Planet Blinkenshell

Snirt Racing! Nothing like going Green!

2010-03-02T04:09:32+00:00

We had company over the weekend. We were meeting new people all over the place, mainly letting them stay in our house. It was fun. It was a bit surreal.

On Sunday, after meeting we all went to watch the “Snirt” races. It is a place where the air is filled with smells of gasoline, exhaust and mud. It is car racing that is only done in the winter. They call it “Snirt” because it is a race track of Snow and dirt. It was started by one of the families that have been around this area for a long so that the kids could learn how to drive. It has turned into a small event every Sunday for anyone who wants to race, watch or ride along in a car. If you know me well enough, you know I was in one of those cars.

The track was so muddy there were times when you could not see out of the car at all. Some cars didn’t have wipers. Instead they put to use the plastic dangling from what used to be their driver’s side window to use by hanging their head out when it was safe. There was a lot of crashing going on. Each hit was like being in a mild accident. At one point, Dave, my driver and I were in the lead only to be rear ended, spun out and side swiped by two cars… it felt like two cars anyway. We couldn’t see out of any window after all of the mud had splashed up on the car while spinning.

In these races you strip the car of any luxury features, such as rear-view mirrors and ignition switches, to make the car lighter. Another needless feature: coolant. After each race M, number 7/8^ths, would cool his car down by putting snow on the engine and recharge the battery by using his tow truck. His car also lacked an alternator.

Anyone who visits in the winter must come along for a ride. Helmets on of course.

Many Ear Rumbling Teravibes

2010-02-25T04:55:22+00:00

Sanctuary pudding. Tango fortresses fortify my clandestine sanctuary. Fortification saves your cigars from gravy. Yeah. You save it from warm liquids which quickly cool. Camel back spiders. Camel spiders quench. Numb your limb and eat it. I am telling you. Numb your limb and eat it. Get me my Smith Corona so I can type a real thing without being becoming zronpurux. A meticulous lobotomy is what they will give me after a typing of any lengthy proportion.

I know Robins of sons exist. I know Ashes of Von exist. I know Norra of Anders exist. I know Raveling of Ravels exist. I know Cases of Torms. I know something about opening windows and doors. There is a will among Wilks. I also know how to move quietly, creep across creepy wood floors. I’d like to know the first among us. Is there one? Is there a Primus? Crap. There is a lot of insanity within a few socketoweea songs! BOOM! There was a bomb (home made) that went off in the distance. Don’t worry, you will not die. It has ended. Just one reminder. Listen to that Miscellaneous Debris or you will never experience vibrations that can occur within one half hour.

Don’t Die!

P.S. Thank You, Avon

Give me a Morphsuit

2010-02-12T16:21:36+00:00

One thing I would really like and need is a Morphsuit. Ever since I knew how green-screening worked, I have wanted one for using with green-screens and as part of my wardrobe.

It seems like everyone wants to get out on a trip. The other day, I was with a big car group. There were three families in the car, besides me. They had all moved out of the state to nice warm places and moved back! The women all talked about how crazy they were for doing it. Then everyone turned their focus on me and called me crazy for never leaving. They said I’m young and full of vigor, that I should have moved somewhere warm since I could. They told me they were happy to have Rach and me in the Hall, despite the fact that we were crazy for staying in this frigid state.

There is one less suit I can wear to meetings until I sew the button back on the pants. I sat down and it shot off inside my jacket like a bouncy ball in a box. What shock! One thing that has been getting me out and exercising is Geocaching. It involves GPS and hidden "treaure." Well, it is moreso the thrill of the hunt. It is like a worldwide hide and seek game where you hide containers with nearly worthless loot in them. It is a good way to get out and explore places you might not otherwise go. I have gone for a few hikes this winter to Geocache. At the begnining of the winter I went out into the middle of a lake and started a fire. It was great.

In the picture on the left (click to enlarge) I was the only one who had been out there since it snowed. There were no tracks on the lake or trail when I went out. After assessing the lake, I determined where the center of the lake was, the best I could. There was a wealth of dry wood around, so I dragged out as much as I could and burned it all, had some coffee and a sandwich. Then after a while had some brandy. There must be some way of convincing Rach to join me on these types of expeditions.

If anyone is up for winter camping let me know. KC and I are definitely going to give it a shot sometime soon it will be fun. We will fish, eat, have a fire, maybe have a few drinks and camp out like the olden days… except we will have high quality synthetic materials to keep us warm and probably use a lighter to start the fire… drive to the location in a heated car and sleep in the frozen woods for no reason but to have fun.

So Many Funny Videos Out There

2010-02-06T02:28:04+00:00

Terribly Delightful… isn’t it?

2010-01-30T03:22:02+00:00

Terrible Women of South America at 45 speed… double time!

terribleWomen45.mp3 (this is for your listening)

Terribly delightful… isn’t it?

Utan början, inget slut

2010-01-18T21:19:41+00:00

Hur formulerar man sig för att någon överhuvudtaget ska finna minsta intresse att läsa vad en – för de flesta – vilt främmande person gör under veckorna, var personen jobbar, maten personen förtär eller smärtan personen genomlider när denne sparkat emot byrån? Något enkelt svar finns inte, tur är väl det. Hur skulle annars världen se ut om man var dag börjar morgonen med att läsa igenom ett 100-tal bloggar där vi får insikt i vad dessa människor gjort föregående dag. Dagen rinner ut i sand innan man hunnit lämna sin säkra plats framför datorn och tagit klivit ut i den riktiga välden.

Jag ska därför inte göra som så många andra, sätta upp ett mål som inte gynnar mig själv. För vad får jag ut av att Gunnar sitter hemma och läser vad jag hittat på i helgen? Ingenting. Därför bloggar jag för min egen skull, av den enkla anledning att det ibland behövs en rensning och rannsakning bland sina tankar. Detta var något jag fann fungerade då jag skrev min förra blogg och fick ner minnen, tankar och problem i skrift, för min skull men även för att hjälpa likasinnade med liknande situationer.

Skulle nu mitt liv intressera någon annan delar jag gärna med mig av mina upplevelser. Om inte så kan jag själv alltid blicka tillbaks och minnas, en typ av tidslinje över mitt liv. Minnen är något som ska uppskattas. Vi må tycka att vissa minnen vi har inte är av större vikt, då vi gjort bort oss, gjort något vi djupt ångrar eller helt enkelt genomlevt något vi helst skulle vilja glömma. Detta är något vi får leva med. Istället för att gå och må dåligt över dessa minnen får vi bejaka dem och lära oss av våra misstag. Det är då vi växer som människor.

Nu ska jag inte vara långrandig utan runda av. Denna blogg kommer helt enkelt finnas för mig själv och ha som mål att bli en typ av minnesbok för att jag någon gång i framtiden ska kunna blicka tillbaks, läsa om hur jag åt falukorv tre dagar i veckan, levde som fattig student på nudlar, inredde min nya lägenhet, bytte jobb med mera. Vill du sedan dela mina känslor, tankar och upplevelser är du välkommen att göra så.

En blogg utan bilder kan framstå som tråkig. Därför har jag som mål att visa en relevant bild till varje inlägg. Med min syn på relevans blir det därför en nytagen bild på mig själv till detta första inlägg.

Present and Past, Plogshoff and Pargosh

2010-01-17T02:01:32+00:00

Been Geocaching Lately. That is some fun stuff. You have probably been feet away from one several times. People hide things in the most obscure places, yet right in the normal walking path of hundreds of people. I have been by several and now that I know of them I got the GPS coordinates and opened them!

Wow, Tool really has some beautiful music. The Tool String Tribute album I have is amazing. I have not listened to the actual band in some time though.

UN-IMPORTANT MEMORIES THAT HAVE RECENTLY FLASHED

Typing with I Seek You (ICQ) with friends.
Seeing Tool, live, twice! Couple of the greatest shows ever.
Seeing Primus, Colonel Claypools Bucket of Bernie Brains, two separate occasions. Awesome! Phantasm!
Climbing very high towers, just for the view.

On a more serious note, there is news to declare! It is probably best that you read it for yourself. Since these things disappear from the internet, I have copied the article. You may read it below:

The City of Solana Beach emergency crews were called to respond to a possible shark attack at approximately 7 a.m. this morning. Both Fire and Lifeguard Rescue Services arrived at Tide Park to assist a 66-year-old male victim, Dr. David Martin, who was pulled from the surf by fellow swimmers and transported to Fletcher Cove Park Lifeguard station for emergency treatment…

Could this be, yet another, result of the terror that the Terrible Women of South America have brought upon us?

Working on the new server

2010-01-01T23:08:37+00:00

I’m currently working on installing software on the new server. I’ve got the virtualization software installed and a couple of VMs running now.

The setup is based on VMware ESXi booting off a USB-stick. I’ve then allocated almost all space on the two harddrives to a VM running Nexenta (OpenSolaris kernel with GNU userland). I’ve then configured this space for a ZFS mirror (RAID 1), and shared it via NFS. VMware ESXi then mounts this NFS share and uses it as a “datastore” (place to store the virtual harddrives) for the other VMs. I will also make NFS shares for things like home directories for all the users.

I’ve also got the router/firewall VM up and runnig with the lastest OpenBSD release. I’ve just started working on the Blinkenshell-specific VMs now, thus far I’ve got a Gentoo instance with Grsecurity up and running (which will replace titan). I’ve also setup a domain controller which will be running OpenLDAP and MIT Kerberos for handling the user and password database. This will allow for the user database to be accessed from multiple servers, which was not possible before. I will probably set up a separate servers for mail and web services, and use Kerberos/LDAP and NFS for centralized user database and storage.

I have figured out how I want most things setup now, but there are a couple of big pieces left. I havn’t decided how to configure the webserver yet, though I have a couple of ideas I will try out. There’s also the signup-program, and how the different accounts will integrate. There is an opportunity to integrate more accounts into the LDAP directory now, but I’m not so sure I want different types of accounts (signup, ssh, mail etc) to share the same password, especially not passwords you usually store in configuration files (mysql, irc).

There is lots of work to be done still, and I don’t think this new server is going to be ready for at least a couple of months. How long it’s going to take depends a bit on how I decide to do things, if I’m going to rewrite parts of the signup-program and integrate it to LDAP it’s going to take a while longer for example.

So to sum it up, work is in progress, but it’s going to be a while longer. But when it’s all done Blinkenshell will be ready for many more years as the best shell provider on the net!

Elk River… Me Driving… My Bro on Camera

2009-12-28T14:58:03+00:00

God Jul

2009-12-24T13:13:33+00:00

Nytt år, nya presenter men samma gamla Kalle Anka på julafton. Traditionen följer sitt stadiga mönster, man vågar inte bryta loss och tur är väl det. Vi finner oss i att fira en modifierad tradition där många inte vet om bakgrunden till firandet. Men vad gör väl det? Så länge man får sin julgröt, julskinka, julmust och sina julklappar.

Av någon anledning känns det inte som julafton än, tvivlar även på om det verkligen är december. Mycket beroende på klimatet men annat spelar också in. Ny levnadssituation sen en tid tillbaks, fast jobb och andra småsaker. Allt faller säkerligen på plats när man bänkar sig kl 15.00 framför tv:n för att titta på Kalle Ankas jul. När man sitter där bland familj och släkt hemma hos mormor, väntar på presentutdelningen och äter gott. Längtan är stor.

Nu vill jag passa på att önska er alla en fröjdefull jul. Nästa år vet man aldrig hur julen kommer firas så ta tillvara på den tid ni har nu. Blicka framåt men lev i nuet!

God Jul!

ld-preload-reverse

2009-12-22T03:27:17+00:00

I though I would post this piece of code since it has been laying around for quite a while.

ld-preload-reverse is a LD_PRELOAD library that overrides the most common
functions for writing text to a terminal, and reverses their output:

Looks like this:

tobbez@sagiri ~/dev/ld-preload-reverse $ LD_PRELOAD=./ld-preload-reverse.so bash
 $ esrever-daolerp-dl/ved/~ irigas@zebbotls
GNIYPOC  elifekaM  EMDAER  c.esrever-daolerp-dl  os.esrever-daolerp-dl
 $ esrever-daolerp-dl/ved/~ irigas@zebbotcat Ma elifek
os.esrever-daolerp-dl :lla

c.esrever-daolerp-dl :os.esrever-daolerp-dl
c.esrever-daolerp-dl os.esrever-daolerp-dl o- derahs- CIPf- ldl- llaW- ccg

:naelc YNOHP.
os.esrever-daolerp-dl f- mr
 $ esrever-daolerp-dl/ved/~ irigas@zebbottixe

It’s licensed under the Eiffel Forum License 2, and you can find the code here.

Eye Lookers Get Stuff in em!

2009-12-18T04:30:20+00:00

These are several pictures that I have been planning on posting.

Some of these pictures were a pixilated in certain spots because we were in the middle of a big city and had to carry protection. Just want to make sure it didn’t offend anyone that came across this baby.

We cannot be blamed for what we do when under the influence of Aphex Twin!

Google Wave

2009-12-14T04:40:31+00:00

I finally activated my Google Wave account. If anyone out there has one add me! My address is flipjargendy {at} googlewave.com.

If you think you would use Wave, let me know. The only way you can sign up is if you are invited. Just like when Gmail started, it is still in testing. So, just like the person before me and the one before him, I’ll have anyone who wants an invite leave a comment to this post with your email address encoded in Base64. I like that idea because that way we aren’t giving bots email addresses to suck up and spam… and Base64 is so cool.

There are some awesome pictures Rach and I came across some awesome pictures which will definitely be posted on my next post. These photos are so great! The only reason I am not posting them is because of who is around me at the moment.

Shotguns, Fires in Snow and Crispy Flesh from Freezing Winds

2009-12-12T02:44:03+00:00

» More Ways to have Fun in the Woods
    ”Would you like to go Partridge hunting this Sunday?” they asked me. My first thought,”I love meat, why not?” So I told them yes! Then I told them,”I have never shot a shotgun.”
    A few days later Tim and I are in the woods. I am wearing a, borrowed, blaze orange hat and carrying a side-by-side (double barrel) shotgun loaded with two twelve gauge shells. My first thought,”Never thought I’d be doing this.”
    ”Now, when I shoot will it kick a lot? I mean, I don’t want to see a bird and not know what to expect when I shoot at it as its flying away.” I told him.
    He said,”See that stump over there, just line up the bead [on the end of the barrel] with the stump and you’ll shoot it!”
    After a little hesitation, being sure there was nothing living near my path of fire, I pulled the trigger and fired one of the shells. At the very moment I pulled the trigger the gun pushed into my shoulder and BB’s scattered on and around the stump. It felt good against my shoulder, like an expedited massage.
    I didn’t see one bird, or hear one fly off. The population is pretty low the past two years, I am told. Next time I go, hopefully I can bring home some tasty food.

» Winter in the Boundary Waters
Over the weekend Rachel and I went to Ely, Minnesota to stay at a cabin with Steve & Aimee. It was the first real snow of the year. There was about six inches of snow on the ground in Ely. When we left home there was no snow on the ground. It was as if we travelled thousands of miles. The woods do not look like skeletons when you go that for north in Minnesota. They are so full of different types of pine and spruce trees that make up such a dense forest, it is thicker and more alive then the forests are in the lower north of the state.
Steve and I ended up hiking about 4 miles one day. We were about 6 miles from that Canadian border. We ate our lunch around a fire we made from birch bark and whatever dry wood we could find. It feels amazing to hike in such cold temperatures. It was so cold while we were there that the lakes, which were open the day before froze over completely. It was, at most, in the single digits during the day. The way your body feels when you stay warm just from moving in those temperatures is amazing. There is nothing like it.
Throughout the weekend I took pictures. My next post will contain those pictures.

lighttpd rewrite rules for Symphony CMS

2009-12-05T16:46:08+00:00

For Symphony 2.0.6.

url.rewrite-once += ( "^/symphony/favicon.ico$" => "$0",
                      "^/symphony/symphony/(assets|content|lib|template)/.*$" => "$0",
                      "^/symphony/workspace/[^/]+/.*$" => "$0",
                      "^/symphony/image/(.+\.(jpg|gif|jpeg|png|bmp))$" => "/symphony/extensions/jit_image_manipulation/lib/image.php?param=$1",
                      "^/symphony/symphony/?(\?(.*))?$" => "/symphony/index.php?mode=administration&$2",
                      "^/symphony/symphony(/(.*/?))?(\?(.*))?$" => "/symphony/index.php?symphony-page=$1&mode=administration&$4",
                      "^/symphony/([^?]*/?)(\?(.*))?$" => "/symphony/index.php?symphony-page=$1&$3" )

Replace the first occurrence of ’symphony’ on every line with the location of your Symphony installation.

Server pics

2009-12-01T21:19:01+00:00

I’ve got most of the parts for the new server now (only missing one cable), here are some pictures!

The chassi for the new server, “Fractal Define R2″.

Installed the motherboard, Supermicro X8SIE-LN4 and PSU.

Processor (Intel Xeon 3440) and memory (4x 2GB Kingston ECC DDR3).

Google wave nominations

2009-11-25T18:28:07+00:00

Seeing as I now have 19 nominations left from the second and third batch I received, I’ll offer the same thing as Ax0n over at H-I-R did: be among the first 19 to post your email address as base64 in the comments, and I’ll send you one.

Ink

2009-11-22T23:40:24+00:00

It is pretty much awesome. You should watch it if you haven’t already.

New Server Hardware Update

2009-11-13T17:09:11+00:00

The parts for the new server has been delayed for a while since the motherboard was not in yet (new item from the manufacturer), but I’ve now got confirmation that the parts will ship by the end of next week. Unfortunately, I’m going to be away the entire week after that building the network at Dreamhack Winter 2009, so I’m not going to have time to start putting it together until early December sometime. I will also need some time testing the server and trying out software etc, but if everything works out alright hopefully the server will be up by the end of December. I’ll put some pictures up when I get the hardware, can’t wait!

Twitter

2009-11-13T12:17:05+00:00

Det var ett bra tag sedan jag fann twitter.com. Hur kommer jag ej ihåg. Vad jag skulle använda det till var oklart. Men ett konto skapades. Försök gjordes för att få mina vänner att använda twitter, tyvärr var det ingen som nappade.

Nu har det gått ett och ett halvt år och 1174 tweets har publicerats sedan mitt konto skapades. Nu har jag funnit ett syfte med twitter. Många kommer ej förstå hur man kan värdera en så enkel men underbart värdefull tjänst som twitter högre än exempelvis facebook. De har helt enkelt missat tjusningen med twitter.

Twitter har kapacitet att bli en utmanare till Google när det gäller sökningar. Att det tar Google allt från några minuter upp till flera dagar att indexera sidor på nätet är ett faktum. Vill man därför hitta den absolut senaste och hetaste nyheten är det därav lättare att följa rätt användare på twitter eller göra en sökning på twitter.

Anledningen till detta inlägg var att presentera en ny funktion som har uppenbarat sig på xintron.se. Testa genom ett litet klick på den blåa fågeln i menyn.

Som avslutning: följ mig på twitter ;)

Rhaphidophoridae… Camel Crickets! What!

2009-11-03T02:01:49+00:00

Found a crazy looking bug in our basement today. It was a scary looking thing that can apparently jump several feet. Take a look at the pictures, they are so cool! Here’s more info you like this kind of stuff: Rhaphidophoridae. Whenever I come across a weird bug I always think to post it at BugGuide.net like my post which has the full size images: Beetle / Grasshopper looking bug! Never seen one before!. Enjoy the pictures… I hope!

Helg

2009-11-01T21:00:25+00:00

Helger må vara ett påfund som vi ej skulle klarat oss utan. Det är otroligt hur underbart det är att bara vara och inte göra någonting. Vara hemma, pyssla med några småsaker, städa, mysa med sambon och katten och se en bra film på tv.

Sen när söndagskvällen lider mot sitt slut börjar man känna fruktan för ytterliggare en vecka innan nästa stund i sin rogivande omgivning. Men denna jobbiga tanke på en hel veckas jobb och slit står man ut med, för man vet vad som väntar vid tunnelns slut, man vet att det är värt det.

Avslutar med ett citat från en låt som jag spelat en hel del på sistone. Passar även på att länka till min spotify-spellista där denna låt och andra liknande finnes.

There’s nothing here for me on this barren road
There’s no one here while the city sleeps
And all the shops are closed
Can’t help but think of the times I’ve had with you
Pictures and some memories will have to help me through, oh yeah
Avenged Sevenfold – Dear God

En nyformad rutin

2009-10-31T22:54:30+00:00

Det är dags igen. Efter att jag satt lite press på mig själv så blir det nu ett nytt inlägg. Att ventilera tankar och idéer är bra, så sägs det. Även då man inte har något speciellt att förtälja.

Det är konstigt hur vi människor så enkelt kan anpassa oss till nya miljöer. Det var blått en månad sedan jag och min tjej flyttade till en helt ny stad där varken jag eller sambon känner någon. Man gick till kontoret för första gången på måndagen, en rutin bildades. Vi blev stödhem åt en katt som döptes till Vim. Kringliggande affärer utforskades, bekantskaper skapades och allt på loppet inom en månad.

Man kan säga att det är skönt att nu ha en arbetsplats. En mer fast tidpunkt – även om jag själv bestämmer då jag börjar om dagarna – då man infinner sig på jobbet för att sedan på kvällen komma hem och koppla av. Framförallt förstår ens bekanta att man faktiskt har ett arbete till skillnad från när man jobbade hemifrån och de fick för sig att man kunde ta ledigt när som under dagen och skjuta upp arbetet.

Nog om arbetet. Ett projekt har påbörjats. En webbsida för allmänheten att bruka och dra nytta av skapas samtidigt som mina kunskaper och programmeringsspråks kunskaper vidgas. Det dröjer men förr eller senare blir det klart och med rätt marknadsföring kan man säkerligen få en extra inkomst vid sidan om.

Det är väl inte mer än rätt att avsluta detta inlägg med en vacker bild på katten som redan från dag ett följde mina fotspår.

Picture Raid!

2009-10-26T16:12:01+00:00

Well, here are some pictures I have been meaning to post for some time. They do not appear in any particular order, just the way Wordpress decided to order them. It is a pretty good mix of photos.

Ny destination

2009-10-13T20:51:04+00:00

Adressen är ändrad. Staden är ny. Livet börjar om, eller? Vissa saker är bestående som min underbara flickvän och mitt jobb. Dagarna kämpar sig förbi för att mynna ut i en efterlängtad helg.

Man ser fram emot helgerna. Än så länge har vi haft två helger i Malmö varav båda varit uppbokade. Ingen fritid med andra ord. Samma visa blir det nu till helgen. Dock ska väl ledigheten komma förr eller senare. Vissa saker är ur vägen som tur är. I stort sett allt är uppackat och lägenheten ser snart ut som vi vill. Även om jag och Therése har helt olika smak när det kommer till inredning – och även mycket annat – så tror jag nog att vi båda är nöjda med det vi lyckats åstadkomma än så länge.

En mysig nyhet är att efter de långa dagar på kontoret så kommer man hem till en söt sambo som numera har maten lagad och framdukat när man kommer hem. Man känner sig nästan lite illa till mods när man får allt serverat på detta vis och kan inte annat än att tacka och bocka och bjuda tillbaks på bästa tänkbara sätt.

På tal om nyheter så har en uppdatering skett här på bloggen. Då jag inte gillade det inbyggda galleriet så byggde jag ett eget. Lägger upp några bilder från nya lägenheten som ni kan kolla på och testa galleriet. Ett stort till Tom Svens som skapat ikonerna till galleriet.