LeoNET Is Back!
As some of you may have noticed, my server has been down a lot lately. This is because the Dell Dimension XPS T550 that this site (and my IRC server) had been running on died, after 8 years of service. I suspect the processor started going, because gcc would have internal errors.
This week, I finally decided to shell out the money for a new server. I got a Dell PowerEdge 1650 (Dual 1.4 Ghz P3, 2GB RAM, 2x73GB SCSI disks and RAID) off eBay and put Fedora Core 6 on it. Then I restored the data from the old box onto this one (which took some work as the hard drive was a little bit hosed on the old box) and here we are. I will be updating this much more often now and the uptime should be good now.
Stay tuned for pictures of the new server!
Linux LDAP Authentication
If you have a decent number of Linux machines and you want them all to share the same authentication scheme (allow a user to login on each of the machines), what do you do?
One of the best solutions is LDAP. LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and it is basically a database of user information. You can use LDAP as a global address book of sorts, and you can also use it to store user information, such as usernames and password. Getting LDAP configured on Linux can be challenging, and I have been looking for a good guide on how to do it. The problem is that setting it up is slightly different on every Linux distro, because of differences in how each distro has PAM set up. However, I have found a great guide, that makes setting up LDAP far easier. If you get authentication with LDAP working, you'll never look back.
Computer Programmer Job Security 101: Write Unmaintainable Code
You always hear news of tech companies having lay offs and firing thousands of workers. Don't want to be one of them? You have to make it so that you are irreplacable at your job. How do you do that? Make yourself the only person that can maintain your code. Here is a great guide on how to do this.The guide has some great suggestions, such as "Make sure that every method does a little bit more (or less) than its name suggests. As a simple example, a method named isValid(x) should as a side effect convert x to binary and store the result in a database."When I did a lot of C++ programming in High School, I often made my code difficult, if not impossible to follow, because if my teacher didn't know what the code did, but knew it worked, he wouldn't bother grading it in great depth, but instead would give me a quick A.
What if Klingons ran NPR? Hilarity is what.
Do you ever find yourself watching some fascinating program on PBS only to be interupted by their annoying anchors begging for money? Wouldn't it be so much better if Klingons ran PBS? Someone apparently thought so. Instead of getting some lame NPR handbag as a present for donating, you would get "a cask of blood wine delivered on the anniversary of your Rite of Ascension". The anchors would also have great pitch lines, like "It is without honor to listen and not pledge." Maybe I'm a nerd but thinking about this is just so hilarious to me.
Zooomr – Like Flickr but better
I just recently found Zooomr, a photo sharing website that is like Flickr, but it uses the Google Maps API so you can 'geotag' your photos and search for photos taken in a specific area. Sadly New Jersey doesn't have a lot of great photos taken in it.
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- Federal Prosecutors Drop Lance Armstrong Investigation: http://t.co/JCiBx9FC
- RT @cnnbrk: Federal prosecutors: Lance Armstrong doping case closed, no charges to be filed http://t.co/F8rzvQH2
- RT @AletheiaHenry: JOBS #Obama2012 http://t.co/qZtCr4sa
- Why does the Mac Remote Desktop client constantly crash? To remind me how shitty Windows is even when I'm RDPing into it?
- RT @jaketapper: On NPR @davidaxelrod says Romney keeps leaving out "'til selfish gain no longer stain/the banner of the free" from Ameri ...
