daBlog by goddess101

Source Code Haven

Rudi and I easily keep at least a few dozen software projects between us, and have hosted a few Subversion source code repositories for clients. Anyone who’s tried to setup a private revision control system, with secure SSH access and to be used among more than a few developers, knows that it can be a pain in the butt. Each SSH key has to be manually setup in a such a way to ensure developers can’t compromise the server. Developers forget the URIs to their repositories or have to resend you new keys because they’ve misplaced their private keys. Sometimes you just want to give developers read-only access, but dealing with permissions is such a hassle that tar-ing up your code and posting it on a website is much more convenient—even though it will eventually get stale and you would have to manually tar-up your code again.

Then there is the developer’s point of view. Rudi and I have hosted our open-source repositories at Sourceforge and Berlios, both popular CVS and Subversion services, but the very act of starting a repository took days because projects had to be pre-approved and you had to figure out how to install your SSH keys yourself which was often frustrating.

Rudi and I also had the problem of hosting way too many private repositories without any sort of system to track them—forgotten usernames, forgotten URIs. Frankly, I know the source code for this blog is in a revision control system somewhere, but we’ve bounced our repositories from one server to another, as well as converted from Subversion to Mercurial, that I can’t honestly tell you where the repository is, or under what system it’s under.

Hopefully with SSH Control, I can finally get organized. Rudi and I created SSH Control for all the reasons stated above, and it’s a really sweet system. Setting up a repository takes a minute. Inviting other developers is trivial. Installing SSH keys is a matter of just copying and pasting the key into a web form for your project. And we can upload old repositories, and, here’s the kicker, convert old repositories to another repository type while keeping all the changeset history.

We’ve still got some work to do, particularly with some of the displays, but we’ve been using the system for a month so far, and it works great for us. We have just opened SSH Control to the public last night. No new registrations yet, but I imagine that anyone looking to start a Subversion, Mercurial, or Git repository with SSH access will have an easy time at SSH Control.

Roodman Rising

Rudi’s been doing some interesting writing lately, particularly on Jim Kunstler’s blog, Clusterfuck Nation and on LiveJournal, Semper Ubi Sub Ubi. Rudi spends a lot of time surfing the net, which is filled, as we all know, with interesting articles, entertaining videos, celebrity news, cute images, and several other distractions. Rudi, on the other hand, uses the internet as a tool to uncover many “truths” that most choose to ignore or actively look away from.

Tomaotes and People

Here’s a great 11 minute video cilibrar showed me this morning. Nothing more to say. Just watch.

Civilian Casualties

cilibrar turned me onto this documentary about Mara Salvatrucha, aka MS13, considered to be the largest and most dangerous gang in the world growing fast.

MS13 apparently started out on the streets of Los Angeles, by a bunch of immigrant kids who needed to protect themselves from established gangs in the area. They got into trouble, went to prison, and returned to society wiser but badder than ever. Those who were illegally in the states were deported back to El Salvador, where they started a following there too. Now MS13 is 100,000 members strong, terrorizing locals and rival gangs all across the Americas.

Beginning with an image of MS13 members flashing their gang sign, here is a collection of other images that came to mind after watching the documentary. They may at first seem unrelated but have an underlying connection.

Devils horns, gang sign of MS13

Black Power fists from 1978 Olympics

Nazi gathering

Klu Klux Klan pledge ceremony

Children pledging to the flag

American Military Salute

8-year old Afghan girl

Are we seeing images of unity or divisiveness?

Out of Gas

A historic event is taking place this Memorial Day weekend at the Indianapolis 500. For the first time in the event’s 91 years, the race will feature 3 female drivers, one of whom has a decent chance at actually winning. Now, before I start breaking into the first verse of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman”, I do have one question: in a world facing a fuel and energy crisis, as well as rising gas prices, why is this something to celebrate? How can the Indy 500, Formula One, NASCAR and any other form of organized motor racing continue to exist?

NASCAR estimates 6,000 gallons of fuel are consumed during a single NEXTEL Cup (a NASCAR racing series) weekend. With 36 points races, that is approximately 216,000 gallons of gas used for a NEXTEL season. NEXTEL cars are also known as inefficient gas-guzzlers, getting only 2 to 5 miles per gallon. NASCAR vehicles could quite possibly be big-time polluters, because they are not required to have mufflers, catalytic converters or other emissions control devices. In addition, the use of lead additives pose huge health risks to anyone exposed to car fumes.

So, why oh why doesn’t motor racing just screech to a full stop already?

Here’s the answer. Formula One is a massive television event, with millions watching in 200 countries. NASCAR has grown to become the second most popular (read profitable) in terms of television ratings inside the U.S., ranking behind the NFL. The Indy 500 is one richest motorsport events in existence, having the largest attendance and one of the largest radio and television audiences of any single-day sporting event worldwide.

Well, so what, you might be thinking, in the grand scheme of things, is auto racing really that bad? You have a couple of dozen cars driving around a race track for only a few hours at a time. Annual gas consumption is in the 10s of billions in America; NASCAR cars represents a tiny smidgen of that. Well, just as a kid is more likely to pick up a football after watching the Super Bowl, we probably are more likely to shop for a new car, more likely to drive those few miles to the grocery store than take public transportation, more likely to go for a drive than a walk when we’re feeling stressed, and more like to buy accessories for our cars or slap on a new coat of paint or purchase a new pair of driving sunglasses—cuz you know what? Driving is so damn cool! Isn’t it?

I haven’t driven in approximately 3 years. I walk nearly everywhere I go, even if it will extend my trip an hour. I don’t worry about car payments. I don’t worry about insurance rates. I don’t worry about parking tickets. However, I do worry about the price of gas going back down, cuz in the end, is there anything else that will make us lay off the gas pedal?