Esthers Follies (and Politicks)

Had a great time seeing Esthers Follies, in Austin Texas. However...

Esthers Follies would be much funnier if it wasn't so chock-a-block full of the kind of (hate to use limbaughisms, or the lines of thinking stemming from limbaughnese folk[yaknow, ditto-heads, I still love you, but critical thinking is sometimes lacking in your crowd], because he's a douchebag fat tick of a man, demonstrably, and loves government when it's staffed by his football team of Dicks and Chainsies) exclusively aimed at media-caricature Right Wingers. It's still funny enough to be worth seeing and enjoying for the performers quality antics and delivery, however. And they do poke alot of fun at media-caricature Lefties, don't get me wrong.

Perhaps it's merely a matter of genuineness of delivery coming from an arguably more Lefty bunch of folks with respect to chosen subject matter.

Simply getting at a resource file in a Jar in Java.

Accessing resources in jar files.  I came across a need for this while attempting to not hard code in Java the some data that would be loaded into a HashMap.  The xml in question was conforming to NetBeans default '.ent' file naming.

Sifting through lots of cruft, applet loading specifics and other somewhat useless but informative and educational blather, I eventually ran across http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5123126 and was rewarded with a straightforward snippet:

use : this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(name)
example: myClass.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("res/my.gif")

two tips:
1 - use your own class that is in jar file. if used another class - for example Object - fails
2 - name i.e. resource must be without leading '/'

I then repurposed accordingly, since I was assuming XML for my org.w3c.dom.* stuff to parse the config with, I needed an InputStream implementation that could later be passed to the document object I was going to be letting those wonderful modules build for me.


InputStream xmlinstr = this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("SomeFileAtTheRootOfMyJar.ent");


Reclaim the word Liberal!

"I am a Liberal. By definition this word means "free man". The root of the word is Latin and is "LIBER" meaning FREE. To free a man is to liberATE him. Once he has that freedom he has liberTY. A free-thinking individual would (in a perfect USA) be a liberTARIAN (I have disavowed my membership with this party since the nomination of Bob Barr last ... Read Moreyear). If you freely give you give liberALLY. A soccer player who freely roams the field is called a liberO. Too many people have made this a disgusting word and it is NOT disgusting to be FREE or to want FREEDOM. BE A LIBERAL and help us ALL be liberals, proudly! Rise from the cognitive misunderstanding of this word to the definitive beauty of it and embrace its essence my brother! Semper Fidelis and Semper LIBER!" -- Adrian Scott Parks

Timezone configuration on SLES Linux

Having some trouble with clock drift with 2 SLES 9 SuSE linux boxes. Turns out vmware and the hwclock settings I chose during setup of the OS have been conspiring to put a long drift on my two systems. Fixing it is somewhat simple. Setting it up right the first time is obviously the best solution. To remedy:

Do this stuff to get your time figured out and fixed to where you want from an OS perspective:

Totally stolen from: http://www.planetmy.com/blog/how-to-configure-timezone-on-sles-linux/

The following tutorial will guide you How to configure TIMEZONE on SLES Linux.

Basically you can configure Linux timezone using two methods which is using command or YaST.

Note: use timezone “GMT+0“ for an example below.

For YaST timezone setup, it’s pretty simple. Login to terminal and type:

#YasT Setup

yast timezone

Select Global, select GMT+0
Hardware clock Set To: Localtime
Click Accept.

For command line setup, you’re require to know these 2 files /etc/localtime and /etc/sysconfig/clock.

#Backup existing file

mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.old

cp /etc/sysconfig/clock /etc/sysconfig/clock.old

#Edit configuration files

ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT+0 /etc/localtimevi /etc/sysconfig/clock

TIMEZONE=GMT+0

HWCLOCK="--localtime"

Bear in mind, you can have different timezone setup for individual or global user by using user profile in your system. For an example,

#Edit configuration file

vi /etc/profile or ~username/.bash_profile
export TZ=/usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kuala_Lumpur

Export “TZ” will overwrite /etc/sysconfig/clock or /etc/localtime setup. Mean that I can use Kuala Lumpur as my separate time zone for particular user in the same system eventhrough my primary timezone setup is GMT+0.

NTP setup
#Edit NTP configuration file

vi /etc/ntp.confserver 0.europe.pool.ntp.org

server 1.europe.pool.ntp.org
server 2.europe.pool.ntp.org
server 3.europe.pool.ntp.org
server your.ntp.server

#Restart NTP Server

rcxntpd xntpd restart

Hardware Clock

#showing hardware clock

hwclock --show

#set the system time from the hardware clock

hwclock --hctosys

#set the hardware clock from the system time

hwclock --systohc

Done!

After doing this verify your clock isn't drifting crazy by using ntpq and lpeers to figure out your clock delay offset and jitter numbers. Seems to work well, saves us some trouble in the future maybe it'll help someone else out of course.

Failing that this thread on the vmware community website illustrates the "clock=pit" option.

URL TO FOLLOW

It refers to this PDF:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf

SSH Passwordless Authentication

http://blogs.translucentcode.org/mick/archives/000230.html was a great find today. Hail google. Hail clarity in technical documentation.

Keep in mind this is dangerous to do if you don't trust your overall account security, but for my purposes at work it's a great way to get something done.

Playing with Crosstool

Not really playing.

Crosstool itself
A version of GCC to compile the compiler (usually something somewhat old)
A GCC Compiler to Compile (usually something new-ish)
A version of glibc
A "sanitized" version of the linux kernel headers


Google Search For Crosstool: http://www.google.com/search?q=crosstool

A quickie script to gather difference between(delta) two unix epoch seconds time values.


#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Date::Manip;
my $delta;
my $date1;
my $date2;
my $err = undef;
print "Thank you for running $0\n";

print "Enter Unix Time Seconds Value Start:";
chomp($date1 = <STDIN>);
$date1 = ParseDateString("epoch $date1");
print "Enter Unix Time Seconds Value Finish:";
chomp($date2 = <STDIN>);
$date2 = ParseDateString("epoch $date2");

$delta = DateCalc ($date1,$date2, \$err);
print "the \$delta is [$delta]\n";


Bash Tidbit: environment variables after escaped semicolons

If you find yourself in need of embedding an environment variable in a path directly after an escaped semicolon (something that happens when you have version control tools like Telelogic, which use semicolons as a project toplevel node delimiter) it is possible to merely use backticks "`<around the command>`" to get the desired effect.

Say your default case on the command line to list the directory contents is thus:


ls /mnt/buford/d/teledb/ccm_wa/poobits01/foo.bar\;foo.bar99.99_int/foo.bar/


And you want the 'foo.bar99.99' to be something settable in a shell variable called $REL you then would insert the following to do such a thing:

REL=foo.bar99.99
ls /mnt/buford/d/teledb/ccm_wa/poobits01/foo.bar\;`echo $REL`_int/foo.bar/


Time Wasting For Fun and Profit

Someone at work mentioned this gamey game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/garin/monsters-den-book-of-dread

Might try it, never know.

Cicada Period Blogging at it's finest.

Heads and Tails of the last file in a directory.

head -n 2 `ls -1rt | tail -n 1` ; echo "...";echo "..."; tail -n 1 `ls -1rt | tail -n 1`

Screen, act like an xterm

Screen when invoked has a multitude of options, but one that was particularly helpful for me was this:

screen -T xterm ssh user@someunixhost

So as to make the TERM environment variable appear to be xterm allowing vi and other tools to work properly.

Figuring out how to get that into my ~/.screenrc so that it takes affect every time is the next objective. Not many of the hosts I connect to identify "screen" as a TERM type.

Obama's Newbie Activists: Unloved By Insiders But Here To Stay

You should ask those more "seasoned" individuals, who there house is built to serve? Their own well being or the well being of the people of this country? Whether in the Republican or Democrat party, I've found that (with some exceptions in each of course) the established members of each organization are convinced of their own entitlement to lead and control things than they are of operating as an organization of free people acting together in the mass of people that make up the parties interests.

Both parties should lean towards the latter half in future or get more Liebermans and might as well be neocon / pseudodem types in your ranks.
About Democratic Convention
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Say It Ain't Jew, Joe

A very effective PAC working in the US to advance the interests of the nation of Israel

* not the people of Israel as about half of Israelis believe the US aids Israel too much, which is saying alot.



You don't have to read conspiracy into it either, it's just a case of one country having a very effective lobbying organization that is getting what more than what it pays for from the US government. That lobbying organization is acting in the interests of hard line militarists in Israel. These folks want to stay in power indefinitely, apparently seeing that the best way to do that is to keep tension high in the region, peace is best kept short lived, military funding is perpetual and plentiful, and best of all we(the US) look like the bad guy.



Lieberman is a friend to them, at all costs it seems.



Contrast AIPAC with JStreet the latter being a more worthy lobbying group IMO. Essentially saying, perpetual shows of "strength" and ever escalating conflict is maybe not such a good idea, go figure.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Meh, more code stuff this time, playing with Perl's FileHandle modules.

Code like:

1. #!/usr/bin/perl -w
   
   use FileHandle;
   my $ifh = new FileHandle;
   if ($ifh->open("< fee.txt")) {
       print <$ifh>;
       $ifh->close;
   }
   

   
   

GOP Insider Eviscerates Bush And Party: Just "Phenomenal Arrogance"

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Brzezinski: Surge In Afghanistan Risky, Some McCain Backers Want World War IV

About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Manager Airs Cash Woes In Video

About Barack Obama
The EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notably active against the current FISA laws set of compromises and willy nilly allotments of warrantless wiretaps to aging chimpanzees and bloated curmudgeons currently in office. Oh and telecom immunity too, for the (telecom) business set to safely feel free to continue to roll over when some spook gives them a call.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Apache Commons

Java is an obtuse beast, written by obtuse beasts.

I will be detailing efforts to use the apache commons io framework (DirectoryWalker in particular) in this post.

Apache Commons consists of several helpful extensions to Java in various areas, IO in particular being the one I'm interested, though Math and XML processing code exists for anyone to take advantage of.

Problems that I'm currently working through:

• DirectoryWalker seems to include mechanics for depth limitations, but the default means of shuffling the File objects returned seems to be an Array, the search process itself seems to dive into the filesystem in a chaotic and unseemly way, that does not lend itself to being easily limited to a certain depth.

• Java in general, is somewhat defiant of concrete scrutiny to non domain level experts. So, if one isn't already an expert Java programmer, one cannot take at face value the indications of the documentation for modules involved.

At the moment, I'm determining if indeed I can throw a DirectoryWalker.CancelException and how much more code I'll have to write to do something that is quite simple in a shell script (gnu find, and the parameters --maxdepth --mindepth) in order to mitigate the lack of an ability to constrain a directory walk to an exact distance from a starting point.

From the documentation:

This class operates with a FileFilter and maximum depth to limit the files and direcories visited. Commons IO supplies many common filter implementations in the filefilter package.

References:
(http://commons.apache.org/io/api-release/org/apache/commons/io/DirectoryWalker.html)

Deciphering HPUX 11.0 era compilers and how they tend to fail to build Chinese code (zhchs, zhcht locales) when it is attempted at my workplace, on certain machines.

What this all brings to mind is the tendency of Unix System Administrators to "poison the pool" so to speak by *not* documenting their setups. I'll put this simply for anyone who is a Unix / Linux advocate in todays world of computing, Unix is difficult enough to understand for people who understand it. Throwing shit together and putting it in production with no supporting documentation creates no end of grief when the eventual (and certain) leaving of your job occurs. Unless you want your name to be cursed nigh unto eternity by those that follow you, DOCUMENT YOUR SETUPS AS YOU GO.

Thank you, and good night.

Pflugerville, Texas - Hanovers Market, a great place for Beer, texas BBQ and friendly outgoing bartenders that will let you hop on over and wrangle your own beer of choice in the back with the taps.

The Smear of Smears, Racism and Ron Paul

Currently working on expansion on this trackback:

http://haloscan.com/tb/sonichost/3905451830583339730

Ubuntu Geek -- Tips,Howtos,Tutorials and Articles about Ubuntu Linux (Dapper - Edgy - Feisty - Gutsy)

I've been digging this site the past few hours, finding things to tweak with my ubuntu installation. Very valuable collection of resources for the Ubuntu users out there.

Ubuntu Geek -- Tips,Howtos,Tutorials and Articles about Ubuntu Linux (Dapper - Edgy - Feisty - Gutsy)

NIN Remixes

Political Dystopia never sounded so good, yet again.

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D is out, and I give it my blessing.

1. Guns by Computer (Saul Williams)
   
2. The Great Destroyer (Modwheelmood)
3. My Violent Heart
4. The Beginning of the End
5. Survivalism_tardusted
   
6. Capital G
7. Vessel
8. The Warning
9. Meet Your Master
10. God Given
11. Me, I'm Not
12. Another Version of the Truth
13. In This Twilight
14. Zero-Sum
    

Blog Aggregates: McCain vs Paul and others.

In reference to the McCain Paul Letter on Andrew Sullivans The Daily Dish struck me. I don't have the same reverence for McCain for various reasons, but I feel for those that see their heroes go down the wrong path nonetheless.

DownThemAll! » DownThemAll! 1.0 Beta

DownThemAll! » DownThemAll! 1.0 Beta

Ron Paul Has Won?

http://rss.townhall.com/trackback/www/7bec946b-bc0e-4a5f-a73f-5eef4f7913dd/

Zogby Spread Poll Result

http://truthseeds.org/2007/11/19/ron-paul-wins-latest-zogby-poll/

A Ron Paul Voter Checklist

Things Ron Paul supporters should do:

This will frequently update. Well, maybe not so frequently.

Register for polling at Zogby to make sure you have a chance to be sampled in their polling data. They also do polls on request.
RedState is a den of snakes, writhing and flicking with straight up Right Wing Tyrranist apologizers and fervent collaborationists, watching their cycle switch over, and very much being the bastion of where George Bush's wind has blown, no matter from which end it is blowing.

In this kind of place prepare to deal with hostile echo chamber advocates of the first order, who will bait you with low roaded speech at every turn, and reveal their bigoted nature only haltingly and with much encryption. This is not only the going penance in the world online. In the world at large they make their presence known by their willingness to be blind and asleep to obvious tyrranies, large and small, with the demon of Apathy firmly laid at their brow. To ask another to do for them that they would not be bothered, against their will. For that be willing to do for your fellows, to get this statesman on the pulpet. It may be bully, but it needs to come. An executively expansionist tyrant every four years, has gotten tiresome, and at least Bill you could relate to, but Hil I think should stay, and rest her hand on the new york senate where she should stay, she should stay. At least it'll make her far from Texas that way.

Niggy Tardust Emerges

Taking a break from politicizing (well, the music is political, guess I lied) the blogosphere. A great concept album, somewhat of a Ziggy Stardust homage, produced by Trent Reznor and released without the benefit of a traditional label. good music, the U2 cover is great, but originals are a massive taste of ear candy. Expect further reviewing as I stew in the album.
He really puts it best here:

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we've created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they'd find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren't aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us 'til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer...

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul