Geek, Internet, Tweets

Experimenting with Twitter

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I first played with Twitter back in August when I was at a Conference and they kept saying “it was the thing to do.” The official conference Twitter feed never got updated and it just seemed like the latest fad of the “social internet.” I just let my twitter account pretty much die.

A week or so ago, Dave started watching my dormant Twitter feed. I thought I’d take another look at Twitter based on the theory that if Dave sees value, there must be some. In talking to Dave last week at lunch, it looks like that is the way a lot of the smaller Mac software guys communicate. I’m not sure what I’d use it for, but I’ll play with it again.

I have to say that it is somewhat addicting to just drop a one liner about what is going on our what went through my head. Twitter also makes it very easy to do so since you can drop a tweet via SMS, IM, or the web. I have at least two of those accessible to me at all times.

The last thing I thought I’d play with is integrating Twitter with the blog. Luckily, the twitter tools wodpress plugin by Alex King make it a snap. So now, every day I drop a tweet, you’ll see a daily digest. We’ll see how this works and/or if I ever say anything of value.

(This has inspired me to take a look at integrating my del.icio.us tags as a daily digest post instead of integrating it to the RSS stream via FeedBurner as I do now. Dan Wooley has posted a ruby script he wrote to do it, so I might rip that off.)

Entertainment, Omphaloskepsis

The more things change, the more they stay the same

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The Blues Brothers cover of Green Onions came on my iPod while I was driving the other day.  I have always liked the tune and it remains one I’ll always listen to.  In the middle of the Blue Brothers cover is a monologue by Dan Aykroyd (aka Elwood) that seems relevant 30 years later if you change a word or two.   First, about the music:

 This is, of course, the Green Onions tune. It was a very big hit in the early sixties in this country. And ofcourse it was composed and recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, right here in the United States Of America. You know, people, I believe that this tune can be acquinted with the great classical music around the world.

Now you go to Germany, you’ve got your Bach, your Beethoven, your Brahms… Here in America you’ve got your Fred McDowell, your Irving Berlin, your Glenn Miller, and your Booker T & The MG’s, people. Another example of the great contributions in music and culture that this country has made around the world.

And then the political part:

 And as you look around the world today, you see this country spurned.  You see backs turned on this country…

I’ve got something to say to the State Department. I say Take that archaic Monroe Doctrine, and that Marshall Plan that says we’re supposed to police force the world, and throw ’em out! Let’s stay home for the next ten years people! Right here in North America and enjoy the music and culture that is ours.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but it hit me, and it hasn’t left me for a few days.  So, to summarize:

  • the blues: all American and awesome
  • bombing the shit out of most of the world: all American and not awesome
Entertainment, Food, ____ of the day/week

Everything I needed to learn in life I learned from Pop songs

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waffle_house.jpgThe Bloodhound Gang was right, getting your Waffle House hash browns smothered1 and covered2 is the way to go. (See The Bad Touch.)

In any case, being in Nashville this weekend has allowed me to go to a Waffle House sober for the first time. Since I am a big fan of greasy food, I loved it. And it was very much like I remembered, but I don’t know if I remember ever eating the food there. I’m sure I did, but I just don’t remember. Alcohol could be helping there too.

Here’s a picture of the grill in action, for no reason at all.

waffle-house-grill.jpg

1. smothered with onions
2. covered with cheese

Geek, Unix

Preach on (about SSH,) Brother Dave

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openssh.pngDave Dribin wrote up a nice post about people breaking some of the first ‘s’ in ssh and how that annoys him and ways to get around it. Its really a good read and really hammers home the point of using ssh-agent, which Dave initially exposed me to. Being able to ssh around without typing my password each time was something I was missing back from when I had kerberized ssh back at UIUC. Er..Illinois.edu.

While I agree with Dave about the empty password thing, one thing you can do in your .ssh/authorized_keys file is lock down a key to a specific IP and to a specific command. So, while you may have a passwordless ssh access, you can somewhat mitigate the risk by locking down what they can can do. For example, with a key truncated because it is long:

from=”192.168.33.22″,command=”/usr/bin/uptime” ssh-rsa AAA…

With this addition in the authorized_keys section, a user with this key from 192.168.33.22 will only be able to execute /usr/bin/uptime. For more information on that and other options you can use, see the AUTHORIZED_KEYS FILE FORMAT section of the sshd(8) man page.

Comics, Geek

See Alex Ross, save animals, visit Keith

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arbc.jpgDon’t visit me, visit Keith of Keith’s Komix.

From http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=11152:

NORTHBROOK, IL – Renowned comic book artist Alex Ross will be signing at Keith’s Komix, 528 S. Roselle Road in Schaumburg, Illinois, on Saturday, August 18, 2007, from 4 to 7 pm. Proceeds from the event will benefit Heartland Animal Shelter in Northbrook, Illinois.

This is my usual store, so I was planning on going and beering afterwards anyway.  Its good to see Keith get the press.

Keith's attempts to fix the cable of life