John Borwick’s blog

Neat stuff John likes.

October 31st, 2004

compiling embedded python on OS X

I haven’t yet figured out how to take this code:

#include <Python.h>

int main() {  PyInitialize();  PyRunSimpleString("print 2100");}

And compile it. I’ve tried gcc -I${PYTHON}/include/python2.3 -o test test.c but I don’t know what library to use… or where to find it.

October 31st, 2004

TCP/IP Illustrated

I’ve been eyeing TCP/IP Illustrated volume one. Seth has a copy, and it’s really useful.

Then I read a review of volume two:

Difficulty aside, this book alone will honestly make you a TCP/IP guru - now that I’ve read volumes 1 and 2, the networking administrators where I work come to me with questions about issues they can’t resolve. I’m literally comfortable saying that there’s nothing I don’t know about TCP/IP, and that’s not a statement I’d make lightly (feel free to test me). But more than that, I learned a lot about writing good, solid code… in learning the networking stack as a whole, I was able to understand some higher-level software engineering concepts that had previously eluded me.

which is a pretty hearty recommendation.

My current plan is to work on my (computer) networking knowledge and to learn Python, so I’ll have most of the “system administration basic requirements” covered.

October 31st, 2004

one-stop no excuse absentee voting

Lauren and I voted early at the Forsyth County Government Center yesterday. The polls were open from 10 AM - 1 PM. We arrived at 11:15 AM and waited two hours forty-five minutes to vote with electronic ballots.

While we were waiting, I asked the elections board why I’d never received my voter registration card. They had keyed my address in as “591″ rather than “541″. My actual address “541B Trade St” could not be inputted; we found out from Lauren’s registration that it must be “541B N Trade St.” Their computer program stores a scanned version of the registration card, which is awesome, because they could verify what I’d written down and chalk up the typo to “BOE ERROR“.

I think we voted with a computer because people were voting from different districts and they couldn’t create a standard paper ballot. The trouble with the computers (other than the lack of any auditing) is that people can see who you vote for. There were 10 voting machines and three volunteers checking registrations inside a 10 foot by 15 foot room. You’d think after the first few days they would have tried to optimize the system by getting a bigger room, maybe more voting machines, and making sure that there were no bottlenecks.

They should also give out numbers if the wait is going to be longer than 10-15 minutes, so that people can leave and come back, get drinks, sit down, etc. Spain is the expert in this arena: lines there (for train tickets) can be 2 hours long and ALWAYS use numbers.

October 27th, 2004

Eminem’s “Mosh”

Yep, I’m stealing links from Daily Kos. The Guerilla News Network has a copy of Eminem’s “Mosh” video. I recommend seeing the video; it’s apparently #1 on MTV.

October 27th, 2004

one-fingered victory salute

While governor, Bush flips off the camera.

October 27th, 2004

Old Gold and Black

Wake Forest’s student newspaper, the Old Gold and Black, has two notable entries this week.
First, an article about the cultural diversity project contains a quote about why to take the class:

“Your mom made you eat tofu when you were younger, and you envied the kid next door whose mom let him eat all the Twinkies he wanted,” [William Hamilton, associate dean] said. “But when you got older, and you had nice teeth, and your neighbor’s teeth were rotting, you thanked your mom.”

Second, the “QWAKE” insert has a map of the legendary steam tunnels. Rock on.

October 26th, 2004

optimizing OS X

The mac’s been running a little slow, so I looked into optimizing it.
I had an NFS export of “/Volumes” (scary) set up in NetInfo, so I removed that by using NetInfo Manager to delete the entry in “/exports”.
GPGMail had an upgrade; version 1.0 kept spawning new “GPGMEProxyServer” processes, fixed in 1.0.2.
Now I need to investigate replacements for iChatStatus, as the “SetiChatStatus” process uses 150mb of virtual memory (to keep my buddy messages in sync with iTunes).

October 26th, 2004

how productive! (back ups)

I just updated my Mac OS X backup script and am in the process of copying my files to the external hard drive (”Off-Shore Banking”). I had to get rsyncx to copy the HFS+ forks for all my files.

(Aside: My previous backups, I found out thanks to AEleen Frisch’s presentation about OS X, are invalid because they used a vanilla rsync, which doesn’t copy any HFS+ forks.)
Read the rest of this entry »

October 26th, 2004

Trying out a new blog client

I’m trying out Weblog Poster as an alternative to Kung-Log/Ecto, because it’s free.

October 26th, 2004

essential sysadmin resources

As of October 2004, here’s my list of essential system administration resources:

and those currently under deliberation: