Category Archives: Web Finds

System Hackery

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Sometimes I find ways to make life easier for my coworkers, things they couldn’t possibly understand but would benefit them anyways. A few weeks ago I discovered a series of system level adjustments to the TCP/IP stack which I thought would benefit everyone. These adjustments, just in case anyone was curious and technically so are here:

/etc/sysctl.conf

kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=4194304
kern.ipc.somaxconn=512
kern.ipc.maxsockets=2048
kern.ipc.nmbclusters=2048
net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1
net.inet.tcp.win_scale_factor=3
net.inet.tcp.sockthreshold=16
net.inet.tcp.sendspace=262144
net.inet.tcp.recvspace=262144
net.inet.tcp.mssdflt=1500
net.inet.tcp.msl=15000
net.inet.tcp.always_keepalive=0
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=1
net.inet.tcp.slowstart_flightsize=4
net.inet.tcp.blackhole=2
net.inet.udp.blackhole=1
net.inet.icmp.icmplim=50

/etc/nsmb.conf

[default]
streams=no
minauth=none
soft=yes
notify_off=yes
port445=no_netbios

I found these files online in various sites and the ultimate goal was to find any way to make the networking work better for clients on their iMacs. Most of these settings make sense if you are using a plain Ethernet system like we are here at Western, most specifically the mssdflt setting at 1500. One setting that I think was causing some issues was net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack. This setting covers how the systems handle ACK packets in TCP/IP communications. Back in the 80’s there was a dispute on how TCP/IP should function and there has been confusion and splits between two camps ever since, and this setting causes issues all depending on which number you set it to, 0 through 3. Apple sets this feature by default to 3, and I had this turned to 0 for many workstations and then I started noticing people having problems accessing SupportPress reliably. Perhaps I was overzealous in the 0 setting, so then the question becomes, how to change the setting without upsetting people?

Of course, ARD to the rescue. I created a new list of computers at work, removed the obvious ones that shouldn’t be touched such as the primary file server and such, and for the rest I copied these two files to the client workstations. Alas, these changes don’t work unless you can reboot the stations. I was able to reboot remotely several unoccupied stations but that wasn’t a real solution. I need to cover all my bases, not only change the system so that the new settings are permanent over reboot, but that they take effect now instead of later. I was on the edge of sending out an email to the group asking them to please reboot their computers during lunch and then it struck me, why not simply ship out the adjustment over ARD? ARD can send Unix commands to connected workstations and it can masquerade as root, so, why not?

The command to find out what this setting has is:

sysctl -a|grep delayed_ack

The command to make a change while the user is online is:

sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=1

The users have no idea I’m mucking about underneath their systems, way down in the BSD bits, all from my office, over the wire, with them logged in doing whatever it is that they are doing. Now all the workstations have this change effective immediately and when they reboot they’ll get this change applied automatically as well.

I will have to sit back and see if 1 is indeed the setting that will help. We shall see.

A Good Addiction

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There is an iOS game that I’ve heard before and didn’t think anything of until I downloaded it and started to play. The game is called Letterpress and it’s incredibly addicting. Each game is composed of 25 english letters in a 5×5 grid and the person who starts the game with another player is the first to go. You can select words from these 25 characters, one letter at a time and as you play the letters they are marked with your color. Your color is blue and your opponents color is red. When you use a letter the colors start out faint, but as you use letters and surround other claimed letters, the letters that are surrounded get a bolder color of whomever claimed them. All letters can be used over and over again and you get points for claiming a letter and stealing letters with weak colors from your opponent. Letters that are in strong colors can still be used but they don’t give you any points. The game ends when all letters have been claimed with a color and the person with the higher score wins.

The games themselves are tiny and quick and really fun. It’s like speed-yahtzee and it exercises your vocabulary as you try to construct words with or without really helpful bits like e’s and “ing”‘s. The app is freemium and so it’s free to play a few games but you can upgrade and play an unlimited number of games for $1.99. It’s the best iOS game I’ve ever played. It’s fair, it’s nicely balanced, and the quick game play is great fun. My win/loss is 50/50 and I don’t really care to win that much, but boy, do I love playing. The game is designed with touch, so it has pleasing sounds when you select and move letter tiles to make words and to remove old dead games you can swipe across the display and tap the Remove button and the game makes a really satisfying exploding noise and it actually explodes off the display. Another added extra is that Letterpress is a universal app, it works on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad equally well and your upgrade works for your Apple ID and then applies to all the different devices you have associated with that Apple ID. All in all I love it and I’m trying to get to word out to friends and family so they can start playing along.

Addressing Balance In The Force

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You can’t really have a lot of negative things in your head just mobbing out all the good things that also have happened. To that end, today I have a particular real humor-based life preserver brought to me by the Apple Spotlight twitter account. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and this is worth a million billion bajillion lulz:

 

downgrade_discount

 

This pleases me.

 

Blog Spam

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I hate spam. I really hate it. I don’t want anything to do with Casinos, cheating lovers, or SEO bullshit. In fact, I’ve developed a very acute loathing for the phrase “SEO”. I’ve started to mentally connect “SEO Specalists” with “Used Car Salesmen”. If you are one, keep it to yourself. Don’t come and talk to me about SEO. It’s just gaming the system and it’s both corrupt and dishonest.

To that end, I went back to look at Askimet and realized that the API token that I thought was for-pay only turns out that it’s free for personal blogs. What a surprise! So I installed the Akismet plugin (I had earlier deleted it because I thought it was pay-only) and applied my API token and so far, although it’s only been a few moments, my blog is blessedly spam free.

The comments are the source of the spam. There was a post in the WordPress Community Pool regarding Twitter that got me thinking about how my readership engages with my blog. People don’t really engage in Twitter much anymore and they don’t engage in WordPress comments either. All the engagement seems to be focused on Facebook. I’m not against any of this, but I find it very fascinating. This leads me to the topic of this post, which is that blog spam in the comments on my WordPress.org system is even more damnable. Nobody uses the comment system but I’m loathe to disable it. So, Akismet, at least so far, is riding to the rescue.

With that, I have a great Monty Python skit to share with you all on YouTube. Enjoy!

 

Unexpected Side Effects

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One thing I wasn’t really expecting but that I’m getting in a rather steady stream are spam comments. There seems to be several species of spam floating about. Amongst these are the link droppers, the foreign language gobbledygook, the ‘cheaters’ messages and the random attaboy messages that are possibly authentic but utterly meaningless.

But then there is another class of commentary. There is a whole argument chain about the Wheel of Time that has been marching along. It seems like real comments from real people, as the commentary has a real argumentative structure but I haven’t written any critical posts about WOT.

I’ve been deleting the spammy comments, all of them, and eventually I think I’ll have to create an email filter to organize them into batches or turn off email notification altogether. At least the WordPress app allows me to deal with comments like the mail app allows me to deal with multiple emails. Highlight batches and delete.

It’s not that I don’t want comments. I do! But I want real comments from real people. One thing I will state, if a comment is obnoxious I will kill it without remorse. If you have an unquenchable opinion, start your own blog.

Problems & Puzzles

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problem

 

I took a long while to hack at this problem and then I decided to be cheeky and post it to my door at work. If you know the answer, please keep it to yourself. If you don’t know the answer, don’t feel really bad that you can’t figure it out – it took smarter people than I a long time to get the answer. If you want to know if you are right, feel free to email me or iMessage me with your answer and I’ll let you know if you are right or not.

WOT: Matrim Cauthon’s Theme Song

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I wrote about this years ago when I first started reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series of books. One of the main characters of the story is Matrim Cauthon and he plays a central role throughout the entire story. I’m currently reading “Memory of Light” and just finished a rather well-written section early in this book featuring Mat.

That section got me to thinking about an old LiveJournal post I wrote all those years ago. Thanks to Spotify I can embed the music right in this post:


After reading the lyrics and thinking about Mat I really think this track from Coldplay has Mat nailed down pretty well. I thought everyone else might enjoy it as well.

Curse of Google

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After I moved my blog over to my own host I discovered that my original WordPress blog on WordPress.com was still getting traffic. All that information is now on my new host so for those looking for bluedepth.wordpress.com, you can find all those posts instead at www.windchilde.com/bluedepth instead.

I set my WordPress.com blog as private, so that should send a message to people that the site has moved. If you had a email subscription or an RSS link, it should have been dead for a long while now. You should be able to get new links from this host instead.

Thanks!

Stunning

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There is something quite breathtaking when you find a female misogynist. Articles like this just dazzle me. She writes for the National Review and she’s a conservative. I can’t help but compare her to Ann Coulter and I think the both of them would be perfectly fine being compared to each other.

I can’t help but see how this is just one more nail in the coffin for conservatives. They have exited reality long long ago and it seems that their playbook only contains hatred, bigotry, stupidity, and monumental self-loathing. A surprising number of conservative men are actually downlow gay and the women are either breathtakingly free of empathy or incredibly misogynistic.

How is it that anyone votes, listens to, or endures the suffering pouring out of these awful false people? There should be a pill for this… 🙂