The Live CD Web Server Project (Ongoing Series - Part I)

Imagine burning a CD with your latest and greatest in web sites, putting it into the computer’s CD drive, turning on, and magically you have your web server running? No installation, no configuration, no login – no viruses, no persistent hacking, no version conflicts? The idea came to me when running a large computer cluster in a three-tier application. The front end web servers were always the worst problem: they handled all the load, they handled the majority of attacks, they were the entry point for vulnerabilities and denial-of-service abuses. Continue reading

Creating an Encrypted Subversion Repository on Linux

Why? I have my source code on a server in the cloud. That makes perfect sense – I want to have my code accessible from everywhere, even if the only person accessing the repository is my own self. Access is secured using SSH with PKI – only whoever has the private key can access the system, no passwords allowed. While I feel pretty secure about access, it bugs me that the source code is not encrypted at rest. Continue reading

The 10 Most Common Mistakes by Tech Job Interviewees (and How to Work Around Them)

The job market is very tight and even if you are the smartest guy around, with tons of experience, and no salary requirements to speak of, you might find it a tad difficult to find a new position. That’s particularly true for those that are just starting out, or who have been out of the game for a while. Unless someone is actively pushing your name somewhere, you’ll see it’s harder and harder to get that job landed. Continue reading

Femininity - the Missing Half of Science and Technology?

I am a man, in the most stereotypical way imaginable. I suffer from all the symptoms of the condition – the hair slowly starting to grow where it shouldn’t, the quick temper ready to flare up for virtually no reason, but most of all for the way I think. You could possibly try to call me sexist because of saying this, but there seem to be marked differences in the way the male and the female brains work. Continue reading

Surfing as a Sport?

I recall the one time I took the train to get from L.A. to San Diego. It was a very pleasant ride along the Southern California coast line, touching surf break upon surf break. Everywhere I’d see people getting into their black wetsuits by the trunks of their cars and running happy towards the waves. There, they’d join a multitude even on a workday morning, and all of them would bob on the waves, sitting on the board bored until a good wave would come. Continue reading

The YouTube Conspiracy in Abby/CClive

There is a command line utility available on all Ubuntu derivatives called cclive. If you install it (sudo apt-get install cclive), you can give it a YouTube URL and it will download the video on it. I love using it for backup purposes – I upload a video from the camera, perform all my changes on YouTube, and then cclive the outcome for posterity. Just in case YouTube “forgets” about my latest cam ride. Continue reading

BPM Detection in Linux

Doing a lot of cardio workouts, it is really good to have music that beats to your rhythm. The pulsating sound gives you energy and pace, both excellent ways to make a good workout, great, and to make time pass faster. When I get new music on my player (a Sansa Clip+ – the almost perfect player for a Sporty Spice) life is good. An hour of running is gone before I even know it, and when I look at the calorie count, I feel like Michael Phelps freshly crowned with Olympic gold. Continue reading

The Rise and Fall of Internet Browsers

It amazes me how, since the very inception, Internet Browsers have been subject to periodic meteoric rise and subsequent fall. They do so a lot more than other pieces of software, like operating systems or word processors. It seems people are much more willing to throw out their browsers than virtually any other kind of software. It all started with the venerable grandfather of them all, Mozilla Navigator. Marc Andreesen, the ur-type of the “smart kid with an idea brighter than even he thinks it is who goes on to think he’s the smartest person on the planet because he’s been lucky with his idea”, and his team created the software and threw it out. Continue reading

Solar-friendly Gadgets

Living in San Diego, you spend a lot of time at the beach. There, it’s a tragedy to have no outlets to recharge things, while you have a lot of sun available. Ideally, you would use a solar charger to recharge all your devices while they are being used. There are lots of chargers on the market. Solio makes very popular ones, but they are by far not the only vendor. Continue reading

The Green Revolution

I read an article yesterday about how chefs are moving away from big meat/protein portions and into vegetables more and more. The reasoning is very chef-y: big hunks of meat are boring. There really isn’t much you can do with meat but marinade it, and no matter what you do, it ends up filling before you want to be filled. So they serve smaller portions, focus more on the sides, and turn their menus around. Continue reading