Simple Proxy with Squid, SSH, and a VPS
August 15, 2009
Sometimes, while at home browsing the web, I’ll enter an erroneous address and receive my ISP’s custom search page – with suggested links – as a response. This is always a little unsettling because it reminds me that all of my network traffic is being mediated, and perhaps recorded, by a powerful media conglomorate. (more...)
Nginx Subdomains Gotcha
July 18, 2009
I was trying to set up a subdomain, photos.kylebanker.com, using nginx. No problems, until I realized that *.kylebanker.com (e.g., whatever.kylebanker.com) was resolving to the content at photos.kylebanker.com. Here’s my initial configuration. Do you see the what’s wrong? (more...)
Javascript, Tetris, and Hanami
April 27, 2009
Javascript and Hanami are the topics of this post, though they really have nothing in common aside from being at the forefront of my mind.
See, just the other day, I gave myself the challenge of writing a Tetris clone using Javascript and CSS. It also happens that I had recently visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to witness the great blossoming (photos).
The result? A Hanami-themed version of Tetris, to play in your broweser. Try it out!.
Incidentally, Javascript’s functional paradigm is slick. Genuinely wowed by this elegant little language. The code is on github.
The Perils of Simplicity
March 31, 2009
Michael Osinski’s software helped create the morgage-backed securities that have undermined our banking system. He reflects on the easy manipulation of systems we don’t wholly understand:
The power we all hold in our hands is shocking, yet it’s controlled by a few swipes of a finger. The drive to simplify the user’s contact with the machine has an inherent side effect of disguising the complexity of a given task. Over time, the users of any software are inured to the intricate nature of what they are doing. Also, as the software does more of the “thinking,” the user does less.
How do we reconcile this “shocking” power with the simplicity enabled by modern software? As more and more human systems submit to control by software, how do we avoid rendering what’s supposed to be too difficult or too dangerous all too doable?
Osinski’s story is worth reading.
Decluttering
March 29, 2009
A cable modem, wireless router, and power strip can still equal a mess under the desk. A few cheap materials and two hours of enjoyable labor yielded this from the front:
And this underneath:
Alas, this clever idea is not my own. Check out Declutter Your Desk for the original implementation.
The Tyranny of the Fixed Price
March 19, 2009
From Philip Greenspun’s book report on The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. The book’s author, Mancur Olson, argues that national economies fall with the rise of special interest groups, which prevent markets from correcting themselves:
How could the Great Depression have lasted so long? [Mancur] Olson suggests assuming that a lot of prices are fixed by colluding business cartels and/or by government regulation. The prices are fixed higher than they would be in a free market, which imposes costs on society and guarantees supranormal profits to cartel members. If there is inflation, the losses to the economy from the cartel are ameliorated. The fixed price is no longer much higher than what would have been the market price. In the event of deflation, however, the fixed price is now ridiculously high, demand for such an overpriced product plummets, and production plummets. Investment in new factories will fall to zero almost immediately.
The government bailouts seem all the more deplorable and misguided.
Recipe: Salmon and Sweet Potatoes
March 18, 2009
A simple, relatively inexpensive, fancy dinner (and, no, I can’t believe I’m posting a recipe to my blog.)
Gourmets can still eat well, even as we enter recession times. Try on this salmon recipe instead of going out; it won’t break the bank.
Salmon
- 2 Salmon steaks
- 4 tbsp mustard (dijon, spicy brown)
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh herbs (mostly parsley, with some thyme)
- Parchment paper
Preheat oven to 450F. Mix the mustard and honey. Line a cookie sheet with the parchement paper, placing the Salmon on top. Spread the honey-mustard mixture over the surface of the Salmon steaks and sprinkle with the herbs. Bake around 20 minutes, or until flaky.
Sweet Potatoes
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter (cut into four pieces)
- 2 tbsp heavy cream
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2lbs sweet potatoes, peeled, quartered, cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices.
Combine the butter, cream, salt, sugar, and potatoes in a medium saucepan. Cover and cook over low heat until the potatoes become mashable, 30-45 minutes. Remove from heat and mash.
Review: No Country for Old Men
March 04, 2009
Several scenes from Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men made me sick to my stomach. Yet somehow I finished this novel, impelled by a deep respect for McCarthy’s other works (e.g., The Border Trilogy, The Road) and the inescapable allure of violence.
For this novel is indeed horrific. The remorseless Chigurh, unmoved by any power save the caprice of a coin flip, casts a dark pall across this story. Intermixed are the reflections of an old sheriff trying to make sense of the downfall of American civilization, of civility itself, and the turning away from the simple truths of right and wrong.
Sure, there’s also a narcotics plot featuring a suitcase stuffed with millions of dollars, decaying bodies, Ford Broncos, innumerable dreary hotels, border crossings, cafe diners, and anonymous powerful men working behind the scenes from Houston skyscrapers. But the novel seems indifferent to these details in the end. Even certain sympathetic characters, when brutally murdered, are apparently forgotten, the narrative not skipping a beat.
What stand out are Sheriff Bell and Chigurh; their names cannot be unintentional. Bell serves as a reminder, a call to ponder, and not ignore, the brutality we witness in the news daily and the horror that may be to come.
That horror would be Chigurgh, the amorphous and frightening embodiment of civilization as it stands taken its logical extreme. I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered a character so heinous in all of literature, an eerie and sobering portrait I won’t soon forget.
Review: Desert Solitaire
February 24, 2009
Just finished reading Desert Solitaire
A philosophy of the concrete.
Edward Abbey’s love letter to the Utah desert is a pleasantly intoxicating sensory overload. Abbey magnifies for us every spec of grit, gives us a sense of the desert’s abundance through inventories of flora, fauna, rock, and sky, and leaves us with a taste of nature’s infinity.
What’s so unusual about Abbey is that, though he is naturally a philosopher, he avoids any tendencies towards the usual mediations on bottomless-pit concepts like being, existence, and essence. On the contrary, Abbey is enamoured of the physical world and the lush vocabulary that describes it: “…I can see the princess plume with its tall golden racemes; the green ephedra or Mormon tea…pepperweed, bladderweed, snakeweed, matchweed, skeleton weed – the last named so delicately formed as to be almost invisible.”
While the epic catalogs thrilled my city-dulled senses, Desert Solitaire
A Hacker's Framework for Blogging
February 08, 2009
Customizable and Quick
I wanted to redesign my blog and host it on my VPS, but two obstacles stood in my way. First, I had been using Wordpress, but had no desire to dig into the tarpit of Wordpress theme design. Second, I wanted to use Ruby, but didn’t care for the overhead of running Typo, Mephisto, or even an improvised Sinatra- or Camping-based blog engine. (more...)