Michael Lissner

The UI for a KDE Python IDE is about the worst I have ever seen:

That's about 90 buttons.

I've been working on getting this post figured out for about five months. In this post, I am going to try to explain exactly how my backup works, and why. It's ridiculously complicated at times, but the detail is necessary on paper in some form or other.

For my backup system, I rely heavily on rsnapshot, which is a tool that uses rsync and some perl scripting to create snapshots of directories. Rsync is a pretty awesome tool. It functions like a simple copy/paste, except that it will check the destination directory of the paste and will only copy the necessary files. As such, it can be interrupted in the middle of a copy, and will be able to continue later where it left off. Perl is a scripting language that has been used with rsync to give it some extra power.

This power is the ability to perform incremental backups, which is to say that if I have 5GB of data that I backup 10 days in a row, it will only take up about 5GB of data, total. However, if I have 5GB of data today, an additional 5GB tomorrow, and another 5GB the day after, which I backup each day for ten days, it will only require a total of 5GB of space the first day, 10GB the second day, 15GB the third day, and no more space after that for the remaining 7 days.

This is important if you want to backup your data on a regular basis. Since I run a server, I have several things that I must backup. I back these up on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. The list includes:

• My laptop is backed up wirelessly to the server's hard drive
• The email server gets copied to an external USB drive (this includes all the Zimbra configuration files as well as thousands of emails)
• The web server gets backed up to the USB drive (this includes the Drupal installation and the MySQL database)
• Lots of configuration files for the servers go to the USB drive (i.e. the /etc/ directory)
• And finally, the backup configuration itself goes to the USB drive

Each of these backups presents some challenging difficulties. For the web server, it is challenging because it is backing up MySQL, Zimbra and Drupal. In order to do this, I have to coordinate the MySQL database dump so that when the Drupal backup is triggered, it will copy the MySQL information over to the USB drive along with the normal Drupal information. For Zimbra, the email server has to be stopped, backed up, and then started again, which means control of the email server has to be carefully scripted.

The laptop presents a challenge because it is the only thing that is backed up wirelessly, and in order to do so, the server must authenticate itself to the laptop before it is allowed to log in and make the copies. If that wasn't complicated enough, in addition, the laptop needs to be set up with a static IP address so that the server can find it to perform the backup. Finally, the laptop needs to be ON, and connected to the network when the server attempts the backup.

Once all of that is figured out logically, you have to authenticate the laptop to the server, create the scripts, backup configurations and cron files. I have attached some of these configuration files to this post, provided they don't reveal too much of my network topology.

One final challenge that had to be overcome was connecting the USB drive to the server in such a way that it would always be mounted in the same location. In addition, I learned that FAT32 doesn't support file system links, and so I had to format the USB drive as ext3.

As of today, it's about five months since I began this project, and I believe I can say that the backup happens flawlessly on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. There are a few things I'd like to change however:

• I'd like to get an email notification when a backup fails — Done - See comment below.
• I'd like to begin backing up /etc/ on my laptop — Done
• At one point, I was backing up a list of all the installed software on my system - it'd be nice to have that again — Done - I wrote a python script to do so
• The backup is unencrypted, so anybody can take the USB drive and have a heck of a lot of emails. Gotta fix that. — See the note below in the comments for details.

Files of Interest

1. rsnapshot configuration for my laptop
2. rsnapshot configuration for the Drupal server
3. rsnapshot configuration for the backup configuration files and the /etc directory
4. rsnapshot configuration for the Zimbra server
5. scripts to stop/start Zimbra
6. My cron file

All in all, this just goes to show that backing up is a very difficult thing to do properly and automatically. It's one thing if you have a desktop that backs up to a USB drive. It's another if you have a server and a laptop. Had I known how long this would take going into it, I'm not sure I would have figured it all out. How the average computer user is supposed to figure this out is beyond me.

On October 24, 1995, the Federal Networking Council met and decided that the "Internet" refers to the global information system that:

1. is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons;
2. is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and
3. provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.

Oh. Thanks for that.

C. William Steele
Director
National Eagle Scout Association
1325 West Walnut Hill Lane
P.O. Box 152079
Irving, TX 75015-2079

5 December 2008

Sometimes to be Silent is to Lie
– Miguel de Unamuno

Mr. Steele:

When I was four years old, I was a Tiger Scout. Later, I became a Cub Scout, and then a Webelos. When I was old enough, I became a Boy Scout. Over the next few years, I advanced in rank, became an Eagle Scout and achieved many Eagle Palms. I had over 100 merit badges, was the Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, went on the National Jamboree in Arlington, Virginia, and the International Jamboree in Chile.

I was what could be considered one hell of a Boy Scout. Today, with much bitterness and sadness, I give up the only remaining symbol of those parts of my life. Today, I return to you my Eagle Scout Badge, and in so doing, renounce and reject the prejudices and discriminative practices of the Boy Scouts of America.

When I was about 16, I learned that agnostics, atheists and gays would not be tolerated by the policies of the Boy Scouts. While it's true that as of 2000, the supreme court backs your (well-funded) position as a private organization to discriminate institutionally, that does not make it right. Each of these positions flies in the face of scouting elsewhere in the world, and each of them reinforces an environment in which people with different opinions are awarded different value. While it is true that Baden Powell said that “[no] man is much good unless he believes in God and obeys His laws,” we sometimes must reflect on the beliefs of our founders, and put them in the context of their day. When Baden Powell made this remark, women had not yet gained suffrage, Nazi Europe had yet to come and go, and apartheid had yet to be institutionalized, let alone dismantled. In short, it was a different time.

We must ask ourselves what are we doing today that our children will disdain. Today we live in a world where religious differences can be enlightening and can lead to greater understanding of ourselves and our peers. Yet in this world, religion can be used publicly as an accusation (Obama as Muslim), and defenses to such accusations need not defend the religion, only the man. We live in a world today where religious differences lead to war, terrorism, and deaths of thousands of people. We live in a world where an organization designed to create leaders out of boys discriminates based on religion and sexual preference. If we are not careful, our children and their children will not look kindly upon our time as one of freedom of opinion and religion, but rather as one of oppression, war, and discrimination.

Your organization has at its heart some of the greatest lessons I have learned during my lifetime, and it saddens me greatly to be forced to abandon it. I plan to have children one day, and it saddens me greatly that they will not have the Boy or Girl Scouts of America in their lives. Most of all though, it saddens me that a national organization would choose not to include a diversity of people and opinions.

Enclosed is my Eagle Scout badge, one of my more treasured possessions. I hope some day to get it back from you, and I hope someday that you will realize the error of your ways.

Sincerely,

Michael Lissner
Eagle Scout, '98

I noticed this year that the winter holiday advertising actually came before Halloween. I could be wrong, but didn't it used to be a faux pas to do this before Thanksgiving?

Oh well, this is a few days late, but I just wanted to mention that it's officially OK to roll out last year's music and crank up the commerce pressure machine.

I've spent Thanksgiving in the Deep South this year at my girlfriend's grandparent's house. It's been a great trip, but one thing about it keeps plaguing me.

We spent a couple of days in New Orleans, and one of the places I insisted upon seeing was the 9th Ward, where Katrina dealt some of the worst damage. I wanted to see if people were recovering, and how much the place had been fixed up since 2005 when the storm blew through.

What surprised me (aside from the markings) is that people are moving back into this area, rebuilding their houses, and generally, pouring money into the location. On the one hand, it makes sense since it's their home, but on the other, I can't help but think that somebody should stop this from happening. From what I've learned while here, the 9th Ward is an area of New Orleans that is going to flood if there is another hurricane Katrina...which there will be sooner or later. Considering that Katrina killed almost 2,000 people this seems rather unwise.

So, rather than moving back in, shouldn't we be cutting our losses right about now, finding somewhere for these people to live, and preventing another disaster? Or is my logic flawed?

I was walking to work a few months ago, enjoying the crisp summer morning air, and I came to a stop light that instructed me to wait to cross. It being a one-way street, I looked left, saw no cars for a block and a half, and casually walked across the road, against the traffic light's firm instruction. I continued walking for another third of a block, and then heard a siren blare behind me on the sidewalk.

Incredibly, I was getting pulled over (so to speak), by a motorcycle cop (now illegally riding on the sidewalk) for defying a traffic light while on foot. I was – and still am – in shock. I expressed my disbelief to the officer, "You're kidding right?" He was not. "You have better things to do with your time, right?" He did not. He told me a woeful tale of how he has to call parents in the middle of the night to tell them that their child had been hit while crossing the road. I informed him that I was in fact a professional walker that literally walked halfway across the continent, and that I was pretty much OK crossing the street. He insisted he was doing me a favor, and teaching me a lesson.

For the 20 minutes that I stalled the guy, I did my best to make him realize that what he was doing was a waste of time, good faith and resources. I realized then and I realize now that this is the minority position when being ticketed by the cops, and I don't think it helped me get out of the ticket. The whole time I was arguing with the guy though, I couldn't help but think about all the waste that is caused by meaningless laws. Jay walking. Full-stops at stop signs. Waiting at red lights at 3AM. The list goes on.

All of these things waste time, and don't have particularly good purposes. We live for only so long, and how much of our time is stuck waiting because of laws that take morality, judgment, and reason out of the picture? Clearly, there is room for improvement, but somehow cops feel comfortable (righteous?) about giving these kinds of tickets.

Ninety-three dollars later, and I've cleared my name of this heinous crime on humanity. Surely something is wrong though, when cops have nothing better to do than to give this kind of ticket. Can't we find better ways to use our resources?

According to Title 17, Chapter 5, section 504c2 of the US copyright law, if you get caught with music that you have downloaded illegally from the Internet, you can get charged up to $150,000 per infringement. I thought I would do a little experiment to see how much I would be in for if my entire collection were to be found to be illegal.

Let's do some math. I have 3,876 tracks, at $150,000 each. So if my entire collection were to be found illegal, that means it would cost me $581.4 million dollars — about .6 billion dollars.

OK, let's assume that I can live with that reality. It just seems odd that I could have bought those songs for $3,876 on amazon.com, or iTunes.

Something isn't quite right here. Also, did I mention that all US digital music sales are estimated to total $2.9B in 2007? That makes my music worth about 20% of the 2007 revenue.

I found a good quote by Mr. Rogers himself today. I knew I always liked this guy. Too bad he couldn't live forever. This quote is a bit dated, but the point is still good. It also helps to imagine his voice before reading this:

Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "Neighborhood" at hours when some children cannot use it. I think that it's a real service to families to be able to record such programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt that with the advent of all this new technology that allows people to tape the "Neighborhood" off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "Neighborhood" because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been "You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions." Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.

You tell them Mr. Rogers. You tell 'em.

What Happened?
Last night around midnight, we heard a crash...might have been more like a bang. I thought it sounded like a bucket of junk falling off a shelf. When we looked outside to see what the sound was, we saw a car on fire across the street. I immediately called 911 and reported it. I had a fire extinguisher, but they kindly urged me not to use it. Not sure if I would have if they hadn't. At that point, the fire was pretty small by comparison to the video, so I'm not totally insane.

When we first saw the car, the fire was only ON the top of the back of the car, which is what leads me to believe that the fire came from the outside, and that the bang was the impact of the molotov cocktail. Within a few minutes, the flame from the outside of the car had penetrated the gasoline tank, and gas was pouring onto the ground forming a flaming puddle. I believe the large explosion seen in the video is the gas tank getting hot enough to explode. This in turn led to the power lines melting and falling in a dramatic fashion onto the nearby Honda.

After about another two minutes, the fire department arrived and quickly put out the fire. It was fortunate that they arrived when they did because there is a large tree over the car that could have easily spread the fire to the neighboring buildings.

After another hour or so, the fire was out in both cars (it spread to the one next to it), and the electrical wire was neutralized. The news team came, but I didn't want to do an interview. Nevertheless though, I did give them my movie, and they tell me it aired on the 5-9 morning news.

Thoughts
I've been living here for about 4 years now. The hood has some issues which I've put some effort into trying to fix. Since living here, I've seen a guy chase another with a knife, I've cleaned up about 6 hypodermic needles, I learned of a bullet hole in a neighbor's window, and I've heard from my window a murder from about a block and a half away. Now I can add molotov cocktail to the list.

Some of these things I know about only because I'm involved in the neighborhood, and I can chalk up to things that most people would be blissfully ignorant of. Others, like the arson and the knife chase are hard to ignore.

I like living in Berkeley, and I like my living situation - good roommates, affordable rent, a nice house - but it's times like today when I have to reflect on why I am living across the street from a drug dealer, and if it's really safe and practical for me and for others. My usual policy is to mind my own business, and they'll leave me alone, which is quite true, but still, exploding cars are hard to ignore.

For years I have been telling friends that it's safe to come here, that their car will be OK, and not to worry, that I have been fine for years. I'm still fine, but I think it might be a harder sale these days. I just hope things get better, not worse.

I'm guessing it was a Molotov cocktail. More details to come tomorrow.

It's important to have perspective these days. Times are changing, you know, and it can be hard to keep track of how things used to be. In that vein, I found an interesting quote from 1978:

Children who begin school today have probably listened to more music than their great grandparents heard in their entire lives.

It's pretty hard to imagine music as such a treat, since I listen to it pretty much every day.

This also reminds me of the Stravinky's Rite of Spring, which was so raucous that it caused riots. These days people get offended by rap, punk and video games (oh my!), and claim that they make children into little ne'er-do-wells.

Riots though? I can't imagine music causing riots ever again.

From Winning the Oil Endgame (free login required):

The average new U.S. light vehicle in 2003 had 24% more weight, 93% more horsepower, and 29% faster 0–60-mph time than in 1981, but only 1% more miles per gallon. If 1981 performance had instead stayed constant, light vehicles would have become 33% more efficient

It's not a bad read, but it is 300+ pages of dense work.

We're just about to the line here with the election, and I, for one, am really looking forward to a phone that stops ringing, to my mail carrier's back feeling better, and to my inbox devoid of political emails.

Really, things have gotten out of control. In an article by the AP today, the Republicans said that they were going to:

"...send out over 200 million pieces of mail and have over a quarter of a billion contacts, counting the mail, the phones and the door knocks,"

According to the 2000 census, there are about 227 million people in the US over the age 18. What that means is that if ONLY the republican party ONLY contacted me regarding the presidential race, they would still do so more than one time.

Unfortunately, both parties contact me at all levels of government from city to county to state to federal. And they both do it for each candidate, and every measure. Often they do it more than once.

Are there any numbers totalling the cost of elections nationwide? I'd be interested in seeing such a thing. What else could we buy with that amount of money?

I stumbled across some incredible maps yesterday while looking at some maps of the status of the American election.

These maps use the Gastner and Newman algorithm (don't ask me for details) to stretch a map to make sizes of countries correspond with some datum of interest. Generally, we study geography as a separate topic from useful stats, but these pictures show which countries are really important, and which might be candidates for less emphasis.

For example, we can take the map of the world, and stretch it so that we can see where the population of the world is located:

Or we can analyze where the highest rates of HIV/AIDS can be found:

Or total spending on health care (no surprises here):

Pretty interesting stuff. This link includes more of these, and also software for making them yourself.

I joined a yahoo group the other day, and I noticed that when Yahoo! shows my member information, it says I am three years younger than I am. "No problem" I thought to myself, "I'll just edit my information, surely I put in the wrong birthday."

I went into the member section, and (after giving them my password for the second time in two minutes) found where my birthday was listed as "on file." I clicked the edit button for that section, and in the resulting page, it again said that my birthday was "on file." It did not give me a way to change it.

Wondering how to change it, I decided to try the help tool. I searched for "change birthday," which gave me the response:

Q: Why can't I change my birthdate, and why does it say, "on file"?
A: We use your birthdate as a security measure in case you forget your password. We would not be able to do so if you were able to change it.

Great. Good work guys.

In Ubuntu Hardy Heron there is a new printer driver that will print a webpage as a PDF file. It's pretty useful, but unfortunately it's set to print the page as post script format by default. While I appreciate post script, it's not that compatible for other people, so I usually want to make PDF documents instead.

To change that setting to PDF, navigate in Firefox to about:config, and search for the setting called "print.print_to_filename". Double click on it, and change the value to a more useful name than mozilla.ps, and change the extension to .pdf. I changed the setting to "Printed Page.pdf"

From there you should be all set.

Now, if anybody can figure out how to make the title of the webpage populate for the name of the saved file, we'll be all set.

I use Evolution as my mail reader, and I like it. It has a lot of good features including a calendar, address book, memos and mail, as well as a number of others. One problem though is that it gets caught up when processing mail, and sometimes just won't come back.

The other problem is that it has several helper apps that are behind the scenes making things work properly, so if you try to just kill the application itself, those will still be running and your problem may not be solved.

My solution was to write a short script to kill all of Evolution and its helper apps. Hope this helps somebody else someday:

% more bin/evokill 
#!/bin/bash
 
ps aux | grep evolution
kill `ps aux | grep evolution | awk -F' ' '{print $2}'`

There is this trend that seems to be popping up everywhere of using radar charts such as this one:

For the record people, these are bad. They imply that there is some circular relationship about your data points. They are line graphs made into a circle. If you want to indicate the volume under a curve, make a line graph, fill the area under your curve, and then consider it done. Don't use these unless your data points progress from A → B → C and then back to A.

Please?

EDIT: I should add - don't use line graphs for things that don't progress from A to B to C either. For those things, use bar graphs, or column graphs.

I have this problem when I am listening to music that I almost never choose artists whose name starts with anything after the letter D. When I am browsing for music, I just never get that far in the list. For some time, I've wondered if this is my fault, or if I just have more music in the front of my collection.

The time came to do a little stats work and figure out why this is. Here are the results.

While there is a strong predominance of the letters A-E, there is also one in the P-T range. This leads me to believe that I should hunt for music in that area more often.

While I expected A-E to come out ahead, who would have thought that B would have more than 80 artists, almost twice the second most common letter?

So, what conclusions does this lead to? One: That I need to look at my music beyond the letter D. Two: That B is a very popular letter.

For those wondering about their own music collection, if you browse to your music folder and run the following, it will tell you how many artists starting with that letter you have. For the example below, it tells me I have 30 artists with the letter 'A'.

ls Music | grep -i ^a | wc -l