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It's Just this Little Chromium Switch Here

Weblogging and commentary by Chip Rosenthal

Terra Toys Resurfaces

Submitted by chip on Wed, 28-Apr-2004 - 6:46 pm
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We've watched the growing gentrification of South Congress consume those places that created its character. The saddest news of all was reported earlier this year, when it was announced that Terra Toys would be vacating their premises. The question everybody wanted to know is would they relocate elsewhere or be gone for good?

While driving home tonight I saw a happy sight. At the strip mall at the northwest corner of Anderson Ln. and Burnett Rd., I saw a store being remodeled with a big Terra Toys sign out front.

It's great to see they've found a home. This move is particularly symbolic for me. I lived in South Austin for over a dozen years and never expected I'd move north of the river. I did just beginning of this year. In fact, I'm living just down the road from the new Terra Toys location. So, I'd like to welcome them to the hood.

Fresh Air and Wi-Fi

Submitted by chip on Wed, 28-Apr-2004 - 3:09 pm
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I'm currently sitting in the Council Committee for Telecommunications Infrastructure meeting. Jay Stone of Austin Parks and Recreation Department just announced that the city, in cooperation with a number of local organizations, will begin offering free wireless Internet access in a number of parks.

Auditorium Shores and Republic Square, the parks selected for initial service, are schedule to go live May 18. Brush Square and Woolridge Square are next to follow.

One thing I'm a liittle confused about is that Woolridge Square is already supposed to be lit by signal originating from the Austin History Center. I hope the parks and library folks are coordinating on this.

Wireless Shenanigans at the Hideout

Submitted by chip on Tue, 27-Apr-2004 - 2:40 pm
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Up until now, it's been a frustrating afternoon here at The Hideout. I was sitting in the back trying to use my laptop to do some work online. Wireless connectivity on the laptop was drifting in and out, breaking connections on all my remote sessions. It was terribly hard to get work done.

The situation was perplexing, because I was seeing a strong Wi-Fi signal and I was connected to the network (with address and default route assignments). The problem is that I'd be working for a while, then suddenly all my packets started getting dropped. If I tried to reset the interface I'd lose those assignments and the network wouldn't let me back on (DHCP failed).

I asked the server if other people were reporting network problems. She said, "You know, people seem to have all sorts of problems at that table. It seems to work better up front."

I moved to a table up front and reset the network interface. Everything came up fine, and it's been that way since.

Once I looked at the configuration it all became obvious: the Hideout is running multiple networks. They must have one in the theater (or some other meeting area) that is closed, and another in the shop that is open to the public. When I was sitting out back my laptop would hop between the open and closed networks, depending on which signal seemed stronger at the time. When I moved to the front it stayed locked to the public network.

So, wireless visitors to The Hideout should be advised, take care that you don't lock onto the wrong network. If you sit out back, you may need to force a connection onto the open network. Here are the details I saw on the two networks:

open network: channel 6, 2.437GHz, ESSID "hideout"
closed network: channel 11, 2.462GHz, ESSID "THEATRE LOCKDOWN"

The management of The Hideout probably ought to post a sign. I'll forward this article to them.

Movable Type MT-Blacklist Hack: Rebuild after Ping

Submitted by chip on Sun, 25-Apr-2004 - 2:51 pm
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I recently modified my blog to put the trackback information on the entry page, thus eliminating the separate pop-up. On a stock Movable Type setup this presents a problem. When Movable Type receives a trackback ping it rebuilds the necessary index pages, but it doesn't rebuild the entry page. This means that although the blog main index page may show that a ping was received for an entry, when you go to read that entry the trackback may not be listed. A manual rebuild of the entry page would be required before that trackback was listed.

Phil Ringnalda has published a note that describes how to force an entry rebuild when a trackback ping is received. The note describes a modification to the ping method in the lib/MT/App/Trackback.pm file.

Unfortunately, if you use the popular MT-Blacklist add-on, this method is overridden. For MT-Blacklist v1.63, I had to place the modification in the extlib/jayallen/MTBlPing.pm file.

I made one other change. Normally, Movable Type calls for an index rebuild after the trackback ping is processed. Phil added a second rebuild: an entry rebuild with dependency rebuild disabled. I combined them all into a single rebuild: an entry rebuild with dependency rebuild enabled. I thought that may be a little more efficient, which is a concern since all this is done while the client is waiting for the trackback ping to be processed.

Here is a patch with this change.

Happy Happy Waffle House

Submitted by chip on Fri, 23-Apr-2004 - 2:51 am
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Only twice have I begged my girlfriend for something. I begged her to get a cat. She refused, saying maybe someday. I'm still begging her—been at it for months. She won't give in. She's a tough cookie.

The only other time I begged was last year, when we were driving I-10 out of Louisiana. We passed a Waffle House. I had to stop. I pleaded with her, refusing to take "no" for an answer. Eventually her hard shell cracked and she had to relent. Thus began my love affair with the Waffle House.

Comment Author Email Addresses Disabled

Submitted by chip on Wed, 21-Apr-2004 - 1:36 pm
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Entity encoded address obfuscation is a technique to protect email addresses on web pages from harvesting by spammers. Some months back, I posted a widely circulated article that demonstrates this technique is not effective. This technique, unfortunately, is the one that Movable Type uses to protect email addresses in comments.

Today, I finally got around to doing something I should have done months ago. As of now, email addresses of comment authors will not be displayed.

That is, I changed the Movable Type template from <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect="1"$> (which performs entity encoded obfuscation on email addresses) to <$MTCommentAuthorLink show_email="0"$> (which suppresses email addresses completely).

Please consider this an interim measure. I'd like to restore email addresses, so long as they can be spam protected effectively. Until I've got a method implemented to do that, I thought it best to remove addresses entirely.

Also, please accept my apologies for not doing this sooner.

KNVA Broadcaster of Bigotry

Submitted by chip on Tue, 20-Apr-2004 - 1:19 pm
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In the wee hours of this morning, I happened to be playing channel clickey with the television remote. I switched onto KNVA channel 54 and saw one of the most repulsive things I've seen on television in some time. They apparently sell that time slot to a TV preacher. He was carrying on with a terrible message of homophobic hate.

He wasn't just guiding his flock, but was preaching a message to judge and vilify others. He wasn't just condemning people, but entire branches of religions that disagreed with him.

KNVA, in theory, has been granted a license to broadcast in the public interest. Unfortunately, public interest seems to be redefined as anything you can get paid for. I wish the FCC would do something about this, but they probably are too busy making sure Bono doesn't say fuck and Janet Jackson doesn't flash another titty.

I contacted the KNVA program director to express my displeasure. I hope that if this continues, they hear from other people too.

Apr 21 followup: The name of the bigoted preacher I saw is Arnold Murray.

CATool&trade; 1.3.1 Released

Submitted by chip on Mon, 19-Apr-2004 - 10:18 pm
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Today, version 1.3.1 of the CATool private certificate authority and X.509 certificate management system was released. I'm the lead developer, so this has been my focus of attention as of late.

The 1.2.x series proved remarkably stable. That is, it did until DBD::mysql version 2 started getting widespread use. Even though it's been out since 2001, many Linux distributions continued shipping version 1.2 for some time after. A change in release 2.1006 (automatic reconnect was disabled) broke compatibility with a lot of perl programs that used MySQL. So, an update was needed.

While in there, I added the first significant new feature: the ability to import certificates generated by other systems. Add-on enhancements can be a test of the original design. Botches in the original design concept often show up here. If, however, the original database schema, object classes, and function libraries are well conceived, then the better the chances you can cleanly add new capabilities.

I'm pleased to say that I got it mostly right. I had to do a little backtracking and tweak a couple of database columns, but otherwise it all went in nicely.

So, if you need to setup a private certificate authority for intranet servers, client authentication, or other applications, I recommend looking into the CATool package.

Cool Tools Community Goes Live

Submitted by chip on Thu, 15-Apr-2004 - 1:59 pm
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Cool Tools for Change graphicLink: Cool Tools for Change Community Forum.

Last month, the LBJ School sponsored a Cool Tools for Change workshop. This workshop brought together people from the technology and non-profit sectors, to explore ways organizations can use some of the exciting new low-to-no cost online tools.

The workshop gave me an awareness of the gap between those who understand these technologies and those who could benefit from them. I fear that showcasing those tools, in some ways, may have been more frustrating than helpful. There already is some awareness of these tools in non-profits. What's often lacking is the resources and skills to evaluate and implement them.

That's why I'm glad to see a forum has just been set up. This could offer an opportunity to continue the discussions that were only started at the workshop. Maybe it will become the needed resource to connect up those with knowledge of these tools and those who could benefit from them.

Wireless Etiquette in Meetings

Submitted by chip on Wed, 14-Apr-2004 - 10:28 pm
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The Austin Municipal Building has been lit up, so tonight was the first Telecommunications Commission meeting where I had wireless Internet access.

At tonight's meeting we had a number of presentations, from organizations such as the River City Youth Foundation and the Austin Community Access Center. I found that the presentations were enhanced by Internet availability, although I have some concerns about the propriety of using that access during presentations.

When, for instance, Mona Gonzalez discussed the River City program, I was able to visit Mapquest and see exactly where the center is located. When she discussed support for the Computer Learning Lab, I was able to visit their web page and see who else sponsors the program.

Similarly, when John Villarreal discussed ACAC policy, I was able to visit their web site and view their posted information.

The net allowed me to get more out of the presentations. It may have appeared, however, that I was only paying half attention. Some presenters understandably may take offense at this. If I was the one giving the presentation, I might be bothered seeing people staring at a laptop screen instead paying attention to me.

I'm not sure what to do about this. It would be wrong to stop doing online research during presentations. On-line access allows me to get even more out of the presentations.

I could say something like, "Don't mind my web surfing, I'm really paying attention to you." That seems terribly lame.

I hope that with time, this becomes less of a concern. I suspect as Internet access becomes ubiquitous, people will become used to this, so online research during meetings will become less offensive.