Yesterday Damon wrote a great article on how to secure your system for unblock-us and I followed his lead.

My only machine runs Mac OS, so I had to do a bit of research…

Step 1: run bind

Following these instructions:


sudo -s
rndc-confgen -b 256 > /etc/rndc.conf
head -n5 /etc/rndc.conf | tail -n4 > /etc/rndc.key


Make sure the ports match.


launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.isc.named.plist
echo "launchctl start org.isc.named" >> /etc/launchd.conf


Step 2: configure

I didn’t need any fancy setup, so I pasted everything into /etc/named.conf:


//
// Include keys file
//
include "/etc/rndc.key";

zone "hulu.com" {
 type forward;
 forwarders {
  208.122.23.22;
  208.122.23.23;
 };
};
zone "unblock-us.com" {
 type forward;
 forwarders {
  208.122.23.22;
  208.122.23.23;
 };
};


Step 3: verify

Check for typos in the configuration:

named-checkconf /etc/named.conf

and check if we get new results. Before nslookup returned:

$ nslookup hulu.com
Server: 10.255.255.4
Address: 10.255.255.4#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: hulu.com
Address: 63.150.131.26
Name: hulu.com
Address: 63.150.131.11


Now I get:

# nslookup hulu.com
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: hulu.com
Address: 184.154.113.147
Name: hulu.com
Address: 50.22.86.53
Name: hulu.com
Address: 173.208.155.19
Name: hulu.com
Address: 173.208.170.19


$ ps aux | grep randomprocessname
psycho 20429 0.0 0.0 11824 1580 pts/7 S+ 12:00 0:00 /bin/bash ./randomprocessname
psycho 20528 0.0 0.0 4188 740 pts/17 R+ 12:00 0:00 grep randomprocessname
$ pkill -9 randomprocessname
WTF? Kill that sucker!
$ pkill -9 randomprocessname
No typo... Am I crazy?
$ pgrep randomprocessname
What's wrong?
$ pgrep randomprocessna
20429
$ pkill -9 randomprocessna

For some arcane reason pgrep/pkill matches only the first 15 characters.


Name: does not matter
APN: internet.eplus.de
Proxy: <empty>
Port: <empty>
Username: eplus
Password: <empty>
Server: <empty>
MMSC: <empty>
MMS proxy: <empty>
MMC: 262
MNC: 03
APN type: <empty>


Update:

The recommended configuration is:


Name: does not matter
APN: internet.eplus.de
Proxy: <empty>
Port: <empty>
Username: simyo
Password: simyo
Server: <empty>
MMSC: <empty>
MMS proxy: <empty>
MMC: 262
MNC: 03
APN type: <empty>


After the initial success with the eplus configuration, I had some problems with it, too. But I guess these errors were internal eplus network hiccups because they were gone without me changing anything and now both configs work.

But thanks to the omniscient internet I found a solution. At the bottom of the “Keyboard & Mouse” preferences page is a setting which allows you to navigate only between text boxes or between all controls. I don’t know who came up with the great idea that the default should be “text boxes and lists only”, but I guess the mighty Steve knows what he is doing.

Rod Hilton explains it much better than I could ever do, why you should Pair-Program. But I haven’t heard about the “ping-pong pairing”:

When doing Test-Driven Development, one of the things we do is called “ping-pong pairing”. So the other developer will write a test, then make it compile but fail. Then he passes the keyboard to me. I implement the feature just enough to make the test pass, then I write another failing test and pass it back.

I have to try this on Monday…

Title: Ruby On Rails I18N Developer
Skills: I18N, Ruby on Rails, mySQL
…
Job description:
…
Chumby Industries is looking for a Ruby On Rails/I18N Contractor to deliver results for the internationalization (I18N) effort on the server.
This candidate would be responsible for externalizing all the text strings (both static and dynamically generated) that the website uses so that Chumby could later change the language of the site based on location.

Skills required:
Previous I18N efforts on browser-based platforms
Strong web-based development experience
Ruby on Rails experience
mySQL database experience
Familiarity of layout issues involved with I18N

My experience so far was great.

Step one: configure WiFi
It detected my local network without a problem. I had to enter the password and was ready to go.

Step two: activate chumby
Create an account at chumby.com and click on “activate chumby”. It shows a 4×4 matrix of dots you have to copy to your chumby to connect you account with your device. This is a nice idea. It’s very simple, easy to use but effective. And surprisingly that’s it.

Step three: add widgets
Just one click. Sometimes the widgets need a some configuration but everything is explained right there.

Minor annoyances

• only two brightness settings: high & low
• you have to press pretty hard on the touchscreen

Plans:
Find a German power supply (should be easy) and start coding a widget

We used Kara to teach them a little bit about programming. You can create finite state machines to control a bug which runs around and tries to solve different problems. The girls did much better than I expected and finished all the exercises we thought would be enough for a whole day before lunch.

Without much preparation I decided to teach them a little about “real” programming and Ruby because there is a Ruby version of Kara which lets you write Ruby code to control the bug.

The experiment was very successful. The girls solved all the problems again, this time in Ruby and from their feedback they really enjoyed it.

A couple of years ago I taught a programming course for kids at the Volkshochschule in Karlsruhe. At that time I used Perl (it was a loooong time ago and I didn’t know Ruby then) but if I ever do this again I will use RubyKara.

The changes are really simple. Here are the diffs:

--- wordpress/wp-admin/wp-admin.css 2008-03-29 08:21:12.000000000 +0100
+++ ../amazing-development.com/wp-admin/wp-admin.css        2008-03-30 16:47:22.000000000 +0200
@@ -573,8 +573,8 @@
 
 #wphead #viewsite {
        position: absolute;
-   margin-top: 12px;
-   margin-left: 10px;
+       margin-top: 3px;
+       margin-left: 3px;
 }
 #wphead #viewsite a {
        font: 12px "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif;
@@ -590,8 +590,8 @@
 }
 
 #wphead h1 {
-   font: normal 36px Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
-   padding: 11px 170px 16px 12px;
+       font: normal 18px Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
+       padding: 11px 170px 20px 13px;
        margin: 0;
        margin-right: 15%;
 }
@@ -635,9 +635,9 @@
 }
 
 #adminmenu a {
-   font-size: 16px;
+       font-size: 12px;
        padding: 5px 7px;
-   line-height: 30px;
+       line-height: 20px;
 }
 
 #adminmenu a.current, #sidemenu a.current {
@@ -770,7 +770,7 @@
 }
 
 #submenu li {
-   font-size: 14px;
+       font-size: 10px;
 }
 
 #minisub { /* for empty submenus */
@@ -961,6 +961,14 @@
        text-decoration: underline;
 }
 
+#wpbody h2 {
+  font-size: 12pt;
+}
+
+#titlediv h3 {
+  display: none;
+}
+
 #poststuff h2 {
        margin-top: 20px;
        font-size: 1.5em;

One thing is for sure: as soon as these laptops become available in Germany, I will buy one.

My current favorite is the TS-409 Pro Turbo NAS. It has:

• low power consuption (ok, sleep mode: 18.8W; in operation: 44.6W)
• RAID support (way more features than I would ever need: Single disk, RAID 0 (Disk Stripping), RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring), RAID 5, RAID 5+ Hot spare, RAID 6, and JBOD (Linear Disk Volume))
• no encryption

But I couldn’t find any other NAS server with a good price (less than 500€) and this combination of features so I guess I have to live without encrypted disks. If you have any experience with this box or know about another box which has all these features, please leave a comment.

I’ve remove my caps-lock key from a couple of keyboards already. But I did not know that a campaign called anticAPSLOCK existed which tries to ban caps-lock from future keyboards. Nice idea!