Older blog entries for Adrian (starting at number 10)

Hmm. Much griping on gimp-developer about the www.gimp.org web site. Perhaps it's because no one has really webmaster'ed it in just about three years.

All the old folks who used to try to keep it up to date, myself included, are no longer interested. I have pretty much no interest in web "stuff" anymore. Particularly where "stuff" is markup, scripting, database setup, learning the new web language of the week, doing graphics, and other fluff. When did websites become such a chore?

The interesting thing is the sheer number of people who have promised help, but never delivered even a single typo fix, or even a suggestion for a link. It's enough to make you completely distrust any offers for help that arent backed up with immediate indications of sincerity. Just something simple like, "heres this web page I made of gimp links."

So, as far as I'm concerned, www.gimp.org site is dead, and has been for at least two years. Despite several requests for help, no one has ever really done any significant amount of work to fix it. Lots of offers to make it "php based" and dynamic, and easily editible, and autoupdating, etc etc, none ever come through though. I havent really considered myself the webmaster for at least two years. But seeing as known else has taken over the webmaster title, I guess it's still me.

I suspect a lot of it has to do with the original rather large intended scope of the site. It was going to be The Resource for gimp related stuff, and was for a short time period. But even at its peak, only maybe %30 of the content "scoped out" was ever completed. So the task of migrating what is there, and potentially having to come up with the rest is somewhat intimidating.

The weird thing is, despite the vast majority of the content on the site being between 2 and 3 years old, no one has really created a better site. Not to mention maintain a better site. It seems even odder given the fact that the gimp is probabaly used in the creation of many web sites, the site for the tool itself languishes. I dont quite get it.

And the fun part is all the griping about the lack of content/reaction from gimp.org webmasters, stems from a thread starting with a positive comment about a tutorial I wrote about a gimp feature I added. Nothing quite like having a nice comment about a contribution you made being turned into a gripefest about your webmastering skills. Oh well, such are the travails of gimp-developer and why we enjoy it so much.

So, the good news is that at the moment, there is at least one person with demonstrated web skills at least contemplating the next version of the site. Anyone else interested?

And please, no comments about how it should be easy to edit my lots of folks, and we can host it at sourceforge, and php is really cool, and *sql rules, wikiwikithisorthat, etc. I know already.

I helped implement this feature several months ago, so I figured it was time to actually document it. So I wrote that a few days ago.

Kind of fun to play with, and I think the feature has the potential to be used very creatively once people figure it out.

Despite years of evidence to the contrary, you can never have too many tater tots.

Now with extra tot! And a gimp image pipe brush.

And more Tater Tots!

Not much hacking recently. Been fairly busy with support stuff.

I only post because I had the urge to reiterate Iain's comments about the whole slashdot/napster thing. Particularly the fun suggestion of putting Jon Katz's book on line.

Better yet, mirror all of slashdot sans ads somewhere.

I would enjoy that a great deal.

My name is Adrian Likins. I am a LDAP-aholic.

topher recently posted a nice set of url's about LDAP. Figured I would do the same, and post some of my favorites.

Using LDAP with RH 6.1

Okay, so this is my page. Slightly out of date, (all the stuff that says "this package has a bug, get a newer version" is true, but now the proper newer versions are in 6.2 or its updates.)

Info on setting up pam_ldap, nss_ldap, etc.

LDAP resources

A set of useful links from Clayton Donley.

Schema Viewer

Browse some of the common LDAP schema. Generally has some good commentary on what the schema are for, how they are typically used, etc.

GQ says all the hip fellows use LDAP. So, okay, it's not the magazine. A very handy gtk based ldap viewer/editor.

A nice page describing the standard schema's for using LDAP as a NIS replacement. From IPlanet. Includes lovely schema such as a automount schema. Pathces to autofs-3.x to use it are in Rawhide or on the autofs list if your intereted.

Okay, so Kerberos is only vaguely related to LDAP, but they make a good combo. Kerb+LDAP is so much cooler than NIS.

Books

Implementing LDAP

The most up to date LDAP book I've found. Lots of info on using the various LDAP development kits.

My favorite. A detailed description of the LDAP C API, and a good introduction to LDAP as a whole. Very useful for those planning to write LDAP apps.

Good overview of general directory service issues, and how to address them using LDAP's feature set. Also has a interesting "case study" of Big Midwestern University, which more or less goes like: "We needed a unified login and directory services. So we invented LDAP." Wacky.

My laptop now gets all of its automount maps from ldap.

Okay, so maybe just I thought it was cool.

I've come to realise that my current laptop config is about as far from the "standard" configuration as possible. Well, almost. I suppose I could run windows.

Perhaps SRP should be the next thing to add, now that kerberos and ldap seems to work pretty well.

I like the idea of explaining why you cert people. So I added some notes.

Noticed almost all the folks I have certed are from work. Mostly cause I tend to only cert people I've met in person, but then, there are lots of folks I know from expos and the like. Oh well. One day.

I suspect "Dimwit" has something to do with April 1st.

Now, a "Jaded Bastard" cert would be interesting.

Been playing with yup, an attempt at a apt-get style tool for rpms. Not quite there yet, but getting there.

Though I really think a LDAP based version of the same concept would be oh so much cooler. Perhaps I should finish mine.

Speaking of which, lukeh has posted some info about the LDAP backend for a KDC. Unfortunately it's based on the Heimdal codebase and not the MIT krb5 we ship, but it still sounds pretty cool. I crave a useable central location for all user info. Secure maybe possibly, even. That might be asking for too much.

Oddly enough, I have no urge to divulge [un]interesting personal details.

I have decided to certify pjones and zab.

Discovered that there is no "Princess" option in the certification. Decided to correct this.

All should be good in the world now.