Recent blog entries for BenFrantzDale

dtucker: Thanks for the response. I'm not suprised I didn't find that, though. Since it is that easy, it really seems appropriate for that to be added to the warning message. I'll suggest that.

If anyone knows a good reason for the warning not to look like this, let me know:

The authenticity of host '192.168.0.123' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint in md5 is: 59:94:5a:d7:2b:1f:ad:6e:ef:24:4c:71:1d:3c:3b:4a
If you have access to '192.168.0.123' you can run
ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
on it to verify this key fingerprint.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting(yes/no)?yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.0.123' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

I've wondered about SSH md5 fingerprints. When I SSH somewhere new I get this:

The authenticity of host '192.168.0.123' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint in md5 is: 59:94:5a:d7:2b:1f:ad:6e:ef:24:4c:71:1d:3c:3b:4a
Are you sure you want to continue connecting(yes/no)?yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.0.123' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

Now I understand that the idea with the md5 fingerprint is that if I know the correct md5 fingerprint on the other side I can know if I'm getting a man-in-the-middle attack. The thing is. There are cases in which I could easily verify that md5 fingerprint except I don't have the slightest idea how to do it. Does anyone know how to check it? If so, why doesn't SSH include breif insturctions in the above warning?

Even the security-minded folks I know just say “assume you arent' getting attacked on your first connection and then you get security from then on.”

I've been doing a lot of debuging at work using GDB. There are a bunch of useful commands among GDB's huge command list. Here's a quick list of the one's I've found useful:

• make – run make. It can take arguments just like on the command line.
  
• enter – do the same command again.
  
• n (next) – move to the next source line in the file.
  
• s (step) – step into the function.
  
• finish – step out of the current function.
  
• break filename:line number – set a breakpoint at a particular line.
  
• clear – clear the breakpoint you are stopped on.
  
• bt (backtrace) – show the current stack.
  
• frame n – go to the nth stack frame.
  
• info threads – list the current threads.
  
• thread n – look at the nth thread.
  
• print something – print a variable's value, or evaluate something (such as print sizeof(foo)
  
• info locals – print all local variables.
  
• info args – print all of the arguments to the current function as they are now (as opposed to as they were at the top of the function).
  
• call function – call a function.
  
• whatis something – print the type of a thing.
  
• x – just look at help x. This does memory dumps in many formats.
  

It's been quite a week. It started Saturday morning when I got up early and drove down to San Diego to have a scuba lesson diving from the Lois Ann onto the sunken Yukon as well as diving some kelp beds. It was a lot of fun. To anyone who's always thought “hey, I've always wanted to try that scuba thing,” go do it. It's fun.

After that I meat up with friends in San Diego and went to the horse races in Del Mar. I'd never been before. I won ten cents on Megahertz. (After parking, admission, and food I lost $13.90.) It's interesting to see the mass histeria that can arise when thousands of people bet a little money.

The following morning, siggraph began. The rest of the week was a blur (or was it just a convolution?) of fragment shaders, GPUs, 3D printers, clouds, and much, much more. (Including some G5s.)

Aside from the cool technology, this was the first academic conference I'd been to and I was struck by seeing the culmination of the scientiffic process in action; seeing researchers present peer-reviewed results to their peers.

Many people used Slithy, a Python-based OpenGL presentation system. The output quality appears to be much better than that of PowerPoint.
This morning started off badly due to fun with my cable modem. My connection died a while ago and today was the first day that worked to get it fixed. Their window was 8AM–noon. They showed up at 11:58, after I had called Adelphia to reschedule.

It turns out it wasn't Adelphia's fault. It looked like someone got into the junction box and messed things up. The line to my appartment went ito a 3-way joint. The “in” to that joint was from another joint... which was connected back to an out from the first joint; neither joint was connected to the outside world.

Still all I can say is that this commic is too true.

I wish Advogato supported the font tag so I could use small caps without having to use bold or itallic at the same time.

I'm having a lot of fun at SIGGRAPH. I've wanted to go to this conference ever since I first heard about it years ago. It's lots of fun, 'though I havn't had time to breathe. I got some pictures so far, 'though I don't yet have captions on them.

I'm looking forward to some down time this weekend.

I've cleaned my appartment all the way for the first time since moving in. Cool.

The accadent at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market today is really disturbing. This was basicly the same intersection at which pople were in line for the Apple store on Friday.

I moved onto a new computer at work. I now have a dual 1 GHz G4 with 1.5 GB of ram. Fun stuff.

I wish the iPod supported OGGs.

I've used my phone's “wireless web” feature as a yellow pages/mapquest. But the interface should really be: “I'm on the corner of Pico and Lincoln near 90401. Tell me how to get where I'm going.” And then it should give bracketing cross-streets along with the address of the destination.

I am considering moving my bloging elsewhere since I havn't been doing much Free Software stuff recently, and since I generally ramble on about quazi-technical stuff rather than discuss productive things. On the other hand, I'm hoping that once I get a new computer I'll have some space to actually do some development.

The cable modem was installed yesterday. Yeay!

I made Pad Thai today as per the Joy of Cooking. It turned out pretty good. I look forward to making more Thai food. The spicy lime/basil/cilantro flavors it uses are almost Baja style, but totally different. Yum.

I went to the local Whole Foods Market to get some real maple syrup and wheet gluten (which is desirable for making bread). One thing I learned was that the clasic tan plastic syrup containers, even out in LA, are made by Sugarhill, a company from Western Mass (where I grew up).

For some reason that Whole Foods doesn't have gluten. I did find Xanthan Gum which is apparently a gluten-free substitute. In addition, it is a common ingredient in commercial salad dressings because it keeps them emulsified. I'll be interested in trying it, particularly since I just tried with great success to make salad dressing the other day. Vinegar, garlic, mustard, salt, and oil. Easy.

As for technical things, last week I spoke with a consultant to the #1 producer of CD-Rs in the world (according to him, they have 52% of the world CD-R market). Here's what I learned:

• DVD-Rs and CD-Rs cost exactly the same to produce. The only difference is the speciffics about the tracks. The technology is identical.
• Kodak, Fuji, and Memorex DVDs all come out of the same factory—they are identical.
• There is no difference among colors of CDs. Gold versus silver versus purple—colors are cool, but it's all just marketing. The laser (being a laser) is only in a very narrow color band.
• As the cd tracks spiral out, they wiggle from side to side. The read head tracks along with this and uses that as timing information which reduces the cost of the CD drive.
• The core of a CD drive costs as little as $14 to manufacture.

I think I'm onto something for reducing CCD noise in digital photos by moving into HSV space and selective-bluring the H channel as well as using perceived brightness as the value rather than simply the value. I'll investigate that more.

I finally got a bed. Yeay! $330ish for a queen-sized spring futon with a nice, simple frame. I had good night's sleep for a change.

I'm off to Vancouver on Wednesday. That should be fun.

I rebuilt and lubricated the drive of my bread machine.

A friend pointed me to a band named Evanescence which I am really enjoying.

I discovered a kitchen store, Sur La Table, which also does cooking classes. They are very tempting. We'll see.

It's been a busy few days.

I flew into LA on Sunday and managed to find and move into a nice apartment by Tuesday afternoon. I started work on Wednesday I set up my work computer with OSX , X11, and Fink. I actually got my feet wet in some code yesterday.

The office is debating which coffee machine to get. We got a demo yesterday of a spiffy one that makes strong, though uninteresting, coffee by the cup. The grounds and a filter come individually packaged in something akin to a large half-and-half container. The technology is cool but it's fifty cents a cup rather than “basically free” for normal coffee.

Wednesday night I had an endless trip to IKEA. They are in Burbank and close at nine. Knowing exactly what I wanted I left at eight. I got into the store at about 8:40. I took the shortcuts to the warehouse, grabbing a few small things on the way. I asked for help finding what I wanted, a 46.5" table. The guy in the warehouse said he needed an exact description and sent me back through the maze to the showroom upstairs (about a quarter-mile away). With the exact information I came back and asked for it, but alas the “Effektiv” series comes in components that need to be ordered upstairs for pickup. By this point it was closing time. I ran back upstairs, finding the table again and got it ordered. By the timeI payed and went to get my car it was probably 9:30. I waited a bit more and picked up my table at about 9:45.

Then the fun began.

A 46.5" tabletop in it's box does not fit into a sedan.

A 46.5" tabletop without it's box still does not fit into a sedan.

I decided to put it on the roof, but first the car was dirty and I didn't want togrind a few months of LA grime into my roof, even with cardboard on hand to pad it. The only source of water was the windshield wipers. Fortunately I had an old newspaper in the car I could use to wipe with. Eventually I got the roof cleaned off.

As for attaching the table, at this point IKEA was closed, locked, and had no lights on. Fortunately I had a length of rope in the car which was there totally by accident, but which I will always keep on hand in the future. Now the problem: how do you secure a round table? After a few tries tying it directly, I put the tabletop back in it's box and on the car. Even then, geometrically constraining it seemed a long shot. The final solution was to put dozens of holes along the edge of thebox and lace the box onto the car. The stability of this depends on thin rope notripping cardboard. I decided City streets would be the best solution. The trip back took about an hour; Sepulveda a nice drive late at night.

I still need to get at least 2 chairs, 1 bed, 1 couch, silverware, and maybe a coffeetable.

My friend who'd been in Iraq is now back. Him being on the left cost and me being East means I havn't gotten stories yet, but I've heard his voice, which is very good.

I was in Boston yesterday. It's a really cool city; I miss living around there. I got to see my brother's appartment and such, as well as visit tmrc.

I've been thinking, we are told “drive defensively”. I think a more appropriate motto would be “drive decisively”. I have no data to back this up; it's just a theory. Still, would you rather be on the road with someone going 90 but using their blinker to change lanes, or with someone going 60 in the middle lane with their left blinker on? Similarly, enterance ramps are for getting up to speed to merge. I suspect it is much safer to get up to speed and perhaps have to break to enter traffic than it is to stop for a gap in traffic.

After commenting to Snapfish that they didn't do as well as Shuttefly with a print (mentioned in an earlier diary entry), they said it was a fluke and that I should try again. I did, but with the same results. The pine tree is grass-green and there are chromatic issues around small details. Shutterfly continues to do well, plus it ships faster and integrates with Gallery.

I've started reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Having always seen it as a self-help book, a genre I've had a poorly-grounded distaste for, I was a bit aprehensive. However so far the ideas it expresses are sitting well with me. It does have it's down-sides. In particular it was written in 1987, so the words it helped to popularize like “proactive” and “paradigm shift” seem a bit dated now. Still, it appears to be a good book so far.

I have found many parallels between Seven Habits and Fight Club, particularly with regard to the “human sacrafice” scene in Fight Club. I'll have to re-read and re-watch Fight Club. It just keeps getting better. :-)

I saw 13 Conversations About the Same Thing. It was reasonably good and reminded me of Magnolia in some ways.