zzamboni.org

Ellen on password security

2013-04-25T14:46:00-05:00

Hilarious - Ellen on the “Internet Password Minder”

Ignite talks

2013-04-14T12:13:00-05:00

I’m giving an Ignite talk for the first time at DevOps days Paris. It’s an interesting format: a 5-minute talk with 20 auto-advancing slides, every 15 seconds. I found How to Give a great Ignite Talk by Scott Berkun very useful, including the accompanying video.

On the other side

2013-03-25T15:57:00-06:00

About a year ago, Posterous was acquired by Twitter. A month ago, it was announced that it will be completely shut down by April 30th. I’ll spare you my rant about how the awesome customer service that characterized Posterous pre-acquisition completely disappeared after the acquisition :)

On a more practical note, Posterous’ closing meant finding a new place to host my blogs. There are many options (you can find many of them described in the posthaven.com migration guide), but I decided to go the DIY way and move my blogs to Octopress, hosted on GitHub Pages.

I’ll post shortly a guide on how I did the migration, but for now I just want to post a first “Welcome” message here. If you are reading this message, you are in the correct place, whether it’s the website or the RSS feed (I updated my FeedBurner feed to point to the new site, so if you are subscribed to it, you shouldn’t have to do anything). All the old contents has been migrated, and links to my blog posts should work unchanged.

There are still a few rough edges (some pages are still in the old site theme), I’m still working on the migration of some parts of the site. Please let me know if you find anything broken.

HowTo: Changing the available display formats for Evernote's "Insert Date" command

2012-11-13T23:00:30-06:00

Evernote introduced some time ago an “Insert Date” keyboard shortcut, which is very handy. However, the options for the format of the inserted date seemed limited (only four options). I finally learned how this works, and how to change it on the Mac. The formats offered are those that are configured in the “Languages & Text” preferences panel. If you go to “Region” and then click the “Customize button” in the Dates part of the panel, you will see and be able to customize the formats for short, medium, long and full date representations. Those are the options that are offered to you by Evernote. Just change them to whatever you want, and they will be available for selection. What I specifically wanted to do was to use the YYYY-MM-DD format, so I changed it to the following:

I had to restart Evernote for it to recognize the change, but afterward the new formats were available.

Tip of the hat to Martin Maiers in the Evernote forums, who explained this technique: http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29812-insert-date-formats-please-add-iso-8601/#entry160872

Included in the #LinuxCon registration packet: a skateboard#

2012-08-27T23:46:49-05:00

Included in the #LinuxCon registration packet: a skateboard#

via twittelator

Letters of Note: Regarding your dam complaint

2012-07-12T12:59:00-05:00

I would like to challenge you to attempt to emulate their dam project any dam time and/or any dam place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no dam way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.

via lettersofnote.com

Amazing letter - read the whole thing, it’s incredibly funny.

The #CFEngine agent, as drawn by my 6-year-old daughter :)

2012-07-04T15:30:13-05:00

When a Dragon mated the space station /ht @BadAstronomer

2012-05-25T11:21:00-05:00

At 16:02 UTC, Friday, May 25, 2012, the SpaceX Dragon officially became the first privately-owned commercial spacecraft to be captured by and berthed at the International Space Station. It is (if I’ve done the math correctly) the 114th spacecraft to dock with ISS, including the missions sent up to build the station. It is the first privately-owned commercial spacecraft in history to do so.

via blogs.discovermagazine.com

Amazing.

CFEngine talks at PICC'12 conference

2012-04-27T08:30:32-05:00

There will be several CFEngine-related classes and talks at the PICC’12 conference (Professional IT Community Conference) on May 11-12th, in New Jersey. I will be talking about using CFEngine as part of your security infrastructure. My colleague Joe Netzel will be talking about migration from CFEngine 2 to CFEngine 3, so if you are using CF2 and have been considering (or dreading) the migration, make sure to come by! Aleksey Tsalolikhin will give an introductory class to CFEngine. And Mark Burgess will give a class not related to CFEngine, but to the perils and skills needed to survive as a technical person in the “business world”.

If you are coming to the conference, we look forward to seeing you there!

Mark Burgess - A Sysadmin’s Guide to Navigating the Business World
Diego Zamboni - CFEngine Configuration Management for Security
Joe Netzel - Successfully Migrating From CFEngine 2 to CFEngine 3
Aleksey Tsalolikhin - Automating System Administration with CFEngine 3

Earth Day, from 40,000 km up | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

2012-04-22T20:13:00-05:00

via blogs.discovermagazine.com

This video is simply amazing.

Publishing with iBooks Author - O'Reilly Media

2012-04-16T17:05:00-05:00

via shop.oreilly.com

Free e-book from O’Reilly.

Bezos Expeditions | F-1 Engine Recovery

2012-04-03T23:30:00-05:00

Photo credit: NASA

I’m excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we’re making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor.

via bezosexpeditions.com

Those are BIG engines. Would be awesome to recover them.

GitHub: Instantly Beautiful Project Pages

2012-04-03T23:15:00-05:00

Ever pushed a new project to GitHub and wished you had the time or talent to make a beautiful page for it? Stop wishing. We’re proud to present the new GitHub Page Generator.

via github.com

Very nice new feature.

Purdue at Night

2012-03-26T00:01:14-06:00

I am at Purdue to give a CFEngine talk and visit some old colleagues, here are some photos I took during a night walk right after checking into my hotel. I graduated in 2001, and the last time I visited was almost 10 years ago. Time really flies, there are many new things in campus (including the shiny new Computer Science Building, which I had never seen), but so many others remain unchanged. It’s awesome to be back.

Learning CFEngine 3 has been released

2012-03-24T01:23:00-06:00

I am ecstatic to announce that the book is now officially released!

via blog.cf-learn.info

I am so happy :-)

Analytics put to a good cause

2012-03-15T17:05:57-06:00

Well, here’s a good use of web analytics. From LinkedIn:

Seeing a lot of daily digests piling up?
Diego, we noticed you haven’t visited
lately. To help keep your email tidy, we’ve switched you from daily emails to weekly digests from this group - we hope this suits you better!

Actually useful.

A dog's gotta do what a dog's gotta doo doo | The Sun |News

2012-03-13T17:29:00-06:00

via thesun.co.uk

Poor dog, but hilarious video.

github/gitignore

2012-03-12T09:10:00-06:00

A collection of useful .gitignore templates

via github.com

Useful resource.

Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar on Vimeo

2012-03-02T13:03:00-06:00

via vimeo.com

Amazing - a continuous-flow artificial heart. You can live without a pulse.

Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

2012-03-02T00:11:00-06:00

Rod Morris/www.rodmorris.co.nz

The story is simple: A bunch of black rats almost wiped out a bunch of gigantic bugs on a little island far, far away from most of us. A few dedicated scientists, passionate about biological diversity, risked their lives to keep the bugs going. For the bugs to get their homes and their future back doesn’t depend on scientists anymore. They’ve done their job. Now it’s up to the folks on Lord Howe Island.

via npr.org

Amazing story.