SWDD

keyadd.py - A smarter ssh-keyscan

2010-03-08T21:04:00.004-05:00

I've been playing around with a wrapper for 'ssh-keyscan' at work, and thought I would share my script with the world.MotivationsWhile at work, we have servers which need to have their SSH known-hosts file updated with the various machines we deal with. Additionally (as SSH is very specific), aliases of machines are not added to the known_hosts file unless you specify them. This script seeks to

Compression Algorithms and their Performance

2009-11-09T16:24:00.009-05:00

The Premise: GZIP vs BZIP2 vs XZ (the new LZMA)I was asking myself the other day (as often as I do), what are the relative differences between the available FOSS compression mechanisms available today? Now, apart from having a recent class in language processing about the matter, I took it upon myself to give a few of them a try, and report it here.The DataI needed some data which would work to

New Layout

2009-11-09T03:36:00.002-05:00

I've been at it once more, and I've updated the layout yet again.This time though, I think I'll keep it this way for a while. I'm much happier with it.

My Issue with Microsoft (Part 2)

2009-11-05T21:59:00.003-05:00

I've been meaning to update this post, and over the ages, I've come across this particular, well-formed essay-like rant which sums up most of my complaints with the Microsoft: Why I Hate MicrosoftI think it's a pretty good read, especially if you're like me.

New Googly Features

2009-11-04T14:04:00.001-05:00

Some minimal changes have been made to the site. While I don't like having so much stuff here that it gets cumbersome, I do like playing around with all the neat things which Google has to offer (most notably Profiles and Friend Connect)

My Issue With Microsoft (Part 1)

2009-08-23T15:39:00.001-04:00

I've been called various things in the past with regards to my personal likes or dislikes with technology. I've been called an Apple Fanboy, a Linux Nut, and various synonyms for each. I'd like to take a few moments to correct people's misconceptions about me, and perhaps people who think like me. About Me The early years First off, you have to know the kind of person I am, before you can

Apple Responds to my Bug Report

2009-07-08T14:57:00.002-04:00

It was really cool today, when my Google notifier informed me I had mail from the bug report people over at Apple. You may remember an older post of mine where I describe a potential bug with Apple's Time Machine system. Here's what they had to say: Basically, Apple wants to keep the way it works because of the way Time Machine works to begin with. Consider this: the Time Machine backup is not

The Trouble with Advertising

2009-07-08T01:52:00.002-04:00

I get frustrated when surfing sites nowadays which are a bit too gung-ho when it comes to advertising. Specifically, online streaming services, such as Hulu, Fox OnDemand, and most others. The problem is, it's difficult for the older generation (particularly those involved in making large executive decisions) to understand how the modern twentysomething thinks (and it's only getting worse with

QuickDep 2.5 Project Update

2009-07-01T14:54:00.003-04:00

QuickDep, the automated Linux deployment solution which I'm working on, is at a major turning point. What I'd like to do is take some time to review one of the changes that I'm working on at this very moment (literally, I have the source code in front of me). Modularization To make things easier to manage, I am modularizing various components of the QuickDep system into these Python modules:

Decent Web Launches Today

2009-06-23T18:22:00.004-04:00

I am very pleased to announce the launch of Decent Web today. I've been playing around with the idea of such a website for some time now, and it's finally come together. To quote from the mission statement as it stands right now: In a world filled with exaggerated product claims, funky fine print, and general kludge, Decent Web seeks to showcase the few who genuinely care about their work, and

iPhone 3G and 3.0 Software Update

2009-06-17T14:50:00.011-04:00

I upgraded today, with a couple hiccups. First off, when it finished the upgrade, it said something about not being able to read the SIM properly. Then, it has decided to give me the most interesting of error windows when trying to view the iPhone window (the one wherein you can set your iPhone preferences). Seriously, what gives? Updates Everything is working ok now. I'm pretty sure that it

On Facebook, Twitter

2009-06-15T15:16:00.004-04:00

SWDD is now listed on Facebook. I figured I'd better grab it before the other 4-letter acronyms move in and snatch it up. Unfortunately, Twitter already had it snatched, so now it's SW_DD. I figure that I'll post random updates to things on Twitter which are SWDD-related, but aren't necessarily worthy of a separate blog post; things like "Committed new version of QuickDep" (which I actually

Linux and Apple: Getting Them to Play Nice

2009-06-11T22:07:00.014-04:00

The Quick Stuff For all you "I hate reading" readers, here are the highlights: Ubuntu and Apple: Just click on one of the links to get to your particular Mac, and you'll be fine. Fedora and Apple: If it's new, it's broken. The Actual Post To borrow the style of Top Gear announcing one of their letters, I have been inundated with literally three hits concerning Linux and some piece of Apple

Fedora 11 "Leonidas" Ongoing Review

2009-06-09T22:00:00.010-04:00

And It's Broken Finally, after 2 weeks of delays (the original release date was for the 26th of May), Fedora 11 has dropped. Just after watching the latest WWDC keynote, waking up and downloading the latest release of my other favorite operating system should have been a great thing. But, unfortunately, it wasn't. It's Half My Fault Sort of... The thing is, the goals and principles of the

Language Benchmarks and Psyco Python

2009-06-05T17:49:00.011-04:00

Ever wonder about how fast certain programming or scripting languages are, versus one another? Well, I have... The Premise So, being that MacPorts has Psyco available to it, I've been playing around with it. For those of you not in the know, Psyco is a JIT compiler and optimizer for Python. I came across this page of benchmarks and thought it would be fun to play around with the various

Google Chrome for Mac Status (with pictures)

2009-05-31T21:42:00.021-04:00

It's a browser! I'm very pleased that it builds, and works without much fuss. I'm not quite sure whether it's capable of replacing Safari for now, but it's definitely a start (provided you download the 3 GB worth of source code). And here's what it looks like: Rendering my blog Good job there, though it isn't surprising as it's taking most of its rendering codebase from Webkit. It does a great

iPhoto '09 and Facebook

2009-05-31T20:43:00.005-04:00

I've been playing around with iPhoto '09 recently (specifically for Apple's implementation of facial detection and recognition), and (almost obviously) I have a big complaint. Facebook contact misconnections After I tagged people via Faces, and uploaded them to Facebook, I was surprised that several of my contacts, though having the exact same name as they do on FB, were not matching up. I

Google Maps Street View Quality

2009-05-26T21:00:00.008-04:00

I've been watching a bit of Top Gear recently, and they always mention some random segment requesting that viewers write-in about something. So, I figured I'd go ahead and see what their HQ looked like. To my surprise, the street view quality was amazing! You could just keep zooming in and in, and the picture still looks crisp. However, in the US, it's not quite the same deal. Have a look

CSS Vertical Centering and Rounding Demo

2009-05-24T18:54:00.012-04:00

So I was scrounging the net for the easiest way of both vertical centering a div and rounding its corners. To my dismay, there are tons of results, but none that are as clean or as simple as I'd like them to be. So, I figured I'd do it myself. The HTML First of all, you can download an archive containing the HTML and requisite images and see it for yourself, or you could view a live demo here.

Silly Apple, CHMODs are for Kids!

2009-05-21T18:56:00.003-04:00

My iMac is configured to dual-boot OS X and Jaunty Jackelope (though I suspect that will soon become Leonidas). As such, I like having the ability to listen to music no matter which OS I'm booted into. On Mac, because everything's in iTunes, it's not that big of a deal (obviously). Linux, on the other hand, has a bit of a difficulty negotiating with HFS+ volumes. It's not that it can't read

New Layout

2009-05-20T23:25:00.003-04:00

Hooray! I have a brand-new, custom-designed layout finally. It was weird getting things to align properly, as Blogger always inserts: <div>style="clear: both;"</div> ...after every post. However, using double floats solved the problem (float main left, and sidebar right).

Rosetta, Still?

2009-05-20T22:07:00.003-04:00

So, in the process of redoing my iMac (I'm very bored, and it needed cleaning), I decided to actually install Microsoft Office 2007 (some teachers at Drexel create the most hideously-proprietary documents which NOTHING but Office can open). What's interesting is that the updating process (to update the AutoUpdater) is still PowerPC. Seriously, can we please move forward now? On a related note:

Dear God Save Me From HTML Hell!

2009-05-18T17:34:00.001-04:00

I'm not quite sure what it is, but the Google Site HTML editor is absolutely retarded! It chooses the most obscure, odd ways of doing what seems to be the most easy of tasks. Take for example, the task of inserting a simple Javascript RSS feed reader. It's a fairly straight-forward installation. But with Google Sites, it has to be a Google Gadget, with its own specified height and width. And,

How's that for off-the-cuff SEO?

2009-05-18T15:38:00.000-04:00

So, I was just wondering how Google was doing in ranking my page. To my amazement, halfway through typing my name into Safari 4's Google search box (on the 'e' in Weigand), it had a suggestion for "Sebastian Weigand"! Needless to say, I was stunned! Then, I wondered, how relevant was it? Well, I'm pleased to say that a search for Sebastian Weigand on Google nearly fills up the page with

DNS Settings

2009-05-16T18:31:00.000-04:00

So, I'm not quite sure about how Google manages redirects, nor am I 100% sure that I'm configuring things appropriately with my domain registrar, but here's what's going on now: www.sw-dd.com is CNAME'd to ghs.google.com (should pull data from Google Sites' servers, à la sites.google.com/a/sw-dd.com/www/home http://sw-dd.com (the naked domain) is A'd to a Level-3 host (the way Spot Domain does