http://dablog.alcruz.com Mon, 12 May 2008 15:17:00 GMT The latest blog entries from goddess101. http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/106 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. Mon, 12 May 2008 15:17:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/106 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/105 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. Sun, 06 Jan 2008 17:28:54 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/105 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/104 Here's a great 11 minute video cilibrar showed me this morning. Nothing more to say. Just watch. Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:05:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/104 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/103 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? Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:41:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/103 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/102 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? Sat, 26 May 2007 16:08:04 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/102 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/101 Rudi and I have been enjoying ourselves quite a lot lately, not just programming (although there's certainly still a lot of that), but also doing art! Rudi began participating in an art group with Edgar Jansen (whose website I occasionally update) in January of this year, which features a nude model posing in the middle of a room for 10-15 minutes at a time while the group sketches or paints her. This particular group (with ever-changing members of course) has been around for 35 years and was recently featured in one of those homeless mags (like Street Sheet in the U.S.) with guess who's art on the cover? Rudi's! What was originally considered a mistake – the elongated neck and misplaced head was not planned – has now been validated as a piece of art by the city of Amsterdam! Not bad for a guy who has been studying art for only a few months and sits down to draw once a week at most. When I got back from my recent trip to San Francisco, Rudi was pretty anxious to have me give this nude-model thing a try. After all, he knew that sketching and drawing was something I loved doing long ago. Unfortunately, the art group is pretty crowded on the days he goes, so he and Edgar arranged for a model to come to our home to do a private session for the three of us. Ooooh, how fun and exhilarating. Yeah, you're probably thinking, how else are you going to feel with a strange, nude woman in your living room? But, really, the process of drawing is as scary and exciting as a roller-coaster ride, and easily more satisfying. In those 15 minutes, several thoughts go through my mind: where the hell am I going to start?, i'm making her look too fat, now she looks anorexic, this is going to look like crap, this looks like crap!, there's not enough time, maybe I can strategically hide this one when we show off our stuff to the rest of the group, and so on. Yet, even though I tend to torture myself during each pose, I somehow get passed that, turn the drawing around somehow, and I'm always proud of the final result. No, I don't think I've created true works of art, but it's extremely satisfying to realize you have created something out of nothing, in just 15 minutes no less. So, yeah, this art thing is really fun... I started out doing pencil sketches, but after some research on the web, I wanted to try to work with pastels. Yesterday, I bought a set of soft pastels, for just 5 euros, and started playing around with them. Oh, what fun! I used to have a paint set when I was a teen, which contained acrylics and oils, but hadn't the faintest idea what to do with them. I might have had pastels too, but I never touched them. I stuck to the oils, trying to do my best Bob Ross imitation, but I guess I just didn't have the patience, and certainly not the focus, so my results were disastrous and debilitating. Anyways, pastels are such an interesting medium. It's all about the color blending, which is always done after the color is applied to the paper/canvas. Sounds a bit backwards, but it certainly works. In my computer guy pastel, I didn't have any flesh tones in my palette. So I started off first with a mostly white face, then added a bit of brown, orange, yellow and red, blended it all together, and viola, got a tone that mostly resembles skin. Pretty neat. This art thing is definitely something we plan to continue. We're due to arrive back in the states soon, so we're already on the lookout for nude women to come to our home. Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:45:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/101 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/100 Here's a video that MTV apparently banned. From director Greenhalgh: War infects all our lives; recently it feels that this has increasingly become 'our way of life'. It is rare to be given the opportunity to shoot a video that is deemed controversial. All I tried to do was make people think about the everyday life we live in our comfortable existences, and the contrast to that through war. Fri, 24 Nov 2006 06:38:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/100 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/99 Here's another video of a guy who took a picture of himself everyday, but he's raised the bar by doing it 2 years longer than Noah Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:40:02 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/99 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/97 I've been spending a lot of time on digg and reddit lately, two sites where people can share interesting links/articles with one another and vote for what they like and don't like. The most popular links, of course, appear on the front page so that any digger can find the 'best' links more easily. There's also a community aspect to these sites as well. Both sites allow users to comment on links, and create a friends list. digg, in fact goes one step further by allowing users to vote on each other's comments, as well as give them access to what links other users have voted on. Aside from the wealth of intriguing information and media on the internet, I've noticed a couple of things about these two sites and their readership: The community is mostly male. Both sites are havens for geeks all over the world who happen to have, more often than not, a Y chromosome. Hence this derivative site http://nsfw.reddit.com/ (Not Safe for Work) which has basically become a porn portal but without the annoying popups. Comments usually fall somewhere between the rude and the really rude category. Wisecracks, snappy remarks, insults – irreverence left and right. Perhaps this is not so surprising as most of us who read digg and reddit have either absorbed too much Buffy-type dialogue, or, though we do mostly see ourselves as liberals, secretly wish we could be as linguistically 'gifted' as Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter. So, when this article appears on digg, All Women Team Takes Yahoo Hack Day Top Prize, we get the worst of both characteristics. Typical samples: See, us females can be l33t too! :D Aren't you supposed to be in the kitchen? Iron my Shirt Bitch! I'd hack the one on the left... What, you want to exploit a local vulnerability and inject shell code into her? Is there going to be a swim suit calender coming out? I personally think the idea that these girls came up with (a handbag which takes pictures and automatically blogs them) is a bit of a silly idea. I don't like handbags. I don't like serial photography or serial blogging. But I do applaud these girls. As my cousin once said, of the 4 weeks in the month, 2 of those suck: one week we're depressed, tired, and irritable from PMS, and in the other we're too annoyed and bothered by the logistics of handling our monthly cycles. So the fact that these women could jump over these technical hurdles, and still elicit illicit comments from the male population, is a pretty amazing accomplishment. Mon, 02 Oct 2006 07:44:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/97 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/96 Rudi once told me about a funny statue he encountered in Finland. It was of a Medusa-type character but with little penises in place of snakes. That was the my first thought when I saw this webpage of strange statues. Alas, no penis-riddled scalp on this site, but still amusing! Sat, 23 Sep 2006 10:27:39 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/96 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/95 My brother sent me a link to an article today about the Indigo Girls, one of my favorite groups. He forwarded it to me mainly because it turns out they are huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans! Who would have thought? (Well, perhaps I did a little. After all I know Amy is a huge Sandman fan.) But I hope you're not thinking I'm referring to the Indigo Girls as stupid? On the contrary! Their social awareness and activism is certainly something I would like to emulate myself. But I mention this because the article also mentions they recently collaborated with P!nk, another one of my favorite female artists whom I admire not only for her gritty vocal prowess, but also for her outspokenness and ballsy political posture. Take her song, which apparently caused a bit of a stir back in April (and on which the Indigo Girls guested), Dear Mr President Let me tell you bout hard work Minimum wage with a baby on the way Let me tell you bout hard work Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away Let me tell you bout hard work Building a bed out of a cardboard box I have yet to check out her latest album (which came out in March this year), but her video for the song Stupid Girls is noteworthy for its sheer audacity. A survey earlier this year revealed astonishing results. Girls aged between 15 and 19 were asked which careers they wished to pursue. 63% said glamour modelling and 25% lap dancing. Are these girls smart enough to comprehend P!nk's message? Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:02:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/95 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/94 By chance, I found this awesome video on YouTube, by photographer Noah Kalina, who took a picture of himself everyday for 6 years and compiled his results into an interesting timelapse experiment. It's nearly 6 minutes (I know, might as well be 6 years!), but it's mesmerizing and you may just find yourself staring at Noah for the entire length of it. Turn up those speakers too; the soundtrack is just as engaging. Mon, 11 Sep 2006 05:57:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/94 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/93 Why does your computer take so long to boot? Chances are, you are running Windows AND you have some kind of anti-virus software installed. This article, What Slows Windows Down gives us the low down. So, want to install Norton's latest software? Expect to wait another minute for your computer to load, and don't complain about it. :) Mom, if you're also reading this, watch out for those font CDs. The 1000 Fonts CD will add another 30 seconds! Mon, 11 Sep 2006 05:38:44 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/93 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/92 It's funny sitting at a computer programming all day can give you the same feeling of having done several hours of physical activity. In the morning, they both make you feel broken. These last few mornings, I've been waking up feeling like I've just been beat up. In some sense, I have. Debugging and testing a program is a lot like trading punches with a powerful enemy. Just when think you've got a bug put down, another one comes up to play on your weaknesses and bite you in the butt. The struggle can often last hours. More often than not, I wind up victorious at the end, with the ability to walk away from the computer knowing I've got something solid working, free of the most obvious bugs. Last night, I wasn't as lucky. I had been working on a specific problem for hours, and it was left still unresolved by the time dinner rolled around. After the meal, I realized I had been done for the day. The stiffness in my forearms and the ache in my lower back told me it would have been foolhardy to continue. So, I spent an hour on the couch, contemplating how much my body hurt, and eventually dozed off. When Rudi told me to come to bed, my body was in such excruciating pain. The shlep to the toilet was like a death march, sharp pangs in my hip and back. My shoulders ached. I needed to grab onto the door frame for support for the quarter step into and out of the bathroom. Luckily, this morning wasn't so bad. Somewhat refreshed and re-energized, I am determined to tame that buggy beast sometime today. Mon, 07 Aug 2006 07:00:59 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/92 annalissa101@yahoo.com http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/91 I've been a lover of comics for as long as I can remember. My mom may even still have old issues of my old well-worn superhero comics (usually sans covers), which I would occasionally grab on trips to Safeway. Later as a teen, jumpstarted by my Robotech obsession, I started collecting comic books more seriously, investing in plastic sleeves and relatively expensive mylar bags to preserve my treasures. I also ventured outside the typical superhero realm, taking great pleasure in reading graphic novels which dealt with more serious and mature material. Neil Gaiman's Sandman is most definitely one of them, and one of the best I've ever read. I had bought the first volume, Preludes and Nocturnes, years ago, which is a collection of the first 8 issues. I had actually tried on numerous occasions to read it, having read that Sandman was one the premier titles to own in the comics universe, but ironically (or maybe not so, given the title!) I would fall asleep. Not that the material wasn't any good. I just couldn't get into it, similar to how the first 50 pages of a good book are a bit tough to absorb at first. However, a week ago, I decided to give it another try, and, well, I've reached that tipping point. Now I must read the rest! What's so great about it? It's creatively written and meticulously planned out. In fact, there have been a few moments when I've had to stop and say to myself, Wow, this is bloody brilliant! I don't want to give away any of the good stuff, but in summary, the series is about Morpheus (a.k.a. the Sandman), ruler of the Dream Realm, who is removed from his world by cultists seeking immortality and held captive for decades. The book follows the affects of his imprisonment and the inevitability of his escape. Sounds simple, sure, but Gaiman has written some pretty trippy stuff in here that will not only tap into your own dream experiences but maybe expand your mind a bit. Sat, 05 Aug 2006 20:32:00 GMT http://dablog.alcruz.com/blog/show/91 annalissa101@yahoo.com