in the end you'll be surprised, then you'll start to realize

203 meters

2009-08-27T19:45:26Z

203 meters
Originally uploaded by sneak

+1 (800) 403-1126 / +1 (312) 361-0355

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-07-29T00:29:00

2009-07-29T00:29:58Z

The best mix CD I ever made:

Halcyon (7" Version) by Orbital
C'mere by Interpol
How Long Must I Be Your Slave by John Lee Hooker
I Will Run After You by Frank Black
Make Love by Daft Punk
Shades Of Jae by Moodymann
Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying by Belle & Sebastian
The Blues Are Still Blue by Belle & Sebastian
Honeycomb by Frank Black
Amo Bishop Roden by Boards of Canada
In a Beautiful Place out in the Country by Boards of Canada
Do Not Break by Ellen Allien & Apparat
You Are My Sun by Vitalic
The Past by Vitalic
West End Girls (DJ Hell Remix) by Pet Shop Boys
Let's Go To Bed by The Cure
Sister Isabel by Frank Black
Where Would I Be by Cake
Girl,Boy Song (NLS Mix) by Aphex Twin
Starter by Cardigans
Cactus by The Pixies
All My Loving by Beatles
The World Has Turned And Left Me Here by Weezer
So Far Away by Dire Straits
Heliosphan by Aphex Twin
Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust
Rock'n Me by Steve Miller Band
Take A Chance (Vocal Version) by Mr. Flagio
A Little Help From My Friends by Beatles
Two-Headed Boy (Live at Terrastock II Festival in San Francisco) by Neutral Milk Hotel

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-06-15T18:00:00

2009-06-15T18:17:39Z

Dear Apple,

Why is it that when my iPhone is connected to my Mac via USB and a call or SMS arrives, the only interface for taking the call or message is on the tiny screen/keyboard/speaker/mic on the phone, when directly physically connected to the telephone is a computer with a 1920x1200 24" display, full keyboard, and USB stereo headset?

Shouldn't I be able to see who's calling on my screen? Shouldn't I be able to use the BT headset paired to my mac, or my USB headset that's plugged in for Skype? Shouldn't I be able to reply to text messages using my full keyboard?

I mean, hell, if I plug the new iPod shuffle headphones (the ones with the volume control in the cord) into my Mac, I can change my system volume - why is the integration with the telephone features so poor? There's a third party app called BluePhone Elite for OSX that does this perfectly over Bluetooth, but only with non-Apple phones like Motorolas (apparently the iPhone doesn't support the right features for BPE to work with it).

Seriously guys, some basement outfit with a copy of Xcode is beating you at your own game. Get with it.

Love,
Jeffrey Paul

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-06-11T19:13:00

2009-06-11T19:19:10Z

What would happen in the United States if every two days, for no readily apparent reason, a full Boeing 727 carrying 189 people, exploded into a fireball in the sky killing everyone onboard?

What would happen after the first week, after the first 576 people died? What would happen after the first month, when 2,800 families were mourning?

What about six months later, with twenty thousand dead? What would CNN be running? What would Congress be doing? What would be in the hearts and minds of the country?

The punchline: Over 40,000 people a year die in automobile accidents in the United States. That's more than 109 a day, or a Boeing 727 full of passengers every 41 hours, or another September 11th death toll (3,017 people) every two weeks.

Be safe out there.

-jp

PS: 17,900 of these, which is about 40% of the total for 2006, were a result of someone being drunk.

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-04-15T13:59:00

2009-04-15T13:59:58Z

I know way more English grammar than I could possibly explain in words.

Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarity_item

I need to take some time and study the linguistic terms for my own language in the hopes that I'll be less confused while trying to learn others.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-04-13T11:13:00

2009-04-13T11:20:03Z

This code appears in almost every one of my perl scripts, saved here for posterity.

use Sys::Syslog qw(:standard :macros);

our $SYSLOG_OPEN = 0;
our $PRINT_LOG = $ENV{PRINT_LOG} || 0;
our $PROGRAM_NAME = 'stupidwhateverd';

sub dout {
        unless($SYSLOG_OPEN) {
                openlog($PROGRAM_NAME,'ndelay,pid',LOG_DAEMON);
                $SYSLOG_OPEN = 1;
        }
        my $msg = shift;
        my $pri = shift || LOG_INFO;
        foreach my $line (split(/\n+/,$msg)) {
                syslog( $pri , '%s', $line);
                print STDERR "*** " . $PROGRAM_NAME . "[" . $$ . "]: " .
                        $line . "\n" if $PRINT_LOG;
        }
}

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-04-04T03:09:00

2009-04-04T03:18:27Z

So now I'm in Berlin, in my new space, working nonstop. It's Friday night and there are a half-dozen clubs packed to the gills here, all playing fantastic music until well after sunrise.

What am I doing? Configuring OSPF to distribute IPv6 routes and listening to an album that the review for which on Amazon contains the following excerpt:

"Best listened to while on a road trip, or tramping about with a rucksack. Use of this album anywhere near a discotheque will likely result in death by culture shock. "

My life is so weird. But it's way more awesome than it's been in a long, long time.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-03-26T16:40:00

2009-03-26T16:42:56Z

This is a paragraph from David Foster Wallace's story "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again":

I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I'm starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life's sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it's my own choices that'll lock me in, it seems unavoidable -- If I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-03-23T19:51:00

2009-03-23T20:06:16Z

Okay, so today's been my first full work day with the new unibody 15" Macbook Pro.

Pros: Everything. This may be the best laptop ever made. The screen is gorgeous, the keyboard is fantastic, the build quality is impeccable. It's also really fast.

Cons: The fucking screen hinge. Fuck.

Who else uses their laptop flat in bed? If you're anything like me, working a majority of the hours you're awake, it's probable that you do. With a pillow under my head, I bend my knees, put the laptop-bottom-half basically vertical, and open the screen something about 30° short of 180 (that would be the screen being completely vertical as well, the whole laptop open flat with top edge pointing at the ceiling). This was right at about the maximum opening angle of the old non-unibody c2d MBPs.

Well, that worked fine on the old ones, works fine on my Toughbook, works fine on most computers. The hinge on the 15" unibody MBPs doesn't allow for this, though - it opens wide enough, but the new glass panel that makes the top half (screen part) look so cool also adds enough weight that it overpowers the hinge. If you use your computer like this, the moment the center of gravity of the screen takes an excursion past the shadow of the base... it falls down.

Solution? Lower the knees, reducing the thigh angle, reducing the keyboard angle to something less than vertical, and thus keeping the laptop screen angle ramrod straight, top edge pointed at the ceiling. This, unfortunately, moves the plane of the screen farther away from my eyes, which, to me, is now quite suboptimal.

It's annoying as fuck. There's even a petition: http://www.fixthehinge.com/

According to this blog post, the 17" unibody MBP doesn't suffer from the same problem, as its hinges are stronger, which would make sense - the screen on that thing must weigh a ton (comparatively). I have read, elsewhere, though, that the 17" does suffer from this same problem. I was going to buy one (a 17" unibody MBP, as I am simply borrowing this one at the moment) next month, but I'm going to have to get a definitive answer on this before I do.

UPDATE: Well, apparently, just tilting my knees down is insufficient... because then I'm looking up at the display from a lower angle (remember, the top edge is now parallel with the ceiling plane to keep it from falling down) and the colors are all off. The only solution, short of inserting something between the hinge and the body to keep it open, is sitting up at a sharper angle. And I'm specifically avoiding buying any pillows until the first to save having to move them. :(
-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-03-21T16:56:00

2009-03-21T15:57:16Z

X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.718 required=5 tests=[AWL=-0.881, BAYES_00=-2.599,
        HTML_MESSAGE=0.001, MISSING_SUBJECT=1.762, SPF_PASS=-0.001]
Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:39:40 +0100
Subject:
From: Megan Baker <REDACTED>
To: Jeffrey Paul <sneak@datavibe.net>

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/dining/21sugar.html?hp
well shit

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-03-11T22:00:00

2009-03-11T22:00:19Z

Best graffiti ever (Kreuzberg, Berlin)

2009-03-11T21:08:16Z

Best graffiti ever (Kreuzberg, Berlin)
Originally uploaded by sneak

online banking FAIL

2009-03-11T13:17:52Z

Thanks, Chase.

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-03-04T16:50:00

2009-03-04T16:50:52Z

How do you make a 3ware 8xxx series pci sata raid card make arrays bigger than 2TB?

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-03-01T15:00:00

2009-03-01T15:01:04Z

Fucking hell, 2GB DDR3 SODIMMs are now $30 after rebates (and only $50 before). One of these days I'm going to not pay attention to hardware for a year or two and computers are going to be free.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-03-01T11:06:00

2009-03-01T11:06:37Z

I'm probably incorporating my consultancy this week. What should I name my company?

(Seriously.)

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-27T13:21:00

2009-02-27T13:23:40Z

From http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/02/26/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4831751.shtml :

Attorney General Eric Holder was busy announcing the capture of more than 50 alleged members of the notorious Sinaloa Cartel yesterday when he unwittingly stepped into a larger debate about gun control.

Responding to a reporter's question on weapons' regulations, Holder said, "Well, as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum."

...

but, then!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to Holder's remarks during her weekly press conference by stating, “On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now. I think it's clear the Bush administration didn’t do that.”

How is it I find myself agreeing with Nancy Pelosi?

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-26T09:06:00

2009-02-26T09:08:15Z

The only way to disable connection tracking in Linux is to either unload the ip_conntrack module, or, if running a monolithic kernel, rebuild the kernel without CONFIG_NF_CONNTRACK.

This seems retarded to me. There's a sysctl for setting the maximum number of conntrack entries - why isn't there a sysctl for turning the damn thing off?

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-26T03:57:00

2009-02-26T03:58:10Z

I am really, really, really surprised that in the over three years this picture has been on the internet, nobody's ever shopped a cock into it:

http://flickr.com/photos/sneak/23859433/in/set-620064/

Y'all slackin'.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-26T03:24:00

2009-02-26T03:25:00Z

OMGWTFBBQ: waffles invites open. send me an email ASAP at sneak@datavibe.net from the email address you want to use for your account if you know how to behave on a "private" tracker and love music.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-24T01:58:00

2009-02-24T02:00:32Z

Last week, I gained basic proficiency in operation of the M4 macro processing language, as well as my M4 carbine (actually an AR15, as I am not yet willing to deal with the cost and hassle involved in title 3 firearms and/or filing a form 4). I wrote a set of m4 macros that output varying dns data in tinydns format based on service availability, and kept a 2-3" grouping at 20 yards using only iron sights (standing without support).

I am amused at the coincidence of this.

Oh, I now have five full 30 round magazines, too.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-24T01:30:00

2009-02-24T01:34:20Z

Things will shortly get completely out of hand
I can feel it in the rotten air tonight
In the tips of my fingers
In the skin on my face
In the weak last gasp of the evening's dying light
In the way those eyes I've always loved illuminate this place
Like a trashcan fire in a prison cell
Like the searchlights in the parking lots of hell
I will walk down to the end with you
If you will come all the way down with me

Apparently I have discovered The Mountain Goats. They are basically Cake crossed with Neutral Milk Hotel, which makes them amazing. Also, their album Tallahassee perfectly fits my mood this month.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-24T00:03:00

2009-02-24T00:07:14Z

Puppet class for authoritative djbdns (tinydns) nameserver, with the dns records (data file) in the puppet module.

Puppet restarting from cron every 2 minutes re-runs the catalog, thereby updating the data file if any changes have occurred on the puppetmaster. This can be used to perform dns failover capabilities with appropriate TTLs. I decided that this was an easier way of increasing the frequency of catalog updates as opposed to changing stuff in puppet.conf.

Bonus points for adding "cd /etc/puppet/modules/auth-nameserver/files && m4 data.m4 > data && svn commit -m autocommit data" to your automatic "svn update" script on your puppetmaster.

class auth-nameserver {

        package { "djbdns":
                ensure => installed
        }

        package { "daemontools":
                ensure => installed
        }

        service { "svscan":
                enable => true,
                ensure => running,
                require => Package[djbdns]
        }

        $tinydns_dir = "/var/tinydns"

        user { "tinydns":
                ensure => 'present',
                home => '/nonexistent',
                shell => '/sbin/nologin',
                before => Exec["create-tinydns-servicedir"]
        }

        user { "tinylog":
                ensure => 'present',
                home => '/nonexistent',
                shell => '/sbin/nologin',
                before => Exec["create-tinydns-servicedir"]
        }

        exec { "create-tinydns-servicedir":
                command => "/usr/bin/tinydns-conf tinydns tinylog $tinydns_dir $ipaddress_eth0",
                creates => $tinydns_dir,
                require => [ Package[djbdns], User[tinydns], User[tinylog] ],
                before => File["$tinydns_dir/root/data"]
        }

        file { "$tinydns_dir/root/data":
                alias => tinydns-datafile,
                owner => root,
                group => root,
                mode => 644,
                require => [ Package[djbdns], Exec[create-tinydns-servicedir] ],
                source => "puppet:///auth-nameserver/data",
                before => Exec["update-dns-db"]
        }

        exec { "update-dns-db":
                command => "cd $tinydns_dir/root && /usr/bin/tinydns-data",
                subscribe => File["$tinydns_dir/root/data"],
                require => File[tinydns-datafile],
                refreshonly => true,
                before => File["/service/tinydns"]
        }

        file { "/service/tinydns":
                ensure => $tinydns_dir
        }

        file { "/etc/cron.d/restart-puppet.cron":
                owner   => root,
                group   => root,
                mode    => 0600,
                content => "*/2 * * * *  root /etc/init.d/puppet restart
"
        }
}

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-23T23:14:00

2009-02-23T23:15:50Z

Last year, I earned $45,099.54 that various governmental agencies conspired to remove from my paycheck before it was disbursed to me.

At least I got my money's worth.

-jp

sneakatdatavibe @ 2009-02-23T22:48:00

2009-02-23T22:48:55Z

use strict;
use warnings qw( all );
use WWW::Mechanize;

sub send_sms {
        my ($to,$msg) = @_;
        return unless $to =~ /^[0-9]{10}$/;
        $msg =~ s/[\r\n\s]+/ /g;
        my $url = 'https://web.mms.msg.t-mobile.com/'.
                'smsportal/index.html?act=smsc&locale=en';
        my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
        $mech->get($url);
        $mech->submit_form(
               form_number => 2,
               fields    => {
                        msgTermsUse => 'on',
                        sender  => 'web',
                        receiver => $to,
                        text    => substr($msg,0,139),
                },
               button    => 'Send'
           );
        return 1 if $mech->content =~ /Your message has been delivered/m;
        return;
}

1;

(for some reason, ${num}@tmomail.net isn't working.)

-jp