Recent blog entries for joshuat

I don't get out very often. In fact, not enough.
Wife.
Baby.
Work.
RFC 2440.
Insert another stress point here
So, as a much needed diversion, I'm going to Santa Cruz to see THE MELVINS!!!! . There is nothing like pure bellowing dropped D angst to get me refreshed.

If you are going to this show, and see me, I may buy you a beer :) Just say "CryptoMail" and I'll know what to do.

RFC2440 is going ok. The Cryptix code is very well written, but I am going to take a different tact when parsing S2K's. I will have two passes. One for root level packet unloading and parsing, and then, when S2K constructs are encountered, a second pass will do the prompting/password getting. I don't want to do in-line, one pass processing. Two passes should be fine, and amenable for a message manager object which will analyze the first pass, and then drive the second pass.

Anyway...almost all packets are "handled". Tsuuh...what ever that means...basically, it compiles, but nothing is driving it yet. :) For ripping from Cryptix, I'm admittedly slow...but anyway...

Recently, on New Year's Eve, I spoke to Darius and we had a great conversation. I basically reiterated my thoughts on the hierarchy on techies: Some people can do my job, but I can't do their's :) Take for instance those hardware guys...for me...as a software engineer...I'm so distant from it..but in my experiences, I have met some AMAZING people who not only build hardware, and have an intimate understanding of the metal, but they also write their own software on top of it. So, if you know hardware, AND you can program your own software on top of it, YOU RULE SO HARD!!!!!!!

Hope you had a good new year's eve. My resolution is to work up the chain, just a little higher :) --josh

Well, I've started....I'm developing a backwards compatible java 1.1 compliant pgp library. I always said I was going to do it, and I finally got around to reading 2440, and I've started coding. It will borrow some code and concepts from cryptix, but not use the entirety of it's base. Why? Too many crusty browsers out there, and I want cryptomail to use OpenPGP as it's format.

Why on earth do I want that? I don't know. It would be kind of cool if people could use cryptomail and actually send email messages to people outside the system via imported OpenPGP keys.

Anyway...it will be a while before anything actually works. But as with any protocol...I've started the arduous process of getting the pgp packets read, and parsed. Hopefully, the library will be done within a couple of months.

The next thing on my stack is to get bram's bittorrent implemented in native - c as a liberry, and as a java library.

I think between pgp and libbittorrent, bittorrent as a liberry is much more valuable, in general, but I have to respect the integrity of my personal stack :)

Torrential rain was not fun. Bit Torrent, however is. I'd rather be worried about torrential bits than scooping gathering water with a bucket due to poor drainage in my backyard. Which is exactly what I did (going to keep doing?) at periodic intervals, to abate rain water coming too close to the house.

At some point, very soon I'll figure out why water does not go down my drainage pipe.

Anyway, things are always hectic. I set up my wireless network, but I gave in... When I realized I needed a bridge for my appliction due to poor signal strength, at first I wanted to go with HostAP as a solution. However, the only box that I had was the size of a refridgerator, and I feared that I would have to put it in an outside environment. So....I gave in. I got a linksys bridge, and if salted, I could possibly eat it and survive.
Maybe I'm getting old.
Why am I continuously fascinated at the diminishing size and increasing power of p00ters these days? It's a never ending source of amazement, and never sinks in. Anyway, my wireless experiment is working, and not sucking gobs of power, stubbing toes, nor making scraping noises.

What a day. I had to eat turkey just like every other soul in this land, but tomorrow....oh tomorrow.....ohhh loathe tomorrow... I'll have nothing of that. I refuse to shop. I refuse to travel by car. I refuse to buy into the bastardization of Christmas. Well....If you've been reading...I *do* need my wireless cards...one for my future HostAP node and the other for my box...

BUT NO! I STILL WON'T SHOP.

Stay inside, and be not concerned at what lurks out there. Keep your eyes on the CRT and fingers moving. 'Nothing to shop for here, type along.

Ugh...I've been at it all night... My space heater needed an upgrade and it was PAINFUL. Crusty old tower with 32MB ram and a 2x cd rom drive. Installed RH8 through rawrite to a floppy.

*DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT THE GUI INSTALL MODE WITH THIS PUPPY*

Took a long time to install.

I know, I know..you're probably thinking get linux on a floppy or some permutation...great idea...except I *want* all the tools like gcc, etc. :)

Anyway.. Turns out that this distro didn't recognize my ethernet cards, so it was fun!!! (I Had to learn about (reteach myself) all about modprobe all over again. Ah..how I wish I had never had to remember it. Or is that I wish I never forgot it? One of the two...pick your evil.

Ok, the sysadmin hat is almost off...just have to lock her down a little bit more (what ever that means).

Next couple of days hopefully will be about wireless!

Lemme clean up around here! dust bunnies, cables, and keyboards oh my!

Ok, I'm ready to enter into the wonderful world of 802.11. I just got an old laptop that (hopefully) will be able to 1) Dock with the docking station to give me eth0 2) Insert pcimcia 80211 card 3) Install linux and HostAP

It's only got one slot for the PCIMCIA card, so that has to be the wireless cxn. And, from what I've read USB doesn't work with HostAP(yet).

I don't know the level of support that the linux kernel will have for the docking station's ethernet card... I will just have to plug it in, and see whahappa.

You're asking why on Earth don't you just get an access point, or a linksys thingy...I don't know... I'm enamoured at the possibility of not having to actually buy an access point. Those guys (HostAP) did a lot of work, and I'm more than happy to sit, read, and appreciate it. Also...My house is cold, so the bigger the form factor, the better. In fact, I have a circa 1992 pentium FULL TOWER as my NAT/FIREWALL gateway that I use for my Internet connection. It's got two crusty old ISA ethernet devices in it.

The old fan buzz, and heat it gives off make me feel comfortable. I also can't stand putting old hardware out to pasture. With Linux and a NIC, it will always be useful... for something.

Wish me luck..I got thanksgiving weekend to work this all out.

Also, Happy Thanksgiving to all... I hope I have alot of open source people to thank when I get it all working, and even if I can't get the HostAP to work with my laptop from mars because of the land-line martian ethernet docking interface...I still have alot of linux people and open source people to be thankful for.

--josh