I’m currently reading Christian Benvenuti’s excellently written Understanding Linux Network Internals from O’Reilly which is helping to shore up my knowledge about how the networking stack is implemented in Linux. It’s a fantastic read so far, on course to match Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love, one of my all-time favorite books.

The following paragraph from Benvenuti’s book really made me step back and take a look at the bigger picture:

A device driver can also disable the egress queue before a transmission (to prevent the kernel from generating another transmission request on the device), and re-enable it only if there is enough free memory on the NIC; if not, the device asks for an interrupt that allows it to resume transmission at a later time. Here is an example of this logic, taken from the el3_start_xmit routine, which the drivers/net/3c509.c driver installs as its hard_start_xmit function in its net_device structure...

That passage is just brilliant. Count the occurrences of jargon there!

I guess i should read more arXiv papers to better understand how much larger the world actually is.

Some things around the internet today:

• The Ten Worst Muppets - I honestly don't know all of the Muppets, but as a geek and someone who used to wear sweatervests, I resent that Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is listed as number eight. Dr. Honeydew has inspired generations of once-normal children to aspire to be inventors, engineers, and wear lab coats.

  Dr. Honeydew in action:

  Amusingly, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew’s archnemesis, as shown above, lives on in Rob Dobi’s recent acquisition.

• Rep. Peter King (R-NY) Wants Military Tribunal For Plane Terror Suspect - Ergo Peter King only ever wants the Constitution applied when he deems it fit and proper. That clause has never been included in that document, no matter how much posturing politicians wanted it.
• XBMC 9.11 came out today and looks super awesome. Congrats to the XBMC team! I'm readying my box for it now.

Wednesday is Thursday (and Dillinger Escape Plan, and United Nations(!), and Glassjaw(!)). I’m super excited, especially after this post from Thursday:

thursdayband: Thinking up some surprises for the holiday set list! ;-)

I seriously have to finish an entire day of work with this anticipation?