New gallery. It might be moved soon, but for now it’s here: photo gallery

Some neat features, and it wasn’t too hard to set up. It even has a “setup wizard”.

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I was listening to KMFA on my way to the grocery store tonight, and I heard something that blew me away. It was the UT Saxophone ensemble playing an arrangement of Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in d minor. Now, that’s one of the most impressive pipe organ pieces that I can think of, and it was being played by a bunch of saxophonists. Wow. if you can find a recording of this, I encourage you to listen to it, and be amazed.

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Robert Heinlein (he’s got a new book coming out, you know) once said

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: “Of course it is none of my business but–” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don’t use excessive force in supplying such moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

I feel that there needs to be an extention to that rule for people who start sentences with “I know we have freedom of speech but–”. BUT WHAT, ASSHOLE?

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I’m really just doing this because it’s funny. I’m sitting here at work, bored out of my skull. I just finished reading The Makeshift miracle (a bargain at 99 cents through bitpass), and I thought “hey, it’d be funny if I started up the handheld and made a post.

Especially since I’m sitting 3 inches from a desktop machine that’d be 3 million times faster.

So here’s that post.

Which I wrote on (and posted from) my iPAQ.

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I know that at least one person who reads this page has considered running a mail server on his system. Now, here’s the problem; there’s basically two ways to do it. You can:

• Run the mail server on your main system, and hope you don’t have to shut down that often, or
• Run the mail server on a dedicated machine that just stays on all the time.

Now, I endorse method 2, since that’s what I do. But many people don’t have an extra computer lying around, so method 1 is better for them.

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I’ve got a new bookmark server. Ol’Bookmarks was OK, but it really didn’t act the way I wanted it to. So I’m trying out b. Yes, that period is part of the name. Pretentious, but still pretty cool. It’s all written in perl, and the bookmarks are stored in XML (well, XBEL) format.

The only drawback to switching to a new bookmark server is that irritating part where you have to get all of your old bookmarks into the new system. Let me tell you, I don’ think I’ll be switching bookmark servers again any time soon, unless the new one will accepts imports in XBEL format. It’s just too much work.

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You’ve heard of SMTP, I’m sure. It’s hard to use the internet without at least having heard the phrase once or twice, even if it’s when you’re jabbering away with tech support because you can’t send mail.

A recent Internet Draft, published about 2 weeks ago, proposes a new “AMTP” (“Authenticated Mail Transfer Protocol”). I read through the draft, it’s pretty neat stuff. I can only see a couple of (small) problems with it. First and foremost, the implementation described forces mail server administrators to work with a CA (certificate authority). This means giving money to someone for a signed X.509 certificate, so that you can establish a TLS connection with other AMTP servers. If the CAs decide to price these X.509 certificates high enough, it’ll basically kill the protocol. Secondly, it pretty much kills the home user who doesn’t wish to use his ISP’s mail server (like me) for whatever reason (i.e., they force you to use an Envelope-To encapsulation). Based on the specification in the Draft, all mail servers must have synchronized DNS and rDNS records: if mail.example.com’s A record is 10.10.10.14, then 10.10.10.14 must be a PTR for mail.example.com. This can cause problems with ISPs who won’t (or can’t) provide proper reverse DNS for their customers. It also has the (theoretical) possibility of causing problems with a sysadmin who didn’t have enough coffee; make a typo in a zone file, and your mail server suddenly won’t work.

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This is a real picture. Behold the . . . whatever.

-- UPDATE – It was photoshopped, and not real, so I pulled it. Looked cool, though.

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Central Texas Disc Golf Love is the premiere site for information about public disc golf courses in central Texas (Austin, San Marcos & surrounding areas). Aerial photos of the courses, with lots of digital photos of the actual tee box, fairway, and basket positions. Good stuff. If you’re a dgolfer in Austin, I recommend you check it out. Of course, if you’re a dgolfer in Austin, there’s probably no way you DON’T know about the site, either.

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So I just got back from playing a round of disc golf with my buddies Andy, Paul, and Nathan. Fun was had by all. This was the first time I’ve played disc golf since I was about 10, and I have to say I think this may become a regular thing. The only trick will be figuring out when I’m going to sleep; you’ll notice it’s after 1300 here in Austin. I’m usually at least 3 hours asleep by now, since I have to work tonight.

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