Yesterday I talked about how to cache RSS feeds in PyBlosxom using only mod_rewrite, a cron job, and a package of hostess twinkies. Today, I’m going a little further. I’ve been having problems with link spammers hitting my pages and using up my bandwidth. I’m pretty sure they’re all coming from the same source, but they’re not the same block of IP addresses, maybe they’re zombied. Anyway, the urls are all terribly predictable like http://www.
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It’s getting to the point where I need to stop doing server generation for my RSS feed whenever it is requested. Mainly because RSS seems to be eating a majority of my bandwidth and doing the server side generation doesn’t give an etag or a last modified date, this makes conditional get broken when people try to fetch my feed. Fortunately, Apache can handle this stuff if I do a static file.
I found this article about how to list devices using hal and dbus from Python, however, I couldn’t get it to work properly. After some hacking I managed to get a little script working to list all the ethernet devices.
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #0000FF">import</span></span> dbus bus <span style="color: #990000">=</span> dbus<span style="color: #990000">.</span><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #000000">Bus</span></span><span style="color: #990000">(</span>dbus<span style="color: #990000">.</span>Bus<span style="color: #990000">.</span>TYPE_SYSTEM<span style="color: #990000">)</span> hal_service <span style="color: #990000">=</span> bus<span style="color: #990000">.
With marriage comes a lot of “firsts”. We’re making a bit of an effort to document some of these firsts so we can remember them for later. On Friday, the day after thanksgiving, Kristina and I put up our Christmas Tree. I purchased it last year on the day after Christmas for about $15 or so. We’ve got a whole series of photos that will eventually go up when I finish my photo gallery software.
Frustrated by the fact that Ubuntu doesn’t ship with NetApplet or NetworkManager? Me too! In the true open source spirit, I’ve chosen to get off my ass actually do something about it. Behold, the first screenshot of PyWifiApplet. This little bugger sits on your gnome panels and tells you what network you’re connected to. It’s as simple as just pulling up a menu to switch networks. Can it get much easier?
Pennsylvania House Bill 30 is currently making it’s way through the Senate in the state of Pennsylvania. It seems like it’s a good thing, ecouraging investment in broadband, supporting voice over IP, and that sort of stuff. But a closer read shows the whole think smacks of corporate interests. In particular, Section 3014, Subsection H (page 70 of the current version as of right now, PN 4778) has the following:
I’ve just finished working CSCW at the Chicago Hilton hotel. My role there was as both as student volunteer and as the computing chair. As computer chair my role was to ensure that the attendees had network access and were able to connect to the Internet during the main sessions to participate in back channel conversations. My role as a student volunteer was to help out whenever possible. I didn’t need to do a whole lot in that respect because most of my time was taken up by working on the network issues.
Both of these are courtesy of BoingBoing. The first is that someone went and made a KILLER video of Encore from The Grey Album. Great creativity lies in this video. Ringo starts spinnin and John starts break dancing. If the video goes down (waiting for the C&D’s to start flying) I can probably find a site that has it an hook you up with it.
The second is the very cool remix from The Kleptones of Queen’s a Night at the Opera.
The TSA seems to be rolling ahead with the horribly named “Secure Flight” program that will do nothing to protect us. As more evidence, I received the following email today on the IP list:
U.S. Airlines Must Supply Travel Records by Nov. 23, U.S. Says
2004-11-12 11:59 (New York)
By John Hughes
Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) – U.S. airlines were ordered to hand over records of all passengers who flew domestically in June so the government can test a new system aimed at keeping terrorists off airplanes.
I was in Chicago this last week and noticed that the nice folks at the MPAA have started up a bit of an advertising campaign to education people on the problems with downloading movies. Here is the ad, and my commentary follows.
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Full Size MPAA Initimdation Ad
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MPAA Intimidation Text
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My initial thought was that whoever actually made this ad for them should be shot. This does not treat the people they’re addressing as customers.