From O’Reilly:

named is pronounced “name-dee” and stands for “name server daemon.” BIND is pronounced to rhyme with “kind.” Some creative people have noticed the similarities in the names and choose to mispronounce them “bin-dee” and “named” (like “tamed”).

right. so I got this today when trying to untar all of my academic work from an archive: ericgar@babbage extusb$ tar -xjf columbia-2007-10-31.tar.bzip2 You can use the `bzip2recover' program to attempt to recover data from undamaged sections of corrupted files. tar: Child returned status 2 tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

ericgar@babbage extusb$ bzip2recover columbia-2007-10-31.tar.bzip2 bzip2recover 1.0.4: extracts blocks from damaged .bz2 files. bzip2recover: searching for block boundaries ... bzip2recover: I/O error reading `columbia-2007-10-31.tar.bzip2', possible reason follows. bzip2recover: Input/output error bzip2recover: warning: output file(s) may be incomplete.

I was thinking, “Well, data loss sucks.”

But it turns out the underlying filesystem was mounted read-write on a read-only mount point. D’oh. I feel like tar and bzip2recover could have told me that off the bat.

My websites demand Swedish:

So really, that’s not a $190 flight:

I didn’t realize email could come without wires:

Not a traditional Nun:

One of these is not like the others:

Really useful tags:

Those of you who know me know that I don’t use Gmail for a variety of reasons. But, I know you do. Here’s looking at you, kid.

When you go to http://gmail.com to login, your browser greets you with a happy “this webpage is secure” notification.

And you sign in. Your username and password is sent using an encryption technology called SSL/TLS so that people who see your information go by can’t actually read it.

*

Google then sends you, over the same encrypted connection, a delicious cookie to identify you so that you don’t have to sign in every time you request something from them.

This is all standard practice. But then Google does something sneaky. It redirects you to the non-encrypted version of Gmail.

All subsequent information you retrieve is sent over the internet unencrypted, available for any eavesdropper to see.

*

This is particularly important when you’re browsing over an untrusted network, like the wireless network at Starbucks, the connection you happen to use on a park bench, or even my wireless network when you come to my apartment (where I may or may not log packets).

Now, we all know that you don’t want your correspondence with the new half-orc you met at the Friday Dungeons and Dragons session to be known to the world.

Worse than anyone being able to see everything you send back and forth to Google, the eavesdropper could intercept the delicious cookie, install it in their browser, and impersonate you. They would have complete access to all of your information at Google.

There is a simple fix to avoid this potential embarrassment, however cute the half-orc may in fact be. Instead of going to http://gmail.com, use https://gmail.google.com which will encrypt everything you send and receive to and from Google.

Remember, your love life is counting on it.

* “Alice” is the name used for the unassuming victim of computer security. “Eve” is the typical name for the “eavesdropper.”

Picture of happy baby by cnbyates. Picture of cookie baby by Jason Trom. Picture of Eva Longoria by steature. Picture of Orc Donny by cristajoy42 All are licensed under CC Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic.

From this week’s “The Look Book” in New York Magazine:

Tell me about your look. A lot of it is influenced by Japanese street fashion, but mostly I wear band gear. My favorite band is Glassjaw. What are they like? It’s hard to explain them, but it’s music that you want to hear when you break up with the love of your life. Very emotional. Very angry. Honestly, I’ve never had a love of my life, but if I did, that’s what I would listen to when we broke up.

I just look forward to the album from United Nations, the collaboration project between Geoff Rickly (lead singer of Thursday) and Daryl Palumbo (lead singer of Glassjaw, among other bands). Then my life will be complete.

… for giving me a $24 student loan.

At least it probably bought a bottle or two of wine and is contributing to my credit score.