, the city’s bank has tightened its security to prevent future similar attacks, she said. The new system requires the city to register the specific computers that will be used for online transactions, she said, while also asking a series of security questions that must be properly answered to gain access to the account.

    “That’s in place now,” Avilla said. “It wasn’t in place last Wednesday and Thursday.”

    An IT consultant who was brought in to help the city before the thefts is also assisting in evaluating security and what needs to be improved, she said.

    A no-tech accounting process detected the event. Mitigation plan: implement further software controls and procedures.

    Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I’m a…

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon June 01, 2007 - 6:03 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-06-01-no-tech-security/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-06-01-no-tech-security/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  62. Frozen action

    One of my current favorite photography techniques, or ‘hacks’, to use the parlance of our times, is to capture slices of time which cannot easily be appreciated otherwise. Mostly because it is easy to happen into accidentally. Anyone can do this.

    This great shorpy post of baseball player Hank Gowdy is of a relatively centered composition with nice shadowing and depth of field. While those elements give the photo a lasting quality, what grabs on the first viewing is Hank’s facial expression, and the ball he likely just tossed up to hit for practice popping out of the page just over his head.

    It made me think of this photo I was lucky enough to get at my wife’s uncle’s wedding:

    The photo isn’t really very successful. The ceiling tilts away from the bachelors while at the same time closing in on the groom, and creates a useless gap of space. The groom is not in focus and his shadow on the distant wall is distracting, as are the baloons and light fixture between the groom and the eligible bachelors. A more successful shot would have started with the camera a few feet higher, used remote flashes, and perhaps caught the garter a few feet sooner mid-flight.

    Nonetheless, the photo does work. At least five of the subjects are mid-action. The wedding band is visible. While the flash induced shadows are a detractor in most of the picture, it helps lift the garter and give it precense. Nobody blinked, so to speak. For being amongst the first few hundred pictures with my new camera and first DSLR (what do you mean I have to frame shots through a viewfinder again?), it isn’t a bad start.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 30, 2007 - 5:17 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-30-frozen-action/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-30-frozen-action/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  63. Flavius Belisarius

    Wow.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 29, 2007 - 6:26 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-28-flavius-belisarius/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-28-flavius-belisarius/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  64. Fake Military

    From Emergent Chaos: the TSA behavior detection team had the state boys in Florida lock up a gentleman in an irregular army uniform. The acronym for this magic (you knew it was coming) is “Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT)”.

    A little over ten years ago, I was SPOTed by a Marine recruiter in the high school cafeteria. I was wearing my dad’s old USMC short sleeve dress shirt with sergeant stripes on the sleeves and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt under it. The recruiter headed directly for me, so that he could let me know that I outranked him. He also told me that it was illegal to wear the uniform with the stripes still on it, and was I aware of the many exciting things the United States Marine Corps could do for me.

    He didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t really in Led Zeppelin.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 24, 2007 - 11:01 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-24-fake-military/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-24-fake-military/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  65. Rodrigo y Gabriela

    Rodrigo y Gabriela - 6/30/2007, 9:00 pm @ Rams Head Live!

    I just ordered tickets.

    Rodrigo Y Gabriela
    Figure 1. Rodrigo Y Gabriela.

    Rodrigo y Gabriela are two fast-fingered, Dublin-based, Mexicans with a unique sound created on acoustic guitars. Their music is difficult to define, straddling both world and rock, and often imbued with timeless Hispano – classical influences. The duo’s repertoire flies beyond familiar Latin folk guitarists’ styles because of the metal connection: their reworkings of Led Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven” and Metallica’s “Orion” are musts.

    Who knew? Stairway is a metal tune.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 23, 2007 - 5:38 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-23-RodrigoyGabriela/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-23-RodrigoyGabriela/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  66. Schneier: Rare Risks Breed Irrational Responses

    Bruce Schneier’s latest wired.com commentar is excellent.

    People tend to base risk analysis more on personal story than on data, despite the old joke that “the plural of anecdote is not data.”

    While there is plenty of philosophical wiggle room in this statement, most of us base decisions and estimations and opinions on personal experience, with anecdotal experience a close second. It is such an amazingly successful strategy that it completely dominates the thought processes of individuals unwilling to concede to the superior experience of others. Most of us start to grow out of it some time in young adulthood.

    This isn’t a strong field of experience to me, so I’m generalizing based on what I’ve gleaned from coursework and experience even in surmising that oh god I’ve recursed, I’m going fractal.

    Starting over:

    Citing examples of others being irrational is easy by the nature of the statement, but it is more insightful to pinpoint personal irrationality. Insight is nice but it’s really really hard. Surround oneself with people that can help is the trick. If your friends and associates aren’t providing insights of this sort, you are either enlightened or wasting time.

    But that’s not the way we think. Psychologist Scott Plous said it well in The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making: “In very general terms: (1) The more available an event is, the more frequent or probable it will seem; (2) the more vivid a piece of information is, the more easily recalled and convincing it will be; and (3) the more salient something is, the more likely it will be to appear causal.”

    On a lighter note, this process also impacts opinions on fashion, entertainment, visual art, music, education, gun control, social welfare, the death penalty, and so on and so forth.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 23, 2007 - 5:11 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-23-schneier-rare-risks-breed-irrational-responses/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-23-schneier-rare-risks-breed-irrational-responses/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  67. Wedding Pics

    Echard Wheeler, the photographer we had at our wedding, has posted a selection on his blog if you’d like a quick peek. If you’d like to see a bunch more, or buy prints:

    Pictage. The event key is ‘Guitar Hero’.

    What ended up on my camera during the week is both here and on flickr.

    Guitar Hero!
    Figure 1. Guitar Hero!.

    Here’s me with a bit of an Eric Clapton chin going on. I must have been playing Crossroads on Expert - I get into it.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 22, 2007 - 12:00 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-21-wedding-pics/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-21-wedding-pics/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  68. Platypus

    Creating applications with applescript is really easy but every time I use it I want to think like a shell or perl scripter and end up bailing. This has been especially annoying with the screenshot and publish script I’ve been using for the past five years. The port to applescript was easy but creating an application out of the shell script didn’t work as expected. I then ported it to Automator when that came out. Ugh. I ended up going back to shell and escaping out for native OSX image handling which is superior to imagemacick.

    Platypus to the rescue!

    Platypus is a development tool for the Mac OS X operating system. It can be used to create native, flawlessly integrated Mac OS X applications from interpreted scripts, such as shell scripts or Perl and Python programs. This is done by wrapping the script in an application bundle directory structure along with an executable binary that runs the script.

    Finally!

    platypus in action

    I tweaked the script with a few more ‘mac’ touches, now it pipes the url into pbcopy, then asks OSX to open the uploaded file in whatever the default browser is. Then I made an app out of it with Platypus.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 19, 2007 - 5:45 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-18-platypus/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-18-platypus/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  69. Mice Parade - May 27

    Would anyone be interested in a Sunday night show in DC? Would Pizza Paradiso in Georgetown be a good enough bribe? I caught this on my last.fm recommended events RSS.

    I’ve never been to the venue.

    Expect a post rock act and two folk artists. Also expect a relatively late evening for a Sunday, as the shows start at 9. Check the first last.fm link for audio of each or Mice Parade’s myspace, if you do that sort of thing.

    Update: This is the day before we all have off work for Memorial day, you no longer have any excuses. How many tickets do I need to buy?

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 19, 2007 - 5:08 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-18-mice-parade-may-27/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-18-mice-parade-may-27/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  70. Social engineering, tigers, and bears

    Cross-posted from somewhere awful and edited to make sense as a stand alone:

    To paraphrase number 5: Social engineering as a security audit tool, if actually providing any valuable information to anyone, is useless at affecting change in any way, and therefore, useless.

    While I certainly concede that there are a few valid security controls failing that a successful social engineering attack highlights, I tend to blanket social engineering ‘hacks’ as a bit of the emperor’s new clothes.

    Commonly suggested mitigating factors: ask for business cards, ask a manager to intervene, ask for photo identification, and so on. All of those controls fail if the attacker prepares for them and has the appropriate forged documents. Forging e-mail is even more trivial. The victim in each case has performed what they consider due diligence and for nothing.

    The inverse cases of detected attacks are rarely security controls in action. Poor preparation or execution by the attackers raise suspicion. Human intuition can see through the con. A bogus HVAC company could be detected by a secretary who’s husband is owner/operator in the same HVAC space and is aware of all competitors. These aren’t examples of lone security conscious ‘model employees’ - just a poor attacks.

    Society - at least the one I enjoy and prefer - requires that there exist trust relationships created by simple things: uniforms, badges, assertions even - some retail employee’s can only be identified because they are folding clothes, we’ve all asked or been asked ‘do you work here?’. Lying and replying “yes, how may I misdirect you? Please write down your home address, phone number, and social security number on this clipboard” doesn’t make you the smarter person performing some sort of hack, it makes you an criminal.

    Luckily, the sociopaths that constantly violate these trusts tend to not be crafty social engineers. Pickpockets, petty thieves, white collar embezzlers, and so on, are practicing some of the world’s oldest professions.

    Or is large scale social engineering happening right under our noses. I’ve heard the scenario: attackers then selling our information to the organleggers in Vegas that buy victims drinks. The Victim wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with surgical scars!

    Corporate espionage does exist but the tried and true method is to just pay an insider, dumpster dive, or hack a network remotely. Paying an insider is a pretty foolproof attack, so worry about that first.

    There are exceptions - places where trust just has to not work: Military bases, public utilities, treasury buildings, that base in Nevada full of aliens and crashed flying saucers, etc: most of them have guards with guns. Checkpoints at ever possible place. Cameras, fences, moats, and so on. Great security. Absolutely overkill in just the large majority of commonly cited cases of successful social engineering attacks, if not of all workplaces. How many of the targeted facilities even have onsite security officers?

    It is pretty easy to decry a post-it note password discovered by a social engineer, but that note is often behind one or more locked doors in what can be considered a secure section of a corporate office. This one is everyone’s favorite cited example of a stupid thing to do. It is stupid but consider the risk versus the cost to prevent. Consider the actual probability of an enterprise being attacked that way. Sometimes the “well I’ve always done it and never been attacked” excuse is actually a valid risk assesment.

    From a cost perspective, it is almost always cheaper to prepare for system attacks with tried and true measures - defense in depth, recovery procedures for data loss, data backup and integrity checking, etc…

    I do not feel this way about all security audits - penetration testing, app vulnerability testing, and physical security controls auditing, are all great. Too many organizations skip basic risk calculations, data classification, defense in depth, and so on, to go straight to the sexy movie-theater stuff, and it is foolish. Oh but I’m sure they have an expensive firewall, and lots of blinking lights under control.

    What social engineering is absolutely brilliant for, is pointing out security theater amongst the real security controls. Common airport, sports arena, concert venue security rant, etc ad nauseam.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 16, 2007 - 7:27 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-15-social-engineering-as-security-audit/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-15-social-engineering-as-security-audit/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  71. Yikes

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 15, 2007 - 5:15 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-14-yikes/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-14-yikes/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  72. DEAR RICHARD

    The SomethingAwful forums have changed their privacy policy after a third-party IP sharing incident went public. If you are a member, check this thread for more whining.

    The old one: “We may share data with the following third parties: NOBODY. These third parties will use the information as follows: NONE.”

    And now: “We may share data with the following third parties: WHOEVER WE FEEL LIKE. IF A RANDOM BUM OFF THE STREET WANDERS IN HERE, WE’LL PROBABLY GIVE HIM YOUR IP ADDRESS IN EXCHANGE FOR A HAND JOB. These third parties will use the information as follows: EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL.”

    I think it is a good natured response. The naiveté of the general internet populace is excellent. Internet lawyers and conspiracy theorists! Oh My!

    I consider myself slightly tinfoil. I lie when asked for phone numbers, zip codes, and so on at retail stores that won’t allow me to complete a transaction by not giving them my information. I am well aware how futile this effort is and how much significantly more damning information about myself than my IP address is traded amongst business partners around the world for the sake of marketing. Every little bit helps. This incident is not a big deal.

    About 15 percent of the world population uses this web thing. It’s going to get a lot bigger, convert to ipv6, likely change killer-apps a few times, likely slowly change dominant operating systems and network stacks a few times, and in general get pretty messy. Neat to watch happen.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon May 14, 2007 - 4:20 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-05-14-dear-richard/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-05-14-dear-richard/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  73. TV-B-Gone

    Some folks were playing with a TV-B-Gone at the Shmoocon after-party at Adams Mill.

    Why do people think this shit is clever? I reached past them and turned the basketball game commercials back on.

    Because I’m a tool of the system oppressing the individual and dumbing down the populace, obviously. Or something.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon April 21, 2007 - 12:12 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-04-20-tv-b-gone/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-04-20-tv-b-gone/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  74. Wedding Vows

    Amanda and I are mashing google-found vows with vows that our good friends have used, for our wedding. Aaron and Kathy filled in the gaps with our first effort, I rearranged some stuff.

    Here they are.

    What do you think?

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon April 10, 2007 - 5:34 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-04-10-wedding-vows/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-04-10-wedding-vows/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  75. Hi!

    The site has been hosted on my powerbook at home for a while. Hopefully not
    for long.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon March 15, 2007 - 4:37 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-03-14-hi/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-03-14-hi/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  76. Making Enchiladas

    ProTip: Do not. I repeat. DO NOT use the oil that the ancho’s soaked in to
    rinse the seeds off the inside because it looks like water in a dark bowl.

    That water is full of chili oil. Chili oil penetrates the skin and if not
    rinsed off will burn for a long time.

    It hurts typing this.

    Ouch.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon March 04, 2007 - 1:28 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-03-03-making-enchiladas/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-03-03-making-enchiladas/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  77. Erkghmph

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon February 23, 2007 - 5:26 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-02-23-erkghmph/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-02-23-erkghmph/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  78. The Eraser

    Hardware failure took the site offline for a while. I’m hosting from my powerbook for now until we put the new server in place.

    Thom Yorke’s The Eraser is great for noodling along to for guitarists of limited ability.

    I should really get the wedding website working again.

    The day the server failed was the day my boss’s boss’s boss sent out the formal welcome to the company e-mail ghostwritten by my boss, including a link to the site. Nice.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon February 18, 2007 - 8:05 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-02-18-the-eraser/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-02-18-the-eraser/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  79. My Great-Grandfather's Record

    Thomas Oriani was a police Washington DC Patrolman from August 1, 1888 through June 30, 1931. A photocopy of a photocopy of his policy record is in the family history I’m documenting, and it is interesting enough that I thought I’d share it with you.

    Items of note:

    • It took him four years to get promoted to Class Two. Later that year in the line of duty, he shot and killed a man; the case was ignored by the Grand Jury.
    • Every few years he received various reprimands which are guessed to be minor complaints from citizens that he was either not on his corner, off in a pub, and so on.
    • He was commended for various reasons: Services rendered makes sense, but I’m not sure what is indicated by his commmendation for ‘attention to Moving Picture Films’ in 1915.
    • In 1920 he was transfered to prisoner transport. He was injured a handful of times, twice struck by automobiles, once by an escaping prisoner.
    • One off the car accidents is listed as occurring at the intersection of 14th St. NW and Irving. My Columbia Heights apartment was two blocks from his incident at 16th and Euclid NW.
    • In his finaly year - 1931, he and another officer were reprimanded for allowing a prisoner to escape.
    • His retirement paycheck was a princely $100, paid monthly.

    Check out [the orignal, I scanned it to pdf](/files/Thomas-Oriani-WDC-Police-
    Record-1888-1931.pdf). This picture above is from the Library of
    Congress    .

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon February 05, 2007 - 6:28 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-02-05-my-great-grandfathers-record/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-02-05-my-great-grandfathers-record/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  80. Migrating this site

    Textpattern is pretty rad and Wordpress seems to be large target for malware,
    so I have abandonded ship.

    That means I’ll lose some of the music sidebar trickery, so I logged into the
    last.fm account I thought I’d never use. They’ve developed into having a
    pretty nice flickr-ish API that should work nicely.

    Jokerbone is a pretty large site, blogs considered. Textpattern blew up trying
    to import so that will be the next focus.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon February 01, 2007 - 2:47 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-02-01-migrating-this-site/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-02-01-migrating-this-site/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  81. Eschatology

    A bumper sticker seen in traffic:

    WARNING: In case of RAPTURE this car will be unmanned!

    Me: Ha. In-case-of-rapture-this-car-will-be-unmanned. Nice.
    Her: What?
    Me: The bumper sticker on that car.
    Her: What’s that mean?

    Her: Maybe it’s a Jurassic Park reference?
    Me: What?

    Him: It says rapture, not raptor.
    Me: In case of raptor, stay the fuck in the car!
    Her: Shut up! I didn’t know!

    Him: I hear they hunt in packs!
    Her: Ha!
    Me: Oh look at that empty car! I wonder if they were eaten by dinosaurs!
    Him: In case of rapture, hide in the kitchen cabinets!

    jurassic park raptos in the kitchen
    Figure 1. jurassic park raptos in the kitchen.

    Et cetera, to wit’s end…

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 31, 2007 - 2:01 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-31-eschatology/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-31-eschatology/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  82. Family trees

    A family history of the Italian side of my Mom’s family was assembled in the 1970’s. Aunts and Great Aunts of mine got copies of it at some time between now and then and fleshed out their generations. My mom made me full copy and gave it to me in a 2" three ring binder last weekend.

    It would be neat even if I wasn’t related to these folks, and that I am doesn’t define me in any way. I’m not Italian.

    That out of the way; I hope to digitize this collection and somehow get access to the original photos that are still accessible as I’m looking at what has to be sixth generation photocopied prints and typed copy. That the text of the history is typed dates it.

    Gist: Relatives of mine took passage from from Mariscovetere, a village in southern Italy. In the history it is written “Marisco Vetere”, likely an error. They landed in New York and then immediately traveled to stay with another Italian family in Washington, D.C. - the Oriani’s. They lived at 205 B. St. NW according to the 1870 city directory. The Oriani’s has just moved down from Baltimore and were also originally from Mariscovette.

    Neat. Look at this modern map of DC and try to figure out where that would have been:

    Notice how 1st street is directly in front of the Capitol building, then the map shows 395. 395 is underground here. Next over is 3rd street. I would have to guess B St. would be about where Constitution Avenue is, putty them just north of the top 395 shield on the map.

    Future posts: My Great Great Great Grandmother’s Will, my Great Great Grandfathers official record on file as a Washington D.C Police Officer, how in the late 1800’s they ran the concessions at the National Theatre, rented houses near the above described area to congressmen, making bathtub booze, Baltimore connections to Little Italy, and of course, pictures!

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 29, 2007 - 3:44 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-28-family-trees/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-28-family-trees/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  83. New Server

    Aaron put me in charge of setting up the new server that will replace the server on which this site and about 20 other domains w/ mail and websites, databases, and so on are hosted.

    We are using FreeBSD again. 5.5-RELEASE this time.

    We are shooting for a combination hardware-refresh and something a bit more scalable for what goes on: virtual users, robust imap and webmail, spam and malware filtering, a bit tighter security, and anything else we want to do.

    Today Exim with Spamassassin, openssl tls (using self signed keys), clamav, and Cyrus SASL have all been installed and configured and are working.

    :dance:

    I’m looking to use Cyrus for imap but the documentation isn’t exactly a series of easy to follow steps.

    I’m also looking forward to trying Roundcube webmail. Neato.

    This is all putting off the obvious tricky part: migrating user website, SQL databases, mail, home directories, and accounts for some and virtual accounts for others.

    Exciting stuff.

    Currently fighting:

    Cryus-sasl wants to link to db43, Cyrus-imapd wants to link to db3.
    They need to auth to the same database. Result: imapd signal 11
    crashes.

    Authentication: Should sasl use its own Berkely DB to store passwords? PAM? And then should exim and cyrus-imap use sasl or mysql? What about the dozen or few virtual users? mysql? mysql linked to pam? :gonk:

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 25, 2007 - 4:13 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-24-new-server/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-24-new-server/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  84. No

    <p><strong>Deep Thought</strong>:	Alright. The answer to everything&#8230;<br />

    Two: …yes…

    [Fanfare starts up.]

    Deep Thought: …Life, the Universe and Everything…

    One: …yes…

    Deep Thought: …is…

    One: …yes…

    Deep Thought: …is…

    Both: …yes…

    Deep Thought: …forty-two.

    Two: (After pause) We are going to get lynched, d’you know that?

    Deep Thought: It was a tough assignment.

    Both: Forty-two?!

    Deep Thought: I think the problem such as it was was too broadly based. You never actually stated what the question was.

    Two: Well… it was the ultimate question – the question of Life, the Universe and Everything!

    Deep Thought: Exactly. Now you know that the answer to the ultimate of Life, the Universe and Everything is 42, all you need to do now is find out what the ultimate question is.

    Two: Alright. Can you please tell us the question?

    Deep Thought: The ultimate question?

    Two: Yes.

    Deep Thought: …of Life, the Universe…

    One: …and Everything?

    Deep Thought: …and Everything?

    [Fanfare starts up again.]

    Two: Yes.

    Deep Thought: Tricky.

    Two: But can you do it?

    Deep Thought: No.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 24, 2007 - 9:16 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-24-no/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-24-no/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  85. New business cards

    Grant Stavely

    Information Security Management

    Engineering and Forensics

    Constellation Energy

    Neat-o.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 24, 2007 - 4:40 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-24-new-business-cards/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-24-new-business-cards/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  86. Canon EOS Rebel XTi

    The Sony F717 I’ve enjoyed for the past four years has been great to me. My only lingering gripe with the camera has been how slow it is between and leading up to each picture. As a combination 27th birthday present / present to myself for going full time at the new job, I upgraded.

    I’ve only been able to use it nights after getting home from work this week - I’ve played with it in the living room grabbing shots of cats and guitars. I’ve been using the Sony as an overkill point-and-shoot for so long, it will be interesting adapting to holding the camera to my eye and not having a live preview of the exposure’s affect in the LCD.

    I also got at 2GB CF card for the Canon because I used to have to take my laptop to family parties and trips so that I could dump the Sony to it two or three times as it filled up.

    The Canon is an excellent compact DSLR that takes all of the auto-focus Canon lenses, flash and battery adaptors. Exciting. As I’ve always said, the only thing between me and world renown artistic penetration in all segments of society is a cooler camera. I’ll have to think of a new excuse.

    Amanda: Where is the zoom?
    Me: I don’t have that a lens for that.
    Amanda: How do I get closer?
    Me: Get closer. 😕

    Amanda: I don’t like it. It’s fast but I don’t like it.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 19, 2007 - 5:40 AM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-18-canon-eos-rebel-xti/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-18-canon-eos-rebel-xti/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  87. A Confederacy of Dunces

    It isn’t very often that I stray from technical reference books and SF short stories and novels. I grabbed A Confederacy of Dunces after it came up in the a book forum I read and was universally praised.

    At about 60 pages in, I’m starting to agree.

    As for the usual faire, I’ve also gone through these in the past few months:

    Robert Charles Wilson (because I enjoyed Spin so much

    John Scalzi

    Joe Haldeman

    Richard Bejtlich

    And lastly…

    John Hodgman

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 18, 2007 - 4:17 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-18-a-confederacy-of-dunces/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-18-a-confederacy-of-dunces/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.

  88. Shmoocon 2007

    The DC nerd convention I’ve attended the past two years is in March this year. Ben snagged tickets on New Year’s day for all of us.

    Neato.

    Posted on Blog over 19 years agoon January 04, 2007 - 10:21 PM and archived here at /blog/2007/2007-01-04-shmoocon-2007/at https://pizza.slow.high.quality.gravely.pizza/blog/2007/2007-01-04-shmoocon-2007/ in the Blog collection in both HTML and markdown.