Make a calendar entry for 21 AUG 2017

A total solar eclipse will cover much of North America as shown on this map.  Hopefully the weather will be clear where I am.  Just have to figure out what kind of photo equipment I'll need.

Travel Destination: Czech Republic

An awesome photo from Prachov Rocks, Czech Republic. 

Cheap stratum 1 NTP server

A cool project for an IT person or someone with a Raspberry Pi: build a small stratum one NTP server.

Enterprise NTP servers with GPS modules can cost thousands.  A Raspberry Pi based NTP server is a small form factor inexpensive way to get GPS based NTP time.  Other good uses, especially at small sites, remote offices, or co-location facilities:

• DHCP
• Out-of-band/management network
• Performance monitoring, troubleshooting, packet capture

Standing on the Shoulders of a Wiseass

The phrase "standing on the shoulder's of giants" has a long and interesting history, generally taken to mean building on past successes of others.

One of the most famous uses of this quote is by Sir Isaac Newton  to Robert Hooke:

What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

While reading  Is God a Mathematician by Mario Livio, I came across an explanation for this quote I hadn't heard before.  Newton, know for his rivalries and disputes, may be been taking a swipe Hooke's stature and severe stoop.  The Wikipedia article on the quote seems to refute this by indicating that Hooke and Newton were on good terms, at least when this letter was written.

On Responsibility

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.


Herbert Spencer

Packet Capture Manipulation Tools

Haven't had a chance to play with them; putting them here so I don't forget:

TCPRePlay : UNIX tools for analyzing and manipulating pcap files
TraceWrangler: A windows program for manipulating pcapng files (such as anonimzing)

An oldy, but goodie.  This one I've many times
TCPtrace: a UNIX tool for analyzing and graphing TCP flows.

Birth Stars

The Joint Astronomy Centre at the University of Hawaii will map out a star whose light started traveling the month you were born. 

Amazingly, it can take thousands to millions of years for a photon to make it from the core of a sun to the surface, depending on many factors including density.  Once at the surface, outside the dense star, it travels at the speed of light.
Put in your birthday, and you can find a star whose light started its journey about the same time you did.  Visit the sight often, because the location of the star will change as you age.

Converting Virtualbox machines to ESXi

Virtualbox is an open source virtualization platform from Oracle that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Its a free and easy way to run machines on existing operating systems.  ESXi is a bare-metal hypervisor from VMWare, available for free with limited features.

Virtual machines in one platform can not directly be run in the other.  This set of instructions from Sysxperts explains how to convert a Virtualbox formatted VM to something that can run in ESXi.

1. Used ‘Export Appliance’ option from File Menu in VirtualBox
2. Uploaded the vmdk file to one of my ESX datastores /vmfs/volumes/local_ds1/DC1
3. opened up putty session to ESX 4 u1 server and navigated to the datastore /vmfs/volumes/local_ds1/DC1
4. [root@esxlab2 DC1]#vmkfstools -i DC1.vmdk -d thin DC1clone.vmdk
5. Created new Virtual Machine and utilized option to connect to existing storage and pointed to my DC1clone.vmdk
6. Deleted original DC1.vmdk to clean up

Ethernet continues its inexorable growth

Recently, the IEEE announced the formation of a study group to look into how to make 400 Gbps ethernet work.  Good timing on a recent Bell Labs announcement Not only have they demonstrated 400 Gbps transmission, but it was done over a distance of 12,800km!! The article doesn't specifically mention, but strongly implies, that this distance was un-amplified which is simply amazing.

This is being announced as 100Gbps adoption is ramping up, both commercially (CenturyLink and Verizon) and in the research networks (Internet2 & ESnet and OARnet as examples).

Different pluggables for 100G ethernet.

Future of High Performance Computing

Excellent read on the state and future of High Performance Computing:

Why we need Exascale and why we won’t get there by 2020

Free IT books for download

Not much more to say....here's the site:

IT eBooks Free Download

Watch porn

Most automatic watches beat about 4 times per second, but this fast ticker from L.U Chopard is about twice as fast at 8Hz.

Faster tick rate means that the watch is more accurate because disturbances will have less of an effect.

This has been tricky to accomplish because it requires twice the power reserve from the mainspring and will cause more wear and tear on the components.

hmm...tasty

Pics from a few years back of a Bird of Prey I saw while walking to lunch

Online LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language and the de-facto standard for writing research papers, especially where special formatting (such as math and chemical formulas) is needed.  It has a pretty steep learning curve, and if you don't really need to use it, its hard to justify learning for occasional use (or at least, that's how I've always felt about it). 

Enter WriteLaTeX, an online, real-time LaTex editor and collaboration site.

Fuzzycast

File under: things I wish I had time to play with AND things that should be used more widely.

Fuzzycast is a multicast distribution system that allows for pause, rewind, fast forward of Video on Demand (VoD) content.  Multicast is useful for one-to-many distribution of content, but generally must be watched in real time (as it streams) by the clients. 

Fuzzycast addresses these problems.

Two stories from the "I must be insane" front

PEPCO, the power utility that serves the District of Columbia, Prince George's County (MD), and most of Montgomery County (MD) is being forced to offer non-RFID smart meters to customers.  The concerns, as further explained in a previously written article, is that the meters emit radio frequencies.  So, the concern isn't about the couple of hundred volts and amps that is coursing through the meter, to power things that generate radio frequencies (really, how many homes in MoCo do you think are WiFi free?), rather, the concern is about a few milliwatts originated by a device on the outside of a house.


Stop the Insanity!!!

If the concerns arre about the privacy of the information generated by a smart meter, or its security, then I understand.  Sure, there's a lot of work to be done to ensure these devices are not attack vectors or are not leaking information.  But if someone says they don't want one because they are concerned about RF?  My answer: disconnect the service if RF is that much of a concern.




And in the bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you moment, let's turn to AIG, the giant insurance company that was bailed out by the US government a few years back.  Seems that the money we lent them, the money they couldn't get on the open market, the money that was needed to avoid bankruptcy, was "too expensive"- we charged them too much interest.  It is considering joining a lawsuit saying that they weren't treated fairly.  The Board says it has a fiduciary responsibility to consider the lawsuit.

I suppose they all live in houses with smart meters.

Regular Expressions in Python

Good overview of regular expressions in Python, especially if you are familiar with Perl regular expressions.