Ranok’s Ramblings

Hello everyone,

I’m taking just a few minutes from my busy day of painting, sanding, weed whacking and boat driving to update you on my past few days in Temagami. I arrived on the 22nd and spent a good sum of time trying to get the water running, and the propane working. The pipes hadn’t been drained properly last fall, and there were a few cracked valves that needed soldering. Once that was done, we headed to Langskib (the other camp) to perform the same tasks there, all of which went very smoothly. Since then, we’ve been cleaning, painting, hauling stuff, just general preparation stuff. It’s going very well and in a few days some more staff will arrive and we’ll get underway.

Hope everyone’s summer is going well and they are finding some time to have some fun,

Ranok

As some of you know, this summer (and many before that) I spent paddling in northern Ontario (and beyond). This year will be my second year on staff, and I’m one of the few who will be going up early to set this up and prepare for the influx of staff, campers and parents, who will take the islands by force. I’m leaving on my 564 mile journey on Wednesday, which I’m breaking up into a few chunks. I’m going to visit some friends in Westport, and spend the night in Potsdam, visiting Lauren and some of my other friends who are there. The next day, I continue my journey north, hopefully getting picked up in a boat (otherwise it’s a long swim) where I’ll start working.

For the first portion of the summer, I’ll be cleaning up rodent scat and prying open doors to reveal… more rodent scat. After the other staff members arrive, we’ll fix canoes, and prepare the rest of camp for the campers to arrive. Once they hit the docks, I will hopefully be assisting a trip of young men out into the wilderness for 3 weeks, portaging from lake to lake, and longs days under the sun and above the water.

I’ve been going to this camp since I was but a young lad, and although I love every minute of being there, there’s no way to communicate that with people who haven’t experienced it. When I try to share my journeys, I can sense that the deeper meaning of my travels is lost, and all is left is a week-long canoe paddle around a lake.

If possible, I will try to post pictures, or keep people updated, but part of the experience is being on a remote island, so if you don’t hear from me, I hope you’re having a wonderful summer, and I’m excited to see you in the fall.

This is my first music review, but I thought I’d give it a shot — any comments would be much appreciated.

After searching for more music like Porcupine Tree, I found another one of Steven Wilson’s project bands, Blackfield. Blackfield is a joint effort between british Steven Wilson and israeli Aviv Geffen. Blackfield II is their second album and overall is a very pleasant listen, with calming melodies and solem lyrics. From what I can tell, both Aviv and Steven take turns with the singing and the difference in accent is quite apparent. Listeners not used to a foreign English accent might find Aviv’s to be a little odd and take a little getting used to. Of the 10 songs on this album, the ones that stand out are “End of the World”, “1,000 People”, “Miss U” and “Epidemic”, each of which have sad, yet powerful lyrics, and a beautiful musical score to accompany them.

While very partial to Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree, I think that Blackfield expresses their emotions and thoughts in a very gestalt manner and comes highly recommended.

Blackfield Home

I know it was short, but please give feedback, as I’d like to review more music and critiques would be quite helpful. Ranok

That’s the reaction I’ve gotten from Clarkson for, wait for it, staying more than 24 hours past my last final. My final ended at 11:45 yesterday, and I’m hopefully going to be gone by 1:30 today. I say hopefully because everytime the maintainence people come knocking on my door (starting at 6AM this morning) they just can’t wait for me to leave. While I understand they need to clean the room, there are other rooms to be cleaned which will be rented out for senior week, and ours is not one of them as the attached room is occupied until after then.

Oh well, I guess I’ll survive.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

As the semester is coming to a close, I thought I’d list some of the things I was able to get done this semester and what I’d like to progress on in the future.

Accomplishments:

1. Released the Open Server Platform version 0.2
2. Managed COSI’s Zimbra server
3. Took the following classes: Compilers, Operating Systems, Network Security, Intro. to Psych, E. Linear Algebra.

Goals:

1. Polish off Wiki Wide Web
2. Work on OSP
3. Have a relaxing, fun summer
4. Work on MOSS

That’s all that comes to mind at the moment, I’m sure I’ll think of more as time goes by.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

As school is starting to come to a close, for many of use, rather than a time for relaxing with friends and preparing for summer internships or jobs, it is a time of stress, studying and many sleepless nights, either working of projects, or tossing back and forth thinking of what needs to be done. I want to wish all those who are in a similar situation good luck with their projects and finals, and encourage them to take a few hours to do something not school related, go for a walk, play a game, or just hang out with friends.

For the next 3ish weeks of school, here’s what is on my plate:

• 3 exams this week: Linear Algebra, Psych and Compilers
• Formal Methods homework (temporal logic)
• Finish semantic analysis and add code generation to my compiler (shudder)
• Do a Java HashMap speed comparision
• Take a small Psych quiz
• Write up my research on AppArmor and 0-day exploits and present to the class
• Complete my paper for WikiSym 2008
• Add some substantial code to MOSS so it can be demoed
• Study for my exams: Operating Systems, Linear Algebra, Psychology

Once all that is done, I can head home (or not) and relax and work on Wiki Wide Web and other projects until I head off to Canada for the summer, returning for Lauren’s birthday then working here in Potsdam for the remainder of the summer.

Wish me luck,

Ranok

After less than a week OSP has reached another milestone in it’s development! Version 0.2 was just released with a few big fixes, performance improvments and added functionality. Also the documentation has been improved and made consistant with the code.

The most important bug fix was a performance issue that caused a slowdown over time, this has been fixed and along with it, the performance and scalability has increased! The biggest feature added was support for UDP (and soon SCTP, and SSL) which can be set without changing the code! Imagine writing a server and deploying it using TCP, UDP, SSL and SCTP, just by changing one line in the XML servlet.

Setup should be simple too, just download from Google Code, extract, make and then compile your servlet. Now on the first node, run ./start-osp.sh and then you can telnet to port 9876 and administer your cluster.

Links:

• Open Server Platform home
• OSP Group
• OSP Code

Enjoy,

Ranok

I’m happy to announce that my OSP version has gotten stable enough to release version 0.1! While still a very temperamental system, it is showing true promise. It’s gotten to the point where on the first node, you edit a configuration file and run start-osp.sh and on each of the other nodes, just copy join.sh and edit it on each machine. After it’s run on each, you can telnet into the first machine and start applications which all have shared state across the cluster.

For more information, check out the home page, the Google Code page and the Google Group.

Generally, I keep my opinions on this rather touchy topic to myself or to my close friends. However, I think our globalized world has reached a point where people need to get their issues resolved and stop fighting about religion. Please be aware that these are my opinions, and I’m not an expert by any means on any religion, but I do try to keep informed (I’ve read most of the Bible and the Our’an).

After watching “Fitna“, a short movie/slide-show about Islam being an inherently violent religion bent on the assimilation and control of the world, I thought it was time to give my 2 cents. In quite a bit of America, Islam is blamed for the 9/11 attacks and everything else that’s wrong in the world. This fear of Islam is being used to remove our rights and freedoms, and I think that it is sad that our country has come to this. After watching “Fitna”, I think that it incites hatred and anger by selectively picking verses from the Qur’an and showing clips of extremists calling for blood. If you read the Qur’an, you’ll find wonderful verses such as Surah 2: 109,110 and Surah 2: 195 (I know there are more, but this is what I could find just reading part of Surah 2). If you look to the Holy Bible, you’ll find equally incendiary verses: Exodus 1:16, Numbers 31:17, etc…

I don’t think that the problem is the religion, but the extremists of any type. Those who hate those that differ from them, and would kill those who do not see their way. I think that there are extremists of most all religions, not just Islam. Watch “Camp Jesus“, which is a documentary of an evangelical bible camp that indoctrinates young children to “fight for Jesus” and that siding with the conservative right is politically the only religiously ‘right’ thing to do. I think that this is a terrifying form of extremism right in our backyard. One only has to look to the KKK to see another Christian extremism sect that is bent on the destruction of everyone who they don’t like.

Does the existance of the Taliban mean that Islam is inherently evil and violent, if so, then doesn’t that mean that Christianity is equally evil because the KKK identify themselves as Christian? Should we hate all Mormans because the fundamentalists are polygamists who ‘marry’ girls as young as 14 and have as many 65 ‘wives’? I’m asking you to answer these questions yourself, and perhaps see that one religion isn’t evil and another is good. To modify a popular saying, “Religion doesn’t kill people, people kill people”. I think this is a true statement and should be taken to heart. I sincerely believe that a religion that teaches only hate and violence will never have a mainstream following, and that there are people who are scared or ignorant and rather than face these fears, they try to destroy all opposition to what they think. These people don’t come from a single religion, but all beliefs and religions.

Only by educating our kin and teaching ethics and morals can we hope to eradicate extremist violence. I am not calling for people to abandon their beliefs, but to be open and respectful to others. Humans have enough differences (skin tone, height, language, etc…) to fight about, they don’t need to fight about things that can’t be seen (religion and beliefs).

Hopefully people will read and think about this,

Ranok

Just a quick little PHP script I wrote for one of my professors to generate a RSS feed of files in a directory. It’s pretty simple to setup, and is mostly useful for either providing a RSS feed for updated files, or for a Podcast, just put this somewhere on your website and point it at your MP3 directory. Then, just upload your MP3 (or anyfile format) podcasts to that directory, and that’s it!

EasyRSS can be downloaded here

Peace and chow,

Ranok