/me is now working as a “Junior System Engineer”, whatever that is supposed to mean… ;)
After succesfully avoiding anything even remotely resembling regular payed work for some years now, this feels pretty strange, but at least my job is all about open source business solutions (clustering, heartbeat, Nagios setups, etc.), the company desktops run Linux (Debian) and code I write is licensed under the GPL.
Setting Orange, Chaos 5, 3172 YOLD
22C3 is over since last Friday, but I needed some time to let everything sink in. Besides that I just came home from Germany this morning… Here’s a list of all the talks I saw:
Day 1:
Private Investigations
Understanding buffer overflow exploitations
Hacking CCTV
Hacking Data Retention
Bad TRIPs
We lost the war
VoIP Phreaking
Day 2:
AJAX Based Web Applications
Anonymous Data Broadcasting by Misuse of Satellite ISPs
Digital Identity and the Ghost in the Machine
Literarisches Code-Quartett
Day 3:
COMPLETE Hard Disk Encryption with FreeBSD
How to construct Utopia
The truth about Nanotechnology
Fnord Jahresrückblick
Hacker Jeoparday
Day 4:
A discussion about modern disk encryption systems
People:
berq, lippi and Manuel were really great company and we had a damn good time together! Thanks guys! :) teemow also was at the congress, and once again we had some interesting conversations. I’ve also met some fellow Gentoo devs, but unfortunately we didn’t talk that much. Maybe next year we once again should try to organize a more formal get-together. I’ve also met some nice people to play Go with, and although I still suck at this game, I really enjoyed playing it.
Misc:
Get rich, because using busses for long-distance travel sucks, at least if you want to sleep. Luckily our hostel (CityStay Berlin Mitte) did great in that regard, and I only can recommend this place to anyone looking for a clean and cheap accomodation in Berlin.
Conclusion:
22C3 definitely was good fun. I’ve seen interesting talks, met a lot of nice people and generally had a good time. However, I found the overall quality of the lectures not that impressive and I tried to express this sentiments via the feedback forms…
Prickle-Prickle, Chaos 4, 3172 YOLD
I haven’t blogged for quite some time now, so I decided I could at least entertain you with one of my semi-regular link dumps until I’m motivated enough to write a proper entry again…
Ruby
RadRails: From a rather recent mail on ruby-talk I learned about RadRails, an IDE for (who would’ve guessd) Ruby on Rails which was built using the Eclipse RCP. Unfortunately I didn’t have too much time to play with it yet, but so far it seems to be quite nice and if you’re into Rails you maybe should have a look at this project.
eigenclass: Recently RedHanded kept talking about Mauricio Fernandez’ new blog called “eigenclass”, which talks about a lot of really interesting and advanced Ruby stuff. Definitely an interesting read for every serious Ruby programmer and everyone who wants to become one.
try ruby!: As I found out on poignant-stiffs why is at it again, which means there’s something cool coming up. Despite not involving cartoon foxes or chunky bacon, try ruby is still a really neat project, giving you the opportunity to interactively test Ruby from within your web browser. There’s also a little tutorial, so this site may very well become the first stop to send Nubies to…
Disobey
The Hacktivist: Instead of summing up what the Hacktivist is all about, I’ll just give you the self-description of the project: “The Hacktivist is dedicated to examining the theory and practice of hacktivism and electronic civil disobedience while contributing to the evolution of hacktivism by promoting constructive debate, effective direct action, and creative solutions to complex problems in order to facilitate positive change.” – Involve yourself!
The World’s Most Populated Countries: Sometimes a new look on things helps changing your perspective in a positive way. That’s why it’s important to take a minute or two to think about this map of the Earth, where all the countries got resized in relation to their population.
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: This comes from an open letter to the Kansas school board: “ I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. […] Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him”. Ramen!
Relax
Unintentionally sexual comic book covers: Part 1: If you know The Best Page In The Universe you either love or hate Maddox. No matter to which group you belong, check out this collection of unintentionally sexual comic book covers and have a good laugh! (via hoodwink.d onslaught)
The Website Development Process: Learn everything important there is to know about the process of developing a professional website from platic figurines. (via BoingBoing)
Squidoo: The developers of Squidoo thought that “Everyone’s an expert on something”, so they decided to give all of us the opportunity to share our knowledge in the form of “lenses”. For all of you who are to lazy to look at the FAQ to find out what a lense is, here’s the answer: “ A lens is one person’s (lensmaster’s) view on a topic he cares about. More specifically, a lens is a single web page filled with information and links that point to other web pages, to continually updated RSS feeds, or to relevant advertising. It’s a place to start, not finish. ”. Interesting concept, and there are some pretty cool lenses already. (via teemow).
Setting Orange, The Aftermath 53, 3171 YOLD
You have nil shillings. You are a simple cleric, you have 10 more shillings to earn before you have proven your xpath/regexen charming skills on par with the druids. A real druid will check your work and pay you soon enough. – http://hoodwink.d/
But I’ve been working hard and tried to prove these druids that my xpath and regex skills are up to their standards. I have hopefully earned my first shilling and I’ve earned it with my very own site! :) So you hoodwinkers out there, feel free to leave your winks instead of regular comments from now on!
And don’t be afraid when you have nfc what I’m talking about, this link explains it all, so open your eyes and feel around…
Pungenday, The Aftermath 41, 3171 YOLD
If you know me, you also know how much I love food. I can’t think of many things which are better than spending a nice evening with friends in a restaurant, having a great dinner and an interesting conversation.
My favorite food definitely comes from East Asian cuisines, which may or may not have to do with the fact that I’ve lived in China for a while. It’s hard to choose between Chinese, Japanese or Korean food, because all of these countries have great dishes: Gongbao jiding anyone? Or do you prefer some Yakitori? Or maybe have some Bulgogi…
Now that we’ve established that East Asian food is just great, it’s time to talk about another country’s great cuisine: Turkey! Yep, I just love Turkish food! Come on, they have Döner Kebab, Dürüm Kebab, Lahmacun (a kind of pizza), cacik, Köfte (delicious meatballs), Dolma, Börek and lots of other great stuff. And don’t even get me started on the desserts… Baklava and Helva, followed by some nice Turkish coffee. And I haven’t even talked about Ayran and all the other great Turkish food and drinks that come to my mind… Luckily enough Austria (and to an even larger extent Germany) has lots of Turkish fast-food joints and restaurants, so I just can go and get me one of my favorite dishes whenever I feel like it. :) BTW: Berg, if you’re reading this, invite me for dinner and cook some great Turkish food… ;)
To finish off this topic I’ll give you some links to a type of food which is almost too good to really be true, namely the Uighur cuisine, which combines elements from Chinese, Turkish and Arabic food: Uighur Food, The Uighurs – Cuisine and Xinjiang-Style Cuisine.
Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 39, 3171 YOLD
Remember the band Frankie Goes To Hollywood? That’s good, but actually they have nothing to do with this blog entry, except for one thing: they’ve once recorded a song called “Relax” and that’s what I finally managed to do today! :)
After feeling pretty burned out recently, my girlfriend and me decided to spend an evening at the spa. We haven’t done this for ages, but it was exactly what I needed to get my head free again. When we arrived there I thought I’m going to mostly swim lanes, but then I decided that I do enough of those at my weekly waterpolo training… That’s why in the end we opted for a wellness program, including water massage, sauna and other nice things.
To make a long story short: I’m really relaxed and feel more motivated again, so the whole thing really was worth the 10 Euro it cost me.
Setting Orange, The Aftermath 38, 3171 YOLD
While my girlfriend was visiting her sister in Rotterdam, I finally set up her notebook to dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. Before you think bad of me: I didn’t sneakily do this without her knowing, but instead because she once mentioned that she’d like to try out another OS.
Now you may wonder why I chose Ubuntu over Gentoo, but I’m afraid the answer is rather pragmatic and uninspired: I had a magazine CD of the current release, so I dind’t have to download an ISO. Also installation is fast and painless and there are lots of nice HOWTOs. Besides that I’ve aleady used Ubuntu to convert one of my non-techy friends to Linux and it has worked pretty good. To sum it up: I think Ubuntu is a decent distro, but I maybe wouldn’t use it on one of my own boxes.
Back to the original topic: I’m really curious to see how well my girlfriend will get along with her new operating system… So far it seems she’ll have a smooth transition. There are free alternatives for all the programs she uses on a regular basis and I found a nice explanation of how to share Firefox and Thunderbird profiles on a dual boot system (the link doesn’t contain anything surprising, but it’s a nice reference anyway). Additionally I’m really curious to see how she will like GNOME and if she finds it as user-friendly as I do.
Boomtime, The Aftermath 35, 3171 YOLD
This week I finally had a little more time to work on Gentoo related things again, so I commited some overdue packages to the tree.
The action started on Tuesday, when I commited the 20+ ebuilds from ruby-gnome-0.14.1 (mostly version bumps plus a few new packages like ruby-gtkmozembed). Quite a lot of users have been waiting for this, as the previous version we had in the tree (0.12.0) didn’t play nicely with GTK+ 2.8/GNOME 2.12. This problems are now sorted, so that quite a few bugs could be closed and marked fixed. :)
And then George released Nitro 0.25.0 yesterday, which found its way into the tree only hours later. This has mainly to do with the fact that I already had everything in place from the 0.24.0 release, which I then never commited because George said that there soon will be a release focussed on bug fixes and code clean-up. Apparently this has worked out nicely, so go ahaed, emerge Nitro and play around with it, I’m sure you’ll like it.
In the evening we had our montly Viennese Gentoo users meetup, which as always was really funny. I came home pretty late and my head still hurts, but it definitely was among the most entertaining evenings in the last few weeks. Thanks guys!
Boomtime, The Aftermath 30, 3171 YOLD
I just wrote a really long text, keeping you up to date on what’s happening in citizen428 land. Then I accidently closed the tab and everything’s gone. I don’t feel like writing all this stuff again, so I just want to say that baby Jesus now is very sad, I’m a dull boy and the puppies are not safe anymore.
Sweetmorn, The Aftermath 29, 3171 YOLD
“The time has come to guarantee consumers certain basic rights in the digital world, and to tell them what they can do with their digital hardware/content. This is our message in this campaign.”
(via CARGAL)
Prickle-Prickle, The Aftermath 22, 3171 YOLD
