Linux Blog

Ok, I’ll admit it; I’m a digital hoarder. I’ve had this problem for a while where I can’t seem to delete stuff. Perhaps its files I’ve created, stuff I’ve downloaded, backups, or backups of backups but files seem to accumulate faster than I can keep up with organizing them. Throw this on top of system re-installs and, being the family geek backups of family members and freelance work to be honest, I’m a bit overwhelmed!

Well, it stops today! At least the start of organization that is. I’ve written in the past about spring cleaning tools, recursive md5sum scripts and tools like md5deep but nothing really came of it. It’s time to take action and get stuff organized. Now I’ve admitted it publicly, I’m sort of obligated to get in control of my digital life and so the voyage begins.

Stay tuned for more posts on digital organization techniques and tools!

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It’s been a while since I’ve done some feature improvements on TheLinuxBlog and quite frankly it’s about time for some updating and modernization. Here are some changes I’ve made and some features I’m planning on adding.
(Read on …)

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Happy new year! I guess it’s time for a yearly update, I feel like everyone else has done it and now its my turn. Hit the jump for some more statistics that are probably only interesting to yours truly.

Top 10 Posts
Interestingly enough none of these were written this year. Perhaps I should write a query to extract the most popular ones of this year, I’m not sure they’re getting the same search love as my older stuff.

(Read on …)

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Over the years my office or workspace has had a lot of variations. From bedroom and dining room workspaces to hole in the wall space at an office, I now have my own home office and I recently got an office make over and have to say so far I’m liking it. I always have liked things to be neat and have there own place but sometimes, things get out of control I’m hoping that this time I can keep it tidy. I think the biggest challenge will be not having enough desk space, I guess having two laptops on it wont help either, I think its time to downgrade one to a netbook!

So, for the first time ever here’s a sneak peak into what my workspaces have looked like in the past and what my workspace currently looks like, starting from the oldest. Keep in mind, a lot of these photos were taken in the process of moving or organizing with the exception of the newest, which were taken recently and in their natural state. (Read on …)

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I’ve been trying to keep up this blog for a number of years now. Problem is, I think I over committed when I created the Shell Script Sundays column. I’ve been keeping it going as best as possible, and will continue to do so, but I’m not going to be able to do it every week. If you may have noticed, I haven’t done any on a regular basis anyway. I do however, have some queued up for every other week, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to continue doing that. There is also, only so much you can write about shell scripts. If anyone wants to step up and write some shell scripting articles you’re more than welcome to do so.

This will be my 70th article written since I’ve started. I doubt any one will even notice anyway, if you’d like to see it make a comeback, let me know.

That is all.

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As the new year has turned, I thought it would be a good time to go back and look at my goals for 2009. To be honest they were pretty modest and I’d pretty much forgotten what they were, despite this fact I still managed to get 4 out of the 6 done. Getting certified never happened, but I feel like I became more qualified, which is all that matters right? Hah. I blame the CD ripping on streaming media services like Pandora, Grooveshark and last.fm which pretty much eliminated my need to rip the CD’s. So all in all I guess it was a productive year.

I’m still working on my technical related goals for this coming year, I don’t really know what to put on the list yet, since I’ve found that goals will change as time goes on. For example, I set up my PBX in November of 09 which was about 11 months after I set the goal that I had forgotten about. Maybe I’ll roll the two I did not accomplish in 2009 over, add a the goals of getting more organized and reducing the amount of equipment I have. Yea, those seem reasonable for now.

Happy new year!

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Best iPhone Error Message Ever

Not Linux related at all but I thought it was funny.  So, yea. Ignore the giant DISMISS_ALERT button, that’s an error caused by me being stupid, but I thought the actual message was pretty funny.

After dialing a “special” number that I strategically obfuscated using gimp and then may have failed to upload the correct one. I get an:

“Error performing request, No Error”.

Although interesting, I now need to find some one without a jail broken phone to see if they get the same message just for the lols. Anyway this sort of stuff can be found all over the place, I just think its funny to find it on such a trendy hipster user oriented device.

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I’m not normally one to just flat out bash Microsoft or trash them for their flaws, but sometimes I do enjoy a good Microsoft Joke.

Here are I know off the top of my head:

Q: How many Microsoft Engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None its obviously a hardware problem
—

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic
navigation and communications equipment.

Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position. The pilot saw a tall building,
flew toward it, circled, and held up a handwritten sign that said “WHERE AM I?” in large letters.

People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window.
Their sign said “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER.”

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely. After
they were on the ground, the copilot asked the pilot how he had done it.

“I knew it had to be the Microsoft Building, because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer!”

They’re terrible I know… Terribly *FUNNY*. Post your favorite Microsoft Jokes in the comments or tweet them to @LinuxBlog and I’ll include them here.

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What’s up folks? I can’t believe that it’s already August. It seems like forever since I’ve updated the site, although in reality it has only been two weeks. I do have a bunch of content to write up, and some new features to implement to the site. As always if any one has any news, ideas for articles, wants to write some articles get in contact with me.

Some one told me that people like free stuff (who doesn’t?), so I’ve lined up some giveaways that some of you might be interested in. Atleast I hope so.

Tune in next week for more information!

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Not that I use Amazon Associates a whole lot, but I got this message from them saying that I can no longer get referral fee’s from Amazon.

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.

Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

Best Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

I have no idea what the “tax collection scheme” is but I’d like to know more about it. Going to the websites they recommend doesn’t really help me as I don’t want to scan through pages just to find the answer.

To me it seems like it would be a good idea for them to reject, as what is stopping an LLC from registering in another state and using the service? If anyone in NC relies heavily on associates this could prevent them from operating, perhaps forcing them to relocate to another state, taking any business and therefore taxes elsewhere. I’m just a small player, I might have got a few referral sales (not from this site) but for those that do heavy affiliate marketing, it might have an impact. This is just on the client side, I’m wondering if it would affect any of the service side. A lot of money is made through services like this, for example Google, so I can see why NC wants a piece of the pie and apparentelly Amazon doesn’t want to pay. I have had no notice from other services.

Oh well, we’ll see how it pans out.

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I haven’t posted here in a while so here is a presentation that I did at a local security meeting about the Snort IDS. Not much on its own but gives an introduction on Snort with a few slides about IDS’s a few on writing Snort Rules. On the demonstration slide is where I did a demonstration that didn’t exactly go as planned. I swear it worked at home using Nikto, but its all good since I had a friendly crowd. The additional resources slide shows some great resources for learning about the Snort IDS. So hit my document on scribd!

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