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  • Asorted junk, listified.

    written by

    james

    As I do way, way too often, I’ve gone and fell off the blogging wagon. But, uh, at least I’ve kept up with the ones who haven’t? Yeah, okay, that works. For the 75 quadrillionth time, I’m going to attempt to fix that. And because there are post ideas in my head, that will probably last–er, well, at least a week or two. I should probably use this thing for, if nothing else, a dumping ground for anything and everything technical that floats through my head. And I probably will. but that’s not what this post will pretend to be. Because there are ideas, and because they’ll probably get their own posts in due time, have a thing in list format. Because lazy, and caffeine’s all the way over there.

    • I promise myself I won’t watch hockey this year, and the Leafs go and make the playoffs. It figures. But I’m still not watching hockey this year. Screw you, NHL.
    • Alright, so it’s still april. And April more often than not is usually a less than stellar month for the Bluejays–at least that’s the line that gets handed to us on a yearly basis. But we were told to expect big things. Approximately 1.5 of us are still waiting.
    • Finding a routine takes on a whole new meaning after you’ve moved a handful of times in the span of less than a year. Interestingly enough, so does finding the things that make up your routine. Or your kitchen.
    • I pay for TV for the first time in a couple years, and am reminded why I stopped. Note: that does not mean I’m stopping again–at least not until the baseball season either ends or implodes. I know better.
    • Small note to Ottawa’s weather paterns. Or, rather, weather paterns in all manner of places. It’s near the end of April, and places are still seeing snow. We only just got finished with the below freezing–again. You’re fired. Oh, and the first person to blame this on global warming buys me a bottle of vodka. I don’t doubt it’s global, but I’m still waiting on the warming.

  • #LoveThisTeam

    written by

    james

    I’ll freely admit it. Last year, I just couldn’t get in to the whole baseball thing. I wanted to, like nothing else. But I just wasn’t feeling it, as in at all. I’m pretty sure the Jays weren’t either–mostly because, well, that’s the only thing I can think of to explain where and how we finished. I tried not to get overly enthusiastic about this season. Yes, in spite of the fact the off season brought in a minor explosion and a major offensive. But see here’s the thing. I sat through spring training. Not all of it, mind, but enough of it. I saw awesome. I saw wicked nifty. I even saw a couple very humanlike screw-ups. But largely, I saw a team that, on paper anyway, should do somewhat better than dead last in the american League east. Of course if I’m wrong I still have the Braves to fall back on, but I’m sort of hoping I’m not wrong. Because the last time I was anywhere near world series baseball and actually had a team I enjoyed cheering for, I was 10. You’ve got two guesses which team that was.

    It’s opening night in toronto. It’s home run season. It’s ball time. I plan to be in the living room, plunked in front of the TV, with pizza and a coke–which may or may not contain something alcoholic. This is what hockey would be if hockey wasn’t nailed in the kneecaps by players who make way too much and want more and owners who have more money than brains and want to spend less. This is my sport. And after about 7:00 PM tonight, that’s about all I’ll be interested in. But don’t worry. It’ll all be back to normal at some point later. Until we do it all over again tomorrow. It might not look like summer right around now, but what the hell. Let’s play ball.

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  • So you’ve got 50 MBPS. But can your ISP do this?

    written by

    james

    I was spoiled twice my first go round with TekSavvy. And, after growing an issue or 5 with Bell during the move to the new place (Yeah, because who didn’t see that one coming?) I figured it was high time I give them try number 2. Why? Because awesome sauce, kids. And not even 6 months after I give these folks a look, I get this in my email.

    Dear JAMES HOMUTH,

    We are writing to inform you of some really great changes to your Internet service from TekSavvy. We are lowering pricing and passing on the savings to all of our customers! How TekSavvy is that?

    As of your next billing date, you will notice that the Internet package you are subscribing to will change from High Speed DSL 25 Unlimited / DSL à haute vitesse 25 Illimite at $77.99 to High Speed DSL 25 Unlimited / DSL 25 Illimité – ON – RED at $57.99.

    No action is required on your part. As of March 27th, 2013 TekSavvy automatically made the updates to our system. Your next bill will reflect the new pricing.

    To find the latest news from the TekSavvy Team like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or visit teksavvy.com.

    Thank you for your continued support, and loyalty.

    Sincerely,

    The TekSavvy Team
    TekSavvy Solutions Inc.
    We’re Different. In a Good Way.

    I deal with way too many business to measure on a daily basis, and this is the first time any single one of them, be they tech related or not, has sent me an email escentially saying “here, have $20 off your bill for the next forever”. I almost went looking for the catch. But then of course, Twitter blew up and well, it’s not april fools. So here’s a question. Why aren’t more people interested in what the smaller guys have to offer? I wish I had the answer, but heaven knows they’ve just increased my interest. Asking me to please not pay them so much money? Yes please. Common sense ISP’s for the epic win. So who wants a switch?

  • Happy April fools day. Please bring coffee.

    written by

    james

    It’s amazing how involved folks get with the whole april fools day idea, even right down to doing things that honestly wouldn’t be surprising–hey, Google killed their Reader platform, so it’s not completely beyond the realm of possibility for them to off Youtube. And with the day being 3 hours old, I’m already highly amused. Why? Well, let’s see.

    • Youtube dies a death today. All along it’s been a contest for the awesomest video, and it goes see ya later while the judges pick a winner. I knew I should have downloaded that Jeff Dunham video.
    • In Youtube’s place, Google’s beta testing a new product, called Google Nose. Finally, I can make the office here smell like the outdoors without the risk of opening the window and freezing my everloving ass off (hi, still nearly 5 degrees out, nice to see ya). Also comes in handy if it happens to be -40 and you still want that freshly cut grass smell.
    • Apparently Google’s the only one taking an early start at this whole gag product thing, but hey it’s worth it. Kind of. especially if you happen to like the colour blue–and maybe want your entire email system to reflect it. Personally I’ll stick with my self-hosted email, but hey–somebody might just sign up for this one.
    • Because everyone pretty much has been dumbed down to LOLSpeak anyway, Twitter’s offering the LOLSpeak edition of its service, TWTTR, for free. Meanwhile, the grown-ups who actually want to continue forming proper sentences, complete with non-missing letters, will be paying $5/month. They’re also offering the ability to extend your tweet limit by an additional character, for a price depending on the popularity of the character you need (*). A mighty fine way for me to actually put some missing punctuation back on the end of some of my damned tweets. Hey Twitter, let’s talk.

    And it’s Google 4, the rest of the world 1. Not bad for a thing that only just started. You should probably disconnect your internets if you don’t have a reasonably good bullshit filter, at least until 12:01 Tuesday morning. Things should return to normal around then. Normal, and baseball. Mmmmm…. baseball.

    (*): I’d actually not mind seeing a feature like this. And paying for it. Though, I’d be interested in maybe a discount for all the Tweets who’s ending pounctuation I had to lop off just to make the damn thing fit. On the other hand, perhaps that’s why it’s on the April Fools list–Twitter’d be paying *me* money.

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  • How I handle backups. Or, happy world backup day!

    written by

    james

    For most of the world, it’s Easter. at least, on the east coast, for the next… we’ll say… less than an hour. But for anyone who maybe doesn’t cellebrate easter, or has maybe more important things on their plate besides that, today is also world backup day. In honour of that, let me tell you how I work.

    I’m insanely paranoid about my backups. To the point where at any given time, it can be pretty well guaranteed I know exactly what’s backed up where, and have backups of those in at least two other places. Let me run things down on a basic level. The server hosting this website has 2 hard drives, both of them 2 TB. On the first is everything I’m running–the OS, the software that runs the site, email, you name it. On the second, is every single configuration file, line of code, database, log file, random thing that just doesn’t really have a home in any other category. And on that drive, it’s backed up in 3 different locations–just in case one of them goes on vacation. Or, you know, on the off chance I need to quickly pack up and slingshot my crap from this server to some other in an aweful goddamn hurry. The advantage of also doing it this way is, pretty much on demand, I can grab a copy of that backup, and pull it to any location I choose with enough room to hold it–like, we’ll say, somewhere local if I suspect some fool’s intent on nuking the server. It also allows for a bit more flexibility–let’s say, for instance, I decide to once again fire up a Dropbox instance on the server. Configuring it to serve as a thing to hold backups would be only too easy, and actually be moderately a painless process. The advantage to that of course being I’d have local access to those backups, regardless what my definition of local is, so long as I have access to Dropbox. Kind of makes emergency “Oops I screwed it good” recovery a thing.

    What does that mean for the hosted folks? In short, barring a nuclear bombardment that takes out the entire eastern/central region of North America, anything and everything data is relatively breakageproof. Of course if a nuclear bombardment on that scale ever becomes a thing, I suspect “where’s my crap” won’t be the first question on the list. But this also gives me a personal thing I can use later, should I ever manage to stop being bounced around and actually shove my foot in a professional door just enough so that it’s not slammed on my nose. I’ve had absolutely no professional training in this or any other area, and I’m more comfortable with the backup solution I have right now than I would be if I was paying someone else to do it. Largely, I suspect, because I know exactly where everything is and it’s a simple copy/paste if ever I need to unbreak something. But, I think, also because if it does go sideways, I don’t need to worry about holding someone else to account who doesn’t have a dog in this fight. It’s my data. It’s my friends’ websites. It’s another friend’s email. It’s all very good reasons for me to pay the fuck attention. And that, I think, is how I work best. Which reminds me. I think I’m due for a local copy pull…

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  • If a Feedburner falls off a cliff and no one notices, does it something something?

    written by

    james

    Remember Feedburner? Remember just about every website with an RSS link usually had it pointed over there? Were you reading long enough to remember when I forecasted its pending death? Well, apparently it’s still doing death twitches. I’m knee deep in RSS feeds (yes, still, in 2013–sue me). It’s how I pull together some of the stuff what ends up posted to the site in a snark sandwitch. I also use it to keep an eye on my own RSS feed (*). Or I did, until my own RSS feed wasn’t actually updating–which was odd, given I run a few things that require the RSS feed to work properly and they were still doing what I told them to. As it turns out, I wasn’t actually monitoring my RSS feed. Well, I was, but Feedburner’s version of it. And, as it turns out, Feedburner stopped pinging my RSS feed a few weeks ago and it just completely escaped my notice until I decided to check and make sure nothing in a couple previous entries produced weird and interesting results when fed. Which is also why when I hit the feedburner URL directly, the newest post on the list was somewhere around 2-3 weeks old. Of course, there was nothing whatsoever running across any of the channels I follow that said things were coming to a sudden stop, but considering Google had closed down its feedburner blog and Twitter account, that doesn’t really all that much surprise me either.

    If you’re following the RSS method already, awesome. If you’re wanting to toss the link for someone else to follow, use this one. And if you were one of the 1.2 people who read this thing through Feedburner, whoops. But I didn’t do it. Thanks for reminding me though, Google–I knew I was missing something. Now let’s not go breaking anything else, yeah? I’ve already got to eventually invent a replacement for Windows Live that isn’t Twitter. Or Facebook. Besides the rest of the internet does a mad scramble type dealy when anything Google shuts down (see also: google Reader). As the kids say, ain’t got no time for that.

    Feedburner was left for dead in late 2012. I’m pretty sure it’s kind of inching closer to that in 2013. And all it took was the damn thing trying to give me a heart attack and making me think maybe I up and busted something. Not cool, but thanks for the reminder. Now maybe you aughta mail the 2.4 people who still use it and probably haven’t caught on just yet. Hey–it’s a thought.

    (*): Not like that, you tool. For technical reasons. My head’s not that big. Besides–all my posts are on Twitter if I really wanna see what I look like in print. But why?

  • If you used any of these passwords for, well, anything, please deposit your user’s license.

    written by

    james

    It’s a little late for best/worst of 2012 lists, but no one ever said I stuck to a schedule. Besides, this one amuses particularly because, well, server admin. So it’s kind of a big deal, if you get me. And also it beats the royal hell out of an entry wherein Amazon tries screwing folks over twice just for fun, which is probably nothing new by this stage. Of course that could also mean I’ll have nothing to write about in a day or two and get back to that one, but hey you’ll have that. As for now, you’ll have the worst passwords of 2012.

    Like one of the commenters to that article, I’m very glad–and yeah, okay, a little surprised–that “admin” isn’t on that list. Personally “master” is almost as bad, but considering how many people almost never actually change the default passwords to things, and those default passwords are remarkably insecure as it is, that’s a thing. Equally disturbing is that passwords like “Jesus” actually exist and don’t cause impressive amounts of damage to the folks what use them. My personal favourite on that list is “welcome”. Why? No, as in, why in the hell? As a password, even if it’s an absolutely brainless password, that doesn’t make sense. As in any. As in at all. As in please, just stop doing anything computer right now, and go back to pen and paper. Typewriter, even. It’s safer. Plus I won’t have to fix you later.

    Related: If you use a thing I maintain and have a password remotely close to any of these, I’m probably gonna wanna have a conversation with you. Of course by the time I find this out you’ll probably be wanting to have a conversation with me about exactly how it is we’re gonna unbugger the crap somebody who got hold of your password buggered while you were too busy up in the weak sauce–which will make the conversation I want just that much easier to have. I like it when things work that way. Of course I like it even better when the passwords belonging to folks I fix don’t end up on one of these lists, but hey, you can’t have everything. Just remember to leave your user’s license with me when you’re done and we’ll all be fine. Or better yet, just change your bloody password.

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  • The first honest cable company. Or, hey–this sounds familiar.

    written by

    james

    I’m a bit of a sucker for snark. Okay, more than a bit. I’m especially a sucker for snark in the form of a Youtube video that just comes right out and, well, says what the folks I deal with on a somewhat regular basis don’t say (I’m looking at you, Rogers–and, to an extent, Bell). Hell, it’d probably be vaguely easier to stomach if these folks’d just come up and be honest with it. But, well, since there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening in about half a forever, I’ll content myself with replaying this video. If you’re going to do the same, you might want to make sure you’re at home and out of earshot of the little ones–there’s a bit of language. Readers of the RSS or email variety, you’ll have to flip on over to the site unfortunately. It’s Youtube, which means flash, which hates email/RSS. Sorry.

    Now tell me. Doesn’t this just wanna make you pick up the phone and have a friendly chat with your local internet/TV tech support? Yeah, me either.

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  • Did your internets grow a wednesday wabble? Here’s probably why.

    written by

    james

    What do you get when you take an ISP accused of being a spammer, the organization doing the accusing, the several security organizations defending the accuser, and one hell of an axe to grind? If you answered a wicked nifty cool DDoS attack, you get yourself a cookie. But since I have no cookies, you can settle for vodka. The attack in question started out just aimed at spamhaus, who manages an antispam blacklist for primarily mail trafick to prevent certain types of spam from hitting a mail server (disclosure: it’s one of the 4 I use, and use heavily). When a bunch of organizations jumped in to help Spamhaus minimise that attack, it escalated. The attack ended up aimed at the folks what provide a backbone to the internet (because someone’s going to ask, it’s explained better than I ever could).

    The long and short version is, if one of the connections that make up the backbone of the internet ever takes a dive, large chunks of the internet can potentially take that dive right behind it–it happens every once in a great while, usually because somebody cocked up. But sometimes, it can be triggered for any number of reasons. On Wednesday, it was denial of service time.

    Now, these things can typically handle a hell of a lot of trafick. They’d have to, considering pretty much any and all internet trafick eventually passes through them to get, well, anywhere. So you’d think they’d be pretty close to difficult to attack. And you’d be right, more or less–the attack from Wednesday measured at, well, about [youtube https://youtube.com/w/?v=f99PcP0aFNE], eh?

    So if you were growing an issue or two on Wednesday, it could have been your local technology. It could have been your ISP mucking something up. Or, it very likely could have been that someone really did just try and break the internets. I might actually be somewhat vaguely impressed–if the attempt at calculating that bandwidth bill didn’t just cause my brain to implode. I hope these folks had uncapped connections…

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  • A 3-strikes blog post for global 3-strikes copyright systems.

    written by

    james

    It never ceases to amaze me exactly how tightly folks will cling to the very same logic that blows up in their collective faces within about 6 months of it being deployed. Perhaps not entirely without some degree of amusement, you see it most often in the two worlds who could use a wake-up call the most. The entertainment world, and the political world. Between the two of them, they’ve managed to piece together a mamoth bad idea on a global scale–and one that could have been predicted to implode before it even got off the ground–in the form of a 3-strikes copyright policy (6 if you’re in the US). In keeping with the entertainment and political worlds’ tradition in this arena, my own 3 strikes system–3 epic failures anyone who used their brain could have seen coming.

    Strike 1: File who?

    I’ve mentioned it in passing before, but it gets its very own special mention here because, uh, this suddenly isn’t exactly a unique situation. Person happens to be the account holder, but may not necessarily be the most technical case on the block. They likely have the internet for email, Facebook, school and if they’re into that kinda thing and have a brain cell to spare, maybe a little Twitter, but that’s the extent of their internet usage. Not so much, perhaps, for that person’s roommates, but the laws as they stand now don’t really go for that kinda thing–you own the internets, therefore you get the nail. It results in, rather irritatingly if you’re the do your homework check your email go to bed type, needing to have the basic idea of file sharing explained to you before the industry tries a nd fails to sue the everloving pants off you. Win or lose, the New Zealand industry got what they wanted–regardless who did the sharing from where and when, the account holder they went after turned around and cancelled the account–thus probably creating a brand new issue for herself in the process where her education and the like’s concerned. But, hey, there’s no more of that nasty file sharing coming from that address now is there?

    Strike 2: Not our material? You’re still guilty!

    I enjoy laughing my ass off at the DMCA. Not so much at the folks what get slapped by it–I myself was indirectly and falsely slapped by it not all that long ago–but at a majority of the folks doing the slapping. And with the onset of the US’s 6 strikes policy, all it takes is someone sending you–or rather, your ISP–a DMCA notice (whether it’s an accurate one or not) for you to start heading down the path towards a very rocky internetting experience. The system they’re using to track, identify, process and send those notices for this 6 strikes system? Well, that would be the same system that became highly confused and decided that a mod for Guild Wars, a computer game, was actually a copy of at least one NBC TV show, none of which remotely resemble computer games or mods thereof. No info on whether or not this is court bound, but were this actually to fall under their 6 strikes system (and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t) the accusation may be all that’s necessary for the ISP to be required to start taking action. For TV shows that weren’t being shared and may not have even existed. Go copyright!

    Strike 3: Serving your country is not a defense.

    Back to New Zealand for strike 3, and perhaps the more ridiculous of the 3. Where at least the other 2 the argument, if shakey and pretty much unproveable, hadn’t completely entered the realm of being entirely out to lunch, this one left the ball park–and, arguably, the country. Again we have a multiple roommate situation–this one, they’re all in the millitary. The guy who’s name the account’s in, and thus the one who ended up fielding the accusation, was in Afghanistan during the time the industry’s precious copyrights were being violated. The others in the house were apparently deployed in various locations around New Zealand at any given time, so figuring out who did what and when was more than a little bit of an issue. But far be it for the industry to let a little detail like that get in the way. So when the account holder was back from Afghanistan, he had that to deal with. How did he deal with it? Well, see, the thing about serving in a permanent war zone–so I’m told–is you don’t really have a lot of time for stupid when you get back, what with getting used to the fact you’re no longer serving in a permanent war zone and all that junk. So rather than very likely have to drag it out in court, all for events that couldn’t be proved and couldn’t be connected to him by more than an IP address tied to him just based on lack of proximity alone, he paid up. And somewhere, in a press release yet to be written, he’s about to be added to the “file sharers we caught” list. And there just went getting shot at in defense of democracy as a legal defense against copyright.

    I’d love to be a fly on the wall in some of the rooms where conversations like these happen, if only because I can’t even guess at the mental and verbal backflipping that goes on to make anything remotely like this sound like something that doesn’t smell entirely of overdone crap on an underdone cracker. Somebody somewhere has to have spoken up and pointed out to these folks that maybe, just maybe, there’s a better option out there other than trying to kill a mosquito with a bazooka and hitting their own feet instead. But, hey, what do I know? I’m just one of those online folks the industry doesn’t wanna hear nothing about or from. Then again, maybe that’s their problem…

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