Ryan J. Allen

Here’s the situation: you’re at a social gathering with a number of people. You’re there with a friend but you don’t know most of the people there. They’re your friend’s colleagues–coworkers or schoolmates. As you’re standing around, making awful small talk with some random person who you don’t care about you hear your name called from down the hall. You turn to look and see your arch nemesis there.

He or she shakes your hand or hugs you (gender depending, usually) and asks how you’ve been (note: friends never ask how you’ve been, they ask how you are because they know how you’ve been because they always ask you how you are). This person tries to catch up with you, genuinely interested in what you’ve been doing if only so he or she can try to demonstrate that he or she has done something better. You need to get away from this person but can’t think of an out. Luckily you’ve read this blog entry and you know that this is exactly what you say:

“Excuse me, I have to go be cooler than you.”

DAVID BRENT
We’ve got access to the Internet, yeah, but it is not censored. Is that a good or bad thing?

GARETH KEENAN
Bad.

BRENT
Well, it’s not for us to say. All I know is I can type in (Typing) “sex fetish”, yeah…it takes a little while…2 230 matches, yeah. Just click on one, at random. Uggh. (Reading screen) “Dutch girls must be punished for having big boobs.” Now you do not punish someone, Dutch or otherwise, for having big boobs.

KEENAN
If anything they should be rewarded.

BRENT
They should be equal.

KEENAN
Women are equal.

BRENT
I’ve always said that, so..

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(Note: the above script is not on-topic with what I’m writing, it was just funny.)

The Internet is the world’s largest public network. Today over 1.1 billion people use the Internet, with many people and businesses in the developed world depending on the Internet day-to-day. This amazing statistic is possible because there are only minor barriers to join the Internet, usually being as simple as paying money to an Internet service provider to gain access. If it so happens that you cannot, or will not do business with a particular Internet service provider, most markets offer a choice of a number of different providers. The size and openness makes one thing very difficult for services on the Internet: exclusivity.

This may come as a shock to you but, by default, any service you put up on the Internet is available to everyone. Everyone. Even your friend’s, friend’s, coworkers. Usually these people have to go looking to find you, but once they have they’re free to do what they can with your website, mail server, streaming audio, etc. That is, if you allow the public access to your service.

Generally speaking, you can block the public from accessing your service. But the service would be pretty useless if nobody could access it. Enter: allow lists.

The Internet is good at inclusiveness. Think of your e-mail account that requires a login and password, or a “public” forum that requires you to register and login. Sometimes blocks are made at a protocol level with firewalls, and sometimes you need to connect to a VPN in order to access services. This can be implemented as simply as requiring a generic password to use the service in question, or by creating a list of acceptable Internet addresses (every computer on the Internet has a number that it can be reached at, like how every payphone has a phone number) or domains (e.g. everyone connecting via “kos.net” can access). For a lot of Internet services, being inclusive is great but it doesn’t make sense for everything–especially websites.

Inclusiveness on the Internet is defined by what you do with a default user; a user that does not qualify for access to your service. If your final rule is DENY then you are running an inclusive service. In the opposite case, when your final rule is ACCEPT, you are running an exclusive service.

Exclusive services are very rare on the Internet. One example that comes to mind is Internet relay chat (IRC) channels (or “chat rooms”). IRC channels offer a “ban” list that can be used to ban users from a channel based on their nickname, identity, and/or host name (Internet address). If you do not match any of the ban list entries you are allowed access to the channel. If you were to try to ban everyone (*!*@*) then no one could enter the channel at all–not even those you want to be able to enter.

Because the public Internet is anonymous, exclusive Internet services tend to only work on ban lists by IP address or domain. There is no way to practically identify a specific person by using the IP address; much like there is no way to identify a driver of a vehicle given a license plate number. You can determine who owns the car, or the Internet account, but you cannot be certain that the owner was using it at the time that you’ve recorded the plate number, or IP address. Because the Internet is large and public it is virtually impossible to exclude using exclusionary methods.

So let’s back up to the Internet being a public network. You’ll recall that I said that means that everything on the Internet is, by default, publicly accessible. This is a truth that all web loggers become aware of quickly, and usually in a surprising manner, if they aren’t already.

Every single web log entry I have ever written has been written with an awareness that it is publicly available. Friends, family, coworkers, potential employers, media, stalkers, and randoms can all equally access my web log. This might not be the way I’d like things but there’s little I can do about this as long as I want this site to be accessible to the anonymous Internet. I want my default rule to be ACCEPT and so I have to accept that everyone, even those I might prefer not, can read my web log.

(Postscript: it also doesn’t help that I use my real, full name in the title and URL; further, I allow search engines to index the site and list it in their search results.)

Any tailors reading? I often have questions that would be best answered by a tailor. I really should find a good one in this city but how do I go about it? That’s not my question, though.

Many pants have two belt loops in the very back. Why is that?

In unrelated news, I sang “O’ Canada” in the bath today. I’m gearing up for Canada Day.

Tonight I barbecued and it was amazing.

Adam J. and I barbecued some burgers after work today. They were deliciously good. I would love to have full-time access to a full-sized barbecue. I have a chicken sitting in the fridge ready to be cooked and I’m just imagining how great it would taste if only I could barbecue it. While it would technically fit in the little barbecue I have here, I can’t stand it up and I don’t have a rotisserie so barbecuing it is out. Someday, someday.

I purchased some barbecuing utensils on the basis of cost effectiveness and am living through the pains of that decision. I have already bent the prongs on the fork and am confident that the spatula and I will get into a fight by the end of this season. I do, however, accept the challenge of producing a high-quality food product using value-grade cooking utensils–I can do it with my knives after all.

When I got home this evening I wanted something sweet, but I had nothing. No cookies, no pudding, no cake–nothing that I could think of. I have some Sweet and Salty Nature Valley bars but I didn’t really feel like a sweet and salty taste.

I had given up. I poured myself a glass of milk and mixed in some of that chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk. It wasn’t what I wanted but I thought it might do. When I went to the bottom shelf to get a new milk bag I took notice of something in the crisper: grapes. Just what I had mentally ordered.

The grape fairy visited me this weekend. Thank you, grape fairy.

I wonder if evergreen trees in Canada prefer one season over another. They’re always green–how can you tell when they are or are not happy?

This will be a quick post. I only forewarn you because the gentleman I will speak of in this post is one who I respect and who deserves more attention than I am going to give.

When I was younger I used to watch professional wrestling. Thanks to the Brown Man, I also went through a spurt of watching it a couple of years ago. There are a lot of things that can be said about professional wrestling, and about professional wrestlers–some opinion, and some fact. I don’t know where I’m going with this but, in short, I want to say that the occasional “superstar”–as in any workplace, I’m sure–separates himself as a person who commands your respect. Chris Benoit was one such “superstar”.

Chris Benoit is dead. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be so blunt, but I’m not sure it is fair to say that he has “passed away” or that he “has died”. Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy, and their son Daniel, were found dead in their home in Atlanta yesterday afternoon. Though details are scarce, it is believed that Mr. Benoit killed his wife and (7 year old) son over the weekend before killing himself yesterday.

**

Such a story is hard to take under any circumstances but it is made that much more worse when it is someone that you have a great deal of respect for. I am trying to think of a popular culture celebrity who might be the equivalent but my lack of knowledge of that field limits my ability to come up with a name.

I do not know Benoit’s motive, but I know that there is no justifiable reason for these actions. My mind is very confused about him right now. Based on what I know of Benoit, and personal accounts I’ve heard and read of him, these actions seem almost impossible for this man to carry out.

I think I will stop there so as to not take away from the focus of this post but I will summarize what more I would say in one sentence: it scares me to think that people can be driven to commit such acts, specifically the idea that a negative influence could be so great.

Today was a good day. The people that I love really make my world go ’round, whether they are right here with me or hundreds of kilometers away.

It was a relaxing day and I am now relaxing with a parfait, of sorts. Some sweet vanilla yogurt with some tasty All Bran buds.

I may have had too much dairy today. For lunch I had a sandwich that had some cheese on it. With that I drank 500 mL of chocolate milk. After lunch I went to the Superstore and bought a 1 L jug of chocolate milk that I consumed over the course of the next hour. At home I drank two large glasses of milk, finishing off the bag, and now I’m eating a bowl of yogurt.

I’m sure you’ve seen a sign, advert, bumper sticker, etc. with the phrase “if you ate today, thank a farmer”. Well, thank you farmers and (not to pick favourites, but) today I especially thank you, dairy farmers.

So I didn’t didn’t blog on Sunday, big whoop.

Yesterday I was tired. My geeky Saturday night left me getting about 2.5 hours of sleep. I don’t always need lots of sleep in order to operate well, but I definitely need more than 2.5 hours.

Somehow, I managed to get through the day. Actually, “somehow” isn’t a fair way to summarize it; I got through the day because of: Church, Dot, Starbucks, Rockstar energy drinks, and wonderful dinner company. I’m sure my inability to formulate thoughts at various times, not to mention some of my habits, got really annoying at times but only a few punches were thrown and none of them connected so I think all is well.

To update you all on meat weekend: it didn’t happen. When Dot arrived on Friday my level of commitment to meat weekend was questioned. Combine that doubt with the general concern for our wellbeing and you get a cancelled meat weekend. That being said, we still ate a lot of meat.

Saturday: bacon, 2 pork tenderloins.
Sunday: breakfast sausages, chicken breasts (Dot only), ribs (I only, minus 1 rib that Dot ate), ham.

I have some leftovers. I have to admit, before the weekend I thought we could have eaten all of the meat. Having eaten what we did, I’m now sure that we couldn’t have. I still have a whole chicken in my fridge that I now will need to cook and I’m confident that this and other leftovers will last me through the week.

A pigeon just spat orange soda, What the F!

I am posting from Dot’s MacBook. This is exciting for multiple reasons. I’m not going to go into it because it’s not the focus of this post.

No, the focus of this post is my tiredness. You may be able to tell that it’s approximately 2 a.m. local time. I was up early-ish and got very little sleep last night. Luckily, I didn’t do anything physically demanding today. In fact, much of the day was spent relaxing (maybe even all of it? Save the parts where we were eating meat). So I’m tired, but I have a renewed sense of energy.

My computer and I had a fight today. And yes, I’m talking about my iMac.

<begin geekspeak>I downloaded the WWDC 2007 build of Leopard. I am mostly excited about the new Finder and desktop, but am equally curious about many other new features of Leopard (there are over 300, if you believe Apple’s marketing hype, which I do). My home computer is mostly for recreation so there is no real harm in blowing it up (software, wise, because I can always reload the software). That being said, I am doing an upgrade-in-place.

Back to Leopard: I downloaded the build and burnt it to a DVD+RW DL disc, which was ridiculously expensive. I excitedly rebooted and held down the ‘C’ key to boot from the optical drive. The computer booted from the hard drive. I changed the startup disc in the System Preferences–no luck. I held down the option key to have Open Firmware give me the boot disk choice–the DVD wasn’t listed as a boot device. I even went into Open Firmware (CMD+OPT+O+F) and futzed around with the command prompt. This is where I learned that the filesystem wasn’t being read from the disc.

Odd, I thought. I followed some advice I found online about shrinking the disc to fit on a single-layered DVD and reburnt Leopard. This new CD didn’t boot. I tried the Tiger disc that came with my mac originally–it worked. I then tried a random disc to see if I could list the contents of it from Open Firmware–that worked. Tried again with the SL DVD, and I could list the contents just fine.

Very odd. I issued the boot command (boot cd:\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX) and the computer seemed to of complied, until it hung at the booting screen indefinitely (I didn’t wait for all of time to pass, but I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t have stayed there until there was outside intervention). The computer and I were not friends.

I decided to clear out some space on my iPod and copy the installation files to it. Seems like I should have been able to boot from it just fine. Startup Disk in System Preferences saw the disk just fine so I rebooted–no dice. I tried the OF command prompt; again, I could list files on the disk and issue the boot command but still couldn’t boot. The computer and I were having communication issues.

I decided to turn to the web and seek out detailed instructions on booting and/or installing OS X from an iPod, or saving that an external disk. I found an article about installing Tiger without a DVD on Macrumors; that was just what I needed. Turns out I had to wipe the iPod completely and make it a regular ol’ external hard disk with an HFS+ partition.</end geekspeak>

So now the new beta version of Mac OS X is installing; it’s nearly complete. My computer and I are talking again; it is now obliging with my instructions. In all, this felt like a very geeky experience. I haven’t had such an experience at home in a while because Macs Just Work(tm); I am lucky enough to experience this sort of thing on a daily basis at work, though. It is a different feeling at home with my Mac: rarely at work am I motivated solely out of personal interest as I am usually working on a problem that doesn’t affect me personally (until I own a Porsche, which I don’t think will ever happen but I’ll restrain from saying why).

So…computer and I friends. I tired. Posting now. This counts for Saturday.

Update: My bluetooth keyboard and mouse didn’t work. I discovered that this was because blued (the Bluetooth daemon) wasn’t running. This was because it kept crashing. The fix: I enabled SSH, SSHed into the machine from Dot’s laptop, and tossed the Bluetooth preferences. Then, things were good.

I also am having some issues with Mail. It wanted to “upgrade” my mailboxes for the new version. This didn’t go well for whatever reason. I’m going to try tossing the old mail settings and see what happens (all of my mail is server-side so I won’t lose any).