the.Inevitable.Org/anism

This morning I went to Phil Windley’s CTO Breakfast
here in Utah.  I guess it’s kind of a variation on a Geek Dinner
that Scoble does.  I really have come to enjoy them … there is a
lot of good conversation and thinking.  It seems that we just
wander in conversation about technology and it’s social implications
… going from one tangent to the next … sharing the cool stuff that
we’ve stumbled on over the last weeks,

This morning we covered a lot of ground as usual … there were a couple of good things that I took away from the conversation.

• Phil pointed out 43Things.com … a very cool site of collective visualization.  It displays the top things that people are saying
  they want to do with in their lives.  It’ll be interesting to see
  how the most popular ones change over time.  It might just be a
  good indicator of some fo the true aspects of human behavior.
• I brought up my interest in the Windows Peer to Peer Networking
  project.  I heard about this recently, in depth, at the VSLive!
  conference that I attended, and I realize that Microsoft is serious
  about getting this out in volume with the next version of
  Windows.  The Windows Peer to Peer SDK
  is out there now to experiment with … and it only going get
  bigger.  I believe that this is going to revolutionize the way
  that people share and access information … it is going to drastically
  impact DNS.
• We also talked about firewalls, and issues with installation and
  configuration of operating systems.  Someone commented that there
  were few simple tools to allow you to manage iptables … so that an
  average human could understand what they are doing.  One of the
  Ekstroms (Sorry … I remembered the joke about usually having more
  Ekstroms there, and I forgot the first name!) suggested looking at KMyFirewall … I’m going to grab a copy and take a look!
• I also asked for suggestions on a GPL blogging application, as an
  alternative to MoveableType.  I really like MovableType, how I
  want “free as in beer.”  I think that Phill offered up WordPress,
  which is the old B2.  Wow … this really looks nice!  I
  downloaded it and am going to install in on one of my new servers.
• I also told people about my new Utah Forums web site … http://UtahForums.org  I am slowly developing a place to aggregate many of the tech and entrepreneurial events going on in Utah.

I keep thinking that Phil is right … we’ve got to turn some of these into a podcast.  They are a pretty fun conversation.

I have been using Radio from Userland software for years now. I really like it for numerous reasons, and if this works then I like it even more.

I have just installed a new tool - xManilaBloggerBridge - that ought to allow me to post to my blogspot blog from within Radio. This is my first test …

I have posted far too little about my son Sam, and his progress and
development.  It is an amazing process to watch and be a part
of.  Lately, Sam has really taken off with grammer and
sentences.  They are crude, but he is learning to communicate
effectively.

I keep working with him on the pronunciation, there are still a lot of
letters that he leaves out.  It’s fun to have him come up and
start talking to me … he is so committed to telling me something, and
quite often I just don’t know what he is saying.  At the same
time, there are some things that he knows and says crystal clear.

Last night we were playing in the garage.  I hung some nylon
webbing from the ceiling, and I showed him how to grab it up high and
swing from it.  I then showed him how to sit in it and
swing.  It was interesting to watch him learning how to put the
loop behind his back to sit in it … he couldn’t quite get it each
time … but try and try again … he started to get the concept. 
They he said “Daddy … you turn.  I sit.”  He wanted me to
get up off the steps, and go swing.  We switched places, and I
swung for a bit.  Then he said “Daddy … me turn.  You
sit.”  What a kick.

He knows that we are going to see the ocean … we’re due to leave for
Hawaii this Friday.  This will be his second trip … and I’m sure
a lot of fun!

My friend Todd Dailey just sent me a link to more applications similar to 10×10.
I have to warn that this one is very cool, however there are sometimes
images with nudity that some people would find offensive. It’s
not that it is designed to include these images … it’s just designed
not to discriminate.

As long as you are ok with a wide range of possible images, then you can go and look at WebCollage … an application developed by Jamie Zawinski.
Unlike 10×10 where the images are grabbed from news services,
WebCollage grabs images by doing random searches on various search
engines, and then finding the images on the resulting pages.
These images are then combined into a collage that updates about once a
minute.

Unlike visual collages, there are also the written collages … like DadaDodo. This project is creating text based on other text, in a format that is designed to “Exterminate All Rational Thought”. To see a sample you can click here.
I see this as a variation, at a lower level, to the concepts of
“multidisciplinary exposure” … something alluded to in the recent
book Medici Effect - Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and
Cultures.

Lastly, Jamie also refers to DriftNet … something I really want to install and play with! A version of EtherPeg for UNIX/Linux.

I always like various ways that information is rendered
graphically.  I am a very visual person, and love to see images
that reflect and represent information.

Quite a while ago, I loved hearing about the use of EtherPeg
and its use at various conferences.  EtherPeg would monitor the
local network, and detect the images from the web pages that people
were looking at.  In real time, EtherPeg would display these
images on the screen as a constantly evolving collage of of activity.

Now there is Ten By Ten (or 10×10?)
which is a very cool way to view the current events of our society …
based on the RSS news feeds of some top sources of current-event
news.  If you go and view the site, you’ll see a 10×10 grid of
images that have been grabbed form the various news services, based on
the popularity of the words detected in news.  Move your mouse
over the images, and you’ll see the list of words … click on an image
and see the articles that contributed to that word and image making the
“top 100″ for the hour.

It is projects like this that blend technology, society, and art … in
a way that I really appreciate.  It is both an experiment in
science, and a piece of art being molded by society.

Ok … I give.  Uncle.  I am through working on this for now, it is far too much wasting of time.

I have been trying, since Friday, to get IIS working with either Apache
(on the same box) or Tomcat (via the JK connectors).  I am able to
get Apache using port 81 to work, however now I have to deal with the
non-standard port issues.  So I found this nifty
isapi_redirect.dll that is supposed to allow me to connect IIS to
Tomcat directly!  No Apache required …

Yeah … right!

I have now spent almost eight additional hours working on this, and
have got nowhere.  The code, installation, and configuration are
simply poorly documented and do not work as described.  On top of
this, no matter what I do, I am unable to get *any* form of logging out
of the isapi_redirector.  I have been hand-hacking the registry,
and it seems to be working … to a point.  The IIS web logs
indicate that the defined URIs are being sent to the .dll … however
all I get are 404 not found errors.

I have now tried both the JK and JK2 versions of this thing … and
they both behave in a similar manner.  I’m stuck for now, and hope
that some day I am able to uncover the deep mystery of why this stupid
thing just won’t work.

I’m somewhat comforted by the posts that I have found all over the web
that seem to express the same feelings … no support, poor
documentation, inconsistenf operation.  It’s too bad … it would
be a nice solution for me!

I sat through a pretty cool presentation on using Samba on Linux.  It was being given by the Utah Valley Linux Users Group, and was a good overview of getting things going.  There were a number of key points to consider in this situation.

One of the conversations was about security.  They talked about
accessing Windows shares over SSH and that it’s not easy.  I did a
quick on Google and found that there was a good How-To page called using SSH Tunneling to access Windows share that even referenced a free non-commercial SSH client that enables this.

I’m going to take a look at this and see what I can do to enable SSH on
the Samba server that I am configuring.  This would make things
much better.

It’s not just that they are here in Utah, we just had one in our back yard!

While I was sitting here writing the last post, my wife jumped up and
pointed out the eagle that just landed in our backyard.  We
watched it while it fed on something it had caught … it spent some
time eating and sitting, and then took off and flew back towards the
lake.

In the last year, we’ve had a quite a list of animals visit us … a
bear, dear, fox, and eagles.  All of this makes it nice to live in
Utah!

I made some progress, and learned more about installing both of these
applications on Windows Server 2003.  First, if you use the
command “netstat -an” you can see the ports that are in use.  I
actually knew about netstat, however it was the “-an” option that
revealed the core information.

That piece of information was that both Apache and IIS both claim port
80 - in its entirety - across all IP addresses … no matter what the
settings in the various configuration files lead you to believe. 
Upon reading the documentation about Apache on Windows,  there is a note that is not completely clear:

Because Apache cannot share the same port with another TCP/IP
application, you may need to stop, uninstall or reconfigure certain other
services before running Apache. These conflicting services include other WWW
servers and some firewall implementations.

I would not have believe that this is the case even on different IP addresses. 
But this is the case.  So there is no way (that I can find) to
install both of these products, on different IP addresses, on the same
machine.  Done.

Ok, so then what is the solution?  I have now found two ways to
resolve my situation.  First, I experimented with creating a
virtual server in IIS that is simply a redirect to Apache on a
different port.  So I installed Apache on port 10.0.0.5:81, and
then configured IIS on 10.0.0.5:80 with a redirect to
10.0.0.5:81.  This worked!

The second solution is even better for my purposes.  I was
actually installing this to get a “JAM” application … Java, Apache,
MySQL … installed.  The actual configuration is for Apache to be
the web server, it uses mod_jk to connect to Tomcat, and the Tomcat is the Java container.  The Java application is what accesses MySQL through JDBC.

As I was reading on the configuration of  Tomcat I found that
there is an IIS version of mod_jk!  The mod_jk
isapi_redirector.dll will allow me to directly connect IIS to Tomcat
without requiring Apache … duh!  I should have figured that
someone would have written such a connector.

I’ll update the progress on Monday or Tuesday … I downloaded the
components, but ran out of time to get this new method installed and
working.

I know that these are some older documents, however I had not seen these docs on Microsoft Identity and Access Management
before.  I found them linked from another web site I was
reading.  There is some interesting stuff .  From their site:

This series of papers provides numerous identity and access management
concepts, techniques, and solutions for use in heterogeneous IT
environments.

Identity and access management combines processes, technologies, and
policies to manage digital identities and specify how they are used to access
resources.

I’m reading through the package for some background.

I am working on a Windows Server 2003 box … it’s been a long
time.  I have to admit that I love and hate the whole graphical
UI.  Once I have spent a couple of days, I start to understand
where all of the options are at, which tabs to use for what, and which
buttons hide what functionality.

I got IIS working with three “virtual servers” for different services
that I was installing.  I’m adding IP addresses to the box so that
I can use SSL on each of these.  Then I ran into problems. 
I’m installing a Open Source project that was built around “JAM” -
Java, Apache, MySQL.

The installation on Windows went well, however I have run into problems
when trying to get IIS and Apache to work well together.  The core
hitch seems to be that when Apache is running, although I tell it to
“Listen 10.0.0.5:80″, it wants to open 80 on *all* of the IP addresses on the box.  Or at least it produces errors that it can’t open 10.0.0.5:80.

Now if I stop IIS, then I can start Apache.  Apache *says* that it
is only listening on 10.0.0.5:80 … however when I then start IIS it
complains that 10.0.0.1:80 through 10.0.0.4:80 are in use!

I’m going to continue to dig, and see if I can get these two technologies working.

My friend Dave Cline just sent me a link to a new tool for Windows … the ISO Recorder Power Toy. It’s a quick way to create CDs from .iso files, and .iso files from CDs.

I was surprised to see this article.  Well … not too surprised … but still surprised.  First we get the Segway … now we have walking robots. 
All of this is the product of the continuing acceleration of computing
power.  With all of this compute power, we can now design these
types of devices, and allow them to operate.

Amazing stuff.

I’ve thought about doing this again.  At one point in the past I
had a low power FM station going here in Heber City, Utah.  This
is a very cool product with a lot more functionality.

An FM Broadcast Transmitter For Your Home [Slashdot:]

When I see devices like this one, I can only imagine where we are
going.  Things are going to be far beyond the iPod very
quickly!  I want one of these!

Archos PMA400 Linux Based Media Portable [Slashdot:]

I have heard about this service from several friends and they indicate
that it is a really good deal.  They like it a lot better than
Vonage, and say that the web interface for managing your account and
phone number is well done.  I like the fact that it has many of
the features of the older “500″ phone service that AT&T used to
offer.

Staples to sell AT&T’s Net phone starter kit. The office supply chain is selling a kit that includes a Linksys router and instructions on how to sign up for CallVantage. [CNET News.com]

I have to agree with Phil Windley … he posted this on his blog, and I
really like the train of thought on these technologies to watch. 
I too have been watching several of these, but David has added some new
ones to my watch list!

Cost Effective Business Continuity.

David Stephenson writes a blog on Homeland Security. I met him when I was CIO for Utah. H recently published a story on the ten homeland security technologies to watch in 2005. But what caught my eye was his criteria for judging homeland security technologies.

1. Also having day-in-day-out applications so that they will
   both be familiar in an emergency (i.e., not requiring users to have to
   learn something new when they’re already stressed) and will have
   economic and/or social benefits so their purchase and deployment are
   more easily justified.
2. Decentralized, so they are less likely to be rendered inoperative by attacks on a centralized switching facility, etc.
3. In the hands of the general public, so they leverage technology
   that is already in use (and, given the inevitable cost and procurement
   limits of government technology, more current) and that people are
   likely to have with them when disaster strikes, so they can get
   up-to-the minute information.
4. Location-based, so that we can get away from lowest-common
   denominator evacuation and response plans that are likely to cause
   their own problems such as traffic jams.
5. Empower the public, because authorities may themselves be
   incapacitated and our fate will be in our own hands, and because we may
   be more likely to listen to trusted friends and/or neighbors than
   distant authorities.
6. Two-way, so that the general public and/or responders who may be
   the first to come upon an emerging problem can feed information back to
   authorities.
7. Redundant, because various technologies have distinctive
   strengths and liabilities that may render them unusable, or, make them
   crucial fall-back options.
8. Allow dissemination of information in advance so they can be
   quickly activated and/or customized in an emergency (instead of
   requiring massive data-dumps in the midst of a crisis).
9. IP based, because packet-based information will require less bandwidth in a situation where conserving it is crucial.
10. Foster collaboration, because multiple agencies and
    jurisdictions may be involved and will need to share information from a
    wide range of sources on a real-time basis.

With only a few word changes, this is also a great set of criteria
for judging any technology you put in place for business continuity.

The point about having day-to-day uses is crucial. If you can’t do
that, then you probably ought to outsource that function to a
specialist who makes it there business to test it. A good example is
back-up diesel generators. Just putting one in might make you feel
better, but you probably ought to have a regular maintenance contract
with someone who’ll come test it regularly.

[Phil Windley’s Technometria]

My friend Joe Skehan sent me a link today to this article - “Can this black box see into the future?” -  on The Gobal Consciousness Project. 
Amazing stuff.  I had no idea that anyone was working on anything
like this.  Yes, even the researchers are skeptical … however
they are also seeing patterns.

These researchers are digging deeper into the possibility that there
could be ways to monitor, or more specifically detect, the presence of
a “global consciousness” using a distrbuted set of monitoring nodes
they refer to as “eggs”.  These devices are designed to generate
random numbers, and yet the researchers are able to detect deviations
in these numbers that seem to coincide with major events on
earth.  The first set of quotes that caught my attention was:

Using the internet, he [Dr. Roger Nelson] connected up 40 random event generators from all over
the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran constantly, day in
day out, generating millions of different pieces of data. Most of the time, the
resulting graph on his computer looked more or less like a flat line.

But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: the
graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence
as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the
norm. The day was of historic importance for another reason, too.

For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around the world
watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey.

The article goes on to give other examples, and the web site
has even more information about the research.  What is even more
interesting is the blend of both scientific and artistic personalities
that are joining on this research.  All of this exploring the
possibility that there are forces at work - detectable forces - that
might indicate that humans have more abilities then we are taught to
believe.

Cool stuff …

Funny what you find on the net!  While reading through some links related to wearable computer research I cam across this great page with some thoughts by Ana Viseu
about “bodynets” and Identity.  Besides that fact that I really
like the look of the web site, I like this train of thought:

Identity, loosely defined as the way we see and present ourselves, is
not static. On the contrary, identity is primarily established in social
interaction. This interaction consists, in its most basic form, of an
exchange of information. In this information exchange individuals define
the images of themselves and of others. This interaction can be mediated-through
a technology, for example-and it can involve entities of all sorts,
e.g., an institution or a technology. I am investigating this interaction
through the study of bodynets.



Bodynets can be thought of as new bridges or interfaces between the
individual and the environment. My working definition of a bodynets
is: A body networked for (potentially) continuous communication with
the environment (humans or computers) through at least one wearable
device-a computer worn on the body that is always on, ready and accessible.
This working definition excludes implants, genetic alterations, dedicated
devices and all other devices that are portable but not wearable, such
as cell phones, smart cards or PDAs.



Besides the matters related to identity, bodynets also raise serious
issues concerning privacy, which in turn feedback on identity changes.
Bodynets are composed of digital technologies, which inherently possess
tracking capabilities, this has major privacy implications.

If you like this, continue reading … there is a lot of additional material.  Whenever I see the University of Toronto, I have to guess that Steve Mann is involved.  These are all important directions to look at.

I have been planning on upgrading my web server for a long time. 
I have the last of my Novell NetWare servers that I am getting rid of,
and I am replacing them with a series of Linux servers running Fedora
Core.  I completed the first of these migrations a while back when
I installed my Linux box with qmail and replaced my old Mercury mail
server on NetWare.

Last night I began the process of installing Linux on a new
system.  I picked up the parts to assemble a nice system in a 19″
rack mount chassis.  2.4Ghz Intel Processor on a Intel 865
Motherboard.  1GB of RAM, and dual 250GB hard disks.  I got
the dual 250GB disks so that I can “mirror” them using RAID 1.

Everything went well … almost.  I spent four+ hours last night
installing over and over again since everything would appear to go
well, and the the server just would not boot.  I read a lot of
posts on-line, but nothing offered seemed to solve my problem.  I
finally noticed that when the system had been assembled, the first hard
disk was “master” on the primary IDE channel, and the second hard disk
was “slave” on the secondary IDE channel.  There was no master
device on the secondary IDE channel, so this morning I opened the case,
and changed the second hard disk to “master” … and everything worked!

So my experience is now:  When installing, have your two hard disks both be masters on the two IDE channels and things go a lot easier!

So what did I do to configure the RAID?  It was actually pretty easy except for the problem above.

1. Using the Disk Druid tool,
   I created three “Software RAID” partitions on my first hard disk by
   clicking the RAID button.  I created the first one for the /boot partition at 100MB, the second one for swap at 2000MB, and then the third for the / (root) partition that used the rest of the disk.
2. Next, I did the same to the second hard disk.  So now both
   of the disks each had three “Software RAID” partitions that were the
   correct sizes.
3. I then created the RAID 1 devices one by one.  I first
   created the md0 partition with a mount point of  “/boot” and a
   file system type of “ext3″.  Also, make sure to select RAID
   1!  I then selected the two 100MB partitions.
4. Second was the “swap” partition.  I set it to md1 and
   selected the file system type of “swap”, and again set this for RAID1
   and then selected the two 2000MB partitions.
5. Last, I created the root “/” partition by setting that as the
   mount point, setting it to be md2 and RAID 1, and then selecting the
   remaining two partitions.
6. Upon completing this, Disk Druid showed the three RAID Devices - md0 (/boot), md1 (swap), and md2 (/) and I was done.

As I proceeded through the rest of the installation, it went smooth
with no other problems.  The server installation completed and
rebooted just fine!

I got the system installed in my rack at the office, and immediately
came home to ssh in and apply updates.  The up2date session is
completing as I type this.  I have a few more things to tweak, and
then adjust some services, and then I can begin the process of
installing a bunch of new code!

Ok … so the holidays got the best of me.  Followed by a lot of
work to prepare for deploying wireless at the Sundance Film Festival in
Park City, Utah.  And also maintaining the 80211.net
wireless infrastructure.  Working in wireless can keep you
busy.  However it’s always fun to learn something new, and
experiment with new equipment.

That is the kind of information that I had hoped to provide on this
site … experiences and information about deploying and operating
wireless internet services.  Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll
be introducing some of the people who will be contributing to our
forums.  These are all people from the industry, either WISPs or
manufacturers.  All looking to contribute and educate.

I’ll be doing my best to keep up with them, and to document some of the work that I am doing!