Gekitsuu's Geekery

A friend I met through DeviantART contacted me about helping her with a project she's working on.
She wanted me to make some fractals for an album she's doing and this is as good a reason as any to start posting the ones I've been
working on, which I'll probably do this weekend. She's linked on the right as Ouisa and is a great photographer, so please check out her
work. She made a good observation about my fractal gallary so I made the change she suggested. Now there are "Back" and "Next" links above
the thumbnails for better navigation, it was an easy thing to add and she was absolutly right about it being necessary. A brief post today
since up I'm way past my bed time.

I'm working on an OpenBSD box for a project at work and so far it isn't giving
me any trouble. Typically when something is more secure it is also more
stringent about doing things a certain way (control = security). This isn't a
total surprise but it is an indication of a group who believes security doesn't
have to exclude ease of use. I'm intersted to see if when I reboot the box it
comes up correctly, and I believe it will. Once I have the box patched
I can begin working on the meat of the project which will be to make a box that
blazes through web stats and requires less maintanence than our current system.
Once I have that functionality I'll include the mail and ftp stats collections.
I'm hoping to have it near ready in a week but since every piece of this is new
to me we'll have to take things as them come.

I work for a company who focuses on security for our customers. We pay attention to all aspects of security for the services we provide our clients. That means analyzing everything that happens in ways most people would consider overly cautious. Once you practice thinking a certain way long enough it, permeates the rest of your life because of the instincts you form. Tonight while driving home from the grocery story I saw a situation down the road. Without knowing all the details I had enough information that made me pause while the 2 to 3 cars on the road continued. About a quarter of a mile up the road there were 5 police cars surrounding one car. I opted to hold back and let the situation play out before I passed. The officers were all out of their cars with guns drawn. The car full of people had all the windows down, with many arms reaching for the sky. I wondered why the people would continue to pass with a situation that the officers obviously did not feel they had control of yet. It occurred to me that many people go through their days without understanding the risks they are taking. Things as simple as traffic around here become complicated because people think things like "I'm not going to let him in, and if he hits me the law will be on my side." That hardly matters if you're dead or you receive a life changing injury. Thankfully this situation was resolved peacefully, but I've never understood why people would put themselves into a situation that could endanger them, when there are alternatives. I don't mean you should be paralyzed with fear but at the very least people should think about the situations they find themselves in. Once the police had all the people from the car under control I proceeded past and I maybe lost 10 minutes in the process. I knew the situation was at least partially controlled when the police had them out of the car and holstered their weapons. I do love the night.

I've been thinking for some time now about making my own blogging tool because, lets face it, if you don't make your own most of the time
you're just making do. I wanted to document a bit, for myself, what the plan is so far, that way I'll have something to look back to later
to see what I planned and what I ended up with. The basic rule of it will be that all the files published to the website are static content
which means there most likely won't be a form for comments. I'm still debating this issue internally and may decide later to make a comment
cgi. I want to have the articles stored in xml files that will be diced up RSS items for easy generation of feeds. I'm big on
RSS at this point and this would be a good way to develop better skills. Also I wanted to design the output files to work easily with
CSS so if I decide down the road to release the project as an open source app; other people will be able to customize it easily.
Another contributing factor to me doing this is so I can design the system in such a way that my wife will be interested in using it. I think
she'd have a real fun time with a blog but she doesn't like using the nanoblogger software that I use.

I've been having a rough couple days because of a situation at work but it looks like things will
work out ok (and I sure hope they do). I didn't post earlier because I was really tired when I got
home so I decided to just crash and post tonight if I could. So far it's been a quiet night and
that's all I can ask for. I went out for chineese food with my parents and wife and we all had a
good time. The visit was too short but they always are. Lots of good things going on, a few not so good things going on. Tonight I plan on studying CSS and maybe starting on my Perl blogging software.
I have a lot of great ideas for it and I don't know how much time it will take to finish but it
will be well worth it. I'm thinking I'll start it as a sourceforge project and open source it, but only after I'm ready to make an initial beta release.

last night I purchased linuxisforlosers.com and .org. I was very surprised to find out that they had not been snatched up already, so I
jumped at them when I saw they weren't. For those who aren't familiar with the story Forbes published, which is located here, titled "Is Linux for Losers?" It was an
interview with the driving force behind OpenBSD who brought up some very valid points about design problems with Linux. Once I had the
domains I knew exactly what to do with them. I'm going to setup a site where people can discuss the general design
problems with the Linux kernel and hopefully help the developers by giving them an outsiders perspective. I haven't decided exactly
what the scope of the site will be but at least for starters it will cover the Linux kernel. I'm excited about this and hope to have up
something in the next couple weeks.

Well, I was wrong about the Oreilly Open Source Convention I have been approved. This is more than I had hoped for and I'm going to prove to my employer that it was not a poor decision. I'm going to bring as much info as I can back about the convention to share with the rest of the Ops team and I'll even do my best to find good opportunities for the company. I expect this convention will produce some really good projects for my group and certainly the bulk of our business is related to open source projects. I've never been to Portland before so that will be a new experience as well. I plan on taking pictures and posting notes about the convention. I've never been to FOSS even though I had the chance a couple times with NoVaLUG so I'm really excited about this.

I want to cover two things in this entry, siding and my code. I didn't come as
far as I would have liked with the web front-end for the blogging software I
use. I've also been toying with the idea of making my own blogging software
based on Perl which is most likely what I'll end up doing even if I get the
CGI front end working. I do have to say that I'll be a better coder because of
it if I do. I'll have to play with XML, CSS, HTML and CGI modules to get it to
work exactly how I want but I think it would make for a pretty secure blogging
tool once I was done. The other thing I wanted to address is siding. I live in
suburbia for sure and it seems that any more all the houses are covered in
siding. Even my folks who live pretty close by have most of their house covered
in siding and I'm not really sure I like the look of most of it. It seems that
all the houses start to look the same just because everyone is getting safe,
sensible siding. My townhouse is covered in wood siding which I personally
think is better than the plastic or metal types but I'd really like to see more
brick on houses. I just noticed it when I was out for my morning walk and
thought it might not be one of the best signs of progress.

One of the things I am using my blog for is a reason for me to code. The more ideas I can come up with the more experience I will get writing Perl. I've recently removed all my fractals from deviantART for many reasons but I've written my own gallery program so that I can display them here. I've also been trying to participate more in www.perlmonks.org I've submitted some code there. If you're into Perl that's one of the best resources I've found for discussions about Perl and Perl code. I have been exercising the past few weeks in an effort go get myself into better shape and so far the only setback is that I seem to keep developing foot problems. So far nothing serious enough that I can't continue so I plan to keep pushing; I'm assuming it's just my body grumbling that I'm being more active. I plan on getting a gym membership to help me during the week. My wife and I had when we lived in Fairfax and both loved the place. The gym I'm referring to is Lifetime Fitness I can tell you from personal experience that they are a bit more expensive than the others but they are the best gym I've ever been in. The bonus for me is that they are open 24/7 and since I work nights that means I can take my lunch break and go work out. I heard from my boss today that it's not likely II'll get to go to the Oreilly Open Source Convention which is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. I was hoping to attend the Perl track and it would have been a lot of fun but I just can't justify paying for it out of pocket. I've started to come to the realization that I don't need classes or books I just need to practice and find problems to solve to improve my skills to where I want to be as a developer. I am going to make a concerted effort to make this a daily blog but time doesn't all ways allow for such things so I'll leave it at that, a desire to be consistent.