Ruby stole my o`o - Home

I decided to set up bind9 today on my Gutsy server. It wasn’t too painful after I finally found some posts from someone who knew what they were doing (2 tutorials I read contained invalid configurations…).

First, you install bind:

sudo apt-get install bind9

OMG - this plan is ridiculously good. I personally use Site5’s $5 deal, and I am completely and utterly happy with it. It’s fast, never down, allows SSH access, has easy to install applications, and Ruby on Rails works perfectly (this blog is using Rails). If you are in the market for web hosting, and even if you currently have a host that charges over $3.50 per month, you should seriously consider switching to Site5 for this deal.

They might put you on a nice new server for this deal, but this is what I was put on over a year ago:

• Quad processor Xeon 5150 2.00GHz, 4MB cache per processor
• 4GB RAM and 8GB of swap
• load average: 3.54, 4.64, 3.90

Pingdom has analyzed Site5 and some other hosting companies recently. Here is a graph of its growth compared to other hosts:

As you can see, Site5 is a very slowly growing company that offers a great quaiity of service for a wonderful price.

Also, their domains are only $8.88/year, which isn’t too bad really. You can find $6 other places, but it’s pretty tough and those places can be shady… The plan also comes with unlimited subdomains, which is a feature I’ve really enjoyed (I have over 20). They take very little time to set up. I currently have 5 domains names hosted on my plan with Site5, 3 of which I registered through them. I’ve done speed testing in the past.

The best part is there is no risk, and I know that sounds like bull, but I’m telling the truth. You just cancel within 60 days, and they refund your money. If you want any kind of shared hosting, these are the guys to get it from.

I wanted to speed up package downloading to set up my apt-proxy today in Gutsy, so I decided to find the correct way to find the fastest Ubuntu mirror. It’s actually done like so (stolen from here):

1. Click on “System | Administration | Software Sources”
2. Under “Ubuntu Sotware” tab, choose “Other” in the “Download from” list box.
3. Choose your country and then click “Select Best Server” and choose the recommendation.

This automatically updates the /etc/apt/sources.lst file. The same utility can also be reached from the Synaptic Package Manager, through “Settings | Repositories”. In action:

It says mirrors.rit.edu is the best one for me. Makes sense.

I found this great little piece of software that does something really cool: it allows you to route your TCP traffic through a proxy using strictly ICMP packets for communication. Here’s a screenshot of it in action:

This rocks - now I have to try it on some For-Pay wireless…

I got my new laptop today!! It’s awesome - I installed Ubuntu very easily on it, and Beryl using a second monitor on the HDMI port even works without much tweaking (just enabling TwinView with the restricted nVidia driver): <embed src="/flash_player/flvplayer.swf" height="480" width="640" />

I made an Ubuntu Wiki Page on the matter. All the information about what works and doesn’t is on there.

So, there I was, wondering what the Founding Fathers of these united States were thinking when they scrawled the 2nd amendment into the paper, wording it so ambiguously (at least in today’s grammar). Maybe they wrote it down in another form somewhere else… Maybe at the Virginia Convention of June 27, 1788! Keep in mind that these were simply proposed amendments, so one could feasibly argue that they later decided that people shouldn’t have guns, but they should word it in Latin Grammar so it’s really confusing…

From page 221 of my Anti-Federalist Papers:

17th. That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit. And that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

This is from the guys who fought for the Bill of Rights. If it wasn’t for these guys, we wouldn’t have many of the other freedoms we enjoy, like the following:

15th. Right to peaceable assembly, redress of grievances

16th. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press

20th. Freedom of religion

After installing Gallery on my Site5 account, I now have my England pictures up. Enjoy!

So, I proposed to my long-time girlfriend Kelsey in England a couple weeks ago. I managed to get it on video:

<embed src="/flash_player/flvplayer.swf" height="400" width="400" />

This takes place in Farleigh-Hungerford Castle, which has this charming history:

The colourful Hungerford family included two members executed during the Wars of the Roses and another – who imprisoned his wife here for four years – beheaded for alleged treason and witchcraft by Henry VIII. One Lady Hungerford was hanged for murdering her first husband and burning his body in the castle’s kitchen oven, another was charged with adultery and attempted poisoning.

<object height="355" width="425"><param></param><param></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9GgWrV8TcUc&amp;rel=1" height="355" width="425"></embed></object>

“If you keep [skateboarding], someone’s going to kill you..”

So I’ve been using Leopard to see if it is adequate for a laptop. So far, it has done nicely. I have a few complaints, but some of them are just old habits that die hard. Here is a short list…

There’s a pretty cool product from DIFRWare that protects your passport from unauthorized reading. It’s about $20, and totally worth it unless you use the hammer method. It’s simply a passport case that features a Faraday cage in its skin! A brilliant idea. Watch the video on their site for the proof that it works.

I love the SixtyOne. It uses a point-based system to allow me to vote up my favorite music, which accrues me more points when more people vote it up. It’s basically like digg for music. Not all the songs are free, but you can listen to the full versions of the songs on demand without buying them.

I was reading the Republican Party platform of 1860 today, which is about 1.5 pages, very broadly worded, and actually has good general platform aims. It was an interesting contrast to the 2004 platform, which is very specific and verbose and specific about every possible issue, 92 pages, and full of praise for George W. Bush. The old platform is much less superficial - it actually lays down the underlying principles that the party aims to achieve, some of which have been ignored by later platforms, the following being particularly powerful:

That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

So, why has the party changed so much? Maybe the 2008 platform should be minimal, only stating the underlying principles behind the individual policies in the 2004 platform. Any intelligent person should be able to conclude from the minimal set of principles what the party’s policy would be on a particular issue. The 1860 platform seemed to recognize this.

I got tired of not having my greasy friend around, so I changed the rdf file to work for all versions of Firefox 3. Here’s the result: