Author: Darren

Categories
Sysadmin

Stop using backup email spooling

Here’s a great opinion piece from the blog of my DNS provider entitled: Want to reduce email spam to your mail server? Stop using backup spooling.

It is with regret that we have come to the following conclusion, but here it is: Offsite backup SMTP spoolers and backup mail exchangers have become worse than useless.

The problem is spam and the software that delivers it exploiting the weak authentication schemes inherent in the SMTP protocol itself. It used to be an annoyance, then it became a concern, it is now an epidemic and has resulted in the death of the offsite backup MX handler.

The author then goes on to explain what the problem is and why you won’t really miss your backup spooling. It’s a very interesting point of view (in a good way) that’s worth considering.

Categories
China

Earthquake in Beijing

We felt an earthquake in Beijing today at approximately 03:57:30 UTC 4 July 2006. The building, my desk, and I went back and forth for about one second. Very weird feeling. It was my first one, I think.

Xie Lei, at work, was scared because she remembers the earthquake that hit Beijing in 1976. I’ll have to read up on that one, but I seem to remember reading that the pagoda at Bei Hai park was partially destroyed in an earthquake then.

Update: From the news I’ve learned that today’s earthquake was magnitude 5.1.

Categories
Music

My First Love in Bluegrass

I’ve been listening to Prairie Pickin’—a bluegrass radio show from my hometown—all day today. It airs every Thursday night (local time) and there’s an Internet stream available, so I’ve got a cron job set up that “records” the stream for me so I can listen to the show whenever I get around to it.

“Prairie Pickin'” was my first introduction to Bluegrass music, and I’ve got recordings going back to May of 2001 when I started listening to the show. At the time, it was hosted by the insane Rob Baker and sweet Anna Somerville, and I credit the two of them for my love of Bluegrass today. Rob still does the show, but now the wise Doug Ritchie is his co-host.

Well, last month, Doug surprised Rob with a track going back to those early days. It was a recording of Rob Baker and the great David Ward performing live in Edmonton, opening for Lynn Morris.

The song is “Hold Whatcha Got”, and David and Rob call themselves “The Lonesome Brothers”, which is derived from the meta-band Lonesome and Then Some. This band was my first love in Bluegrass. I followed them everywhere. So hearing a part of their music today brought back all those good memories. I love David’s vocals and Rob’s harmony. Totally in the pocket.

“Hold Whatcha Got”, by David Ward and Rob Baker (2:36, 2.4 MB)

Categories
Philosophy

Wow

All I can say is wow: The Best and the Interesting.

Categories
Astro China

A Solar Eclipse for the 2008 Olympics

[Total Solar Eclipse, by Astrobrian]I just found out today that there will be a total solar eclipse in China one week before the 2008 Olympics begin!

This event will occur on 1 August 2008, giving us 2 minutes and 27 seconds of maximum totality. The line of totality will pass through Siberia, skirt along the western Chinese-Mongolian border, and pass through central China southwest of Beijing. (It will only be visible as a partial eclipse at sunset in Beijing itself.)

This is great news for people thinking about coming to Beijing for the Olympics. Just come a week early, catch the eclipse, and then tour around China until the Olympics start. I can’t wait. 🙂 Spread the news.

Categories
General

Announcing Gulistan Art

I’m both proud and pleased to announce the launch of my Tchou Tchou’s new website: Gulistan Art. It’s a brand new WordPress blog/website, where we’ve adapted the design from a third-party theme.

Getting to this stage has been quite the journey. We’ve gone through two domain names and one professional design, [Gulistan's signature] only to put this together ourselves. The focus has switched from being a professional site for her as an artist to a site that’s more personal. She’s excited about blogging, but scared to let others see her writing. I’ll have to continue to encourage her to just start writing. I mean, the point is self expression.

There are a few articles to read by others who have written about her as an artist, in both Chinese and English. We’re working on a few more to add soon. She has written a lot of poetry about her artwork, too. So as we get that translated, it will be added also.

There’s no artwork posted yet. Sorry. We actually broke the theme yesterday by posting a blog entry with a picture. So the theme I chose wasn’t well written in the html and css. I’ll have to tweak it to get it to work right. Anyway, a gallery is in the works, too. So just be patient. 🙂

Categories
FreeBSD Sysadmin

bsdtalk

[bsdtalk logo]I just discovered yesterday that there’s a BSD podcast out there. Awesome! It’s called bsdtalk, and has the tagline: “Talking about the BSD family of free operating systems.”

I’ve been using Linux for over a year and a half now, and I’m starting to miss my BSD. This might push me back…

Categories
Rant

Frames of Reference

From the I-can’t-believe-they-published-it-like-this department:

Errors in Fixed and Moving Frame of References: Applications for Conventional and Doppler Radar Analysis, by Tzvi Gal-Chen, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 1982.

Yuck! 🙁

Categories
FreeBSD Linux Sysadmin

A Hacker’s Vacation

[Head in the clouds]I took this week off work to enjoy a Hacker’s Vacation. That is, I’m planning to spend a lot of time hacking on my computer.

It’s more than that, actually. I desperately need some time to put my life back in order and catch up on things that I’ve been neglecting, such as housework, email, this website, hard drive spring cleaning, my Tchou Tchou’s website, the Swing website, a new server, and various little projects I have going on. Slowly, I’m getting parts of it all done. I’ll have to carry on some of the tasks later, but at least this week will give me a good foundation to work with.

The biggest thing I want to hack on is my brain. As I mentioned above, I’ve got a new server and I need to spend some time learning how it works. I’m intimately familiar with FreeBSD, but since it’s a virtual hosting solution, I’m constrained at this point to use Debian GNU/Linux on the new server. Since I’ve been using Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) on my desktop for over a year, it is fairly easy to manage. But there are lots of server-related configurations and tasks that I need to nail down for good security and management.

For general Linux information goodness, I’m following a set of tutorials from the IBM Developer Network entitled the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) exam prep, described as a “series of tutorials to help you learn Linux fundamentals and prepare for system administrator certification”. I’m not intending to write the exams—just learn the material. I’m finding that the tutorials give very good background information, covering things in enough detail to explain the process. I can then, of course, delve into the man pages and other documentation to learn more.

I’m enjoying it so far.

Categories
China Tech

Entering Chinese Characters into a Computer

Here’s an interesting article on how Chinese computer users enter characters into their computers. I’m guessing that some of you may wonder how it’s done.