wally’s blog

I’ve for a long time enjoyed using e-Sword. It’s a superbly well built package which runs on Microsoft Windows (and partially under Wine on Linux) … which is where I see the downfall.

The advantages to sticking with one platform are obvious – speed, usability, feature range, you name it. But that’s just it. You’re sticking with one platform.

I didn’t realise until very recently, “e-Sword live” has been launched. I couldn’t actually login, so I was stuck with the basic version … and that (as I expected) only contained a fraction of the features the full e-Sword does. (That is not a gripe, that’s an observation.)

On my Android phone I use “YouBible”, which does the job. But it requires internet connectivity …

So what am I getting at. Well, for the last 3 months I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an e-Sword like application, on the cloud. Yes. That’s a massive undertaking. No, it’s not because I believe there’s anything wrong with e-Sword, neither do I believe there’s anything wrong with biblegateway.com or e-Sword live!

This is to give myself a better understanding of XML, PHP and webapps, to play around with using direct filesystem-based storage over MySQL, and to possibly provide something really usable for those who cannot run e-Sword (i.e. Mac users).

Long term possibilities include Facebook integration. Twitter output. Etc.

I can’t link to the work I’ve done so far, there’s no copyright messages displayed or anything. And it’s not yet that impressive.

Currently I’ve written a parser for the OSIS document format, which splits and outputs the Bible in smaller chunks (chapter level), adding XML tags where I deem necessary. SimpleXML powers the viewer; which can load, process and output a chapter in currently 0.004s. (That’s on low powered hardware too.)

References, “explanations”, passage chapters, verse numbers, footnotes etc are already mostly handled. (3 evening’s programming so far.) A lot to of gratitude to the OSIS and SWORD guys. Awesome stuff. I wouldn’t be 40% of the way there if it wasn’t for you.

I’ve not yet got a domain, or anywhere to properly host it. Dreamhost may do to begin with, you never know, if things really take off – RapidSwitch’s dedicated servers may have me back once more!

I’ll post here as things progress.

Kennet, near where I live, right on my commute home each day.

I am sorry, but that “40MPH” all-singing-all-dancing-flashy-you’re-going-too-fast-no-wait-it’s-just-the-rain electronic sign post “thing” is yes, just a mere 150ft (50 yards) from the following “national speed limit” sign (visible in the distance). Why sould you do that? Why?

Then another one, this time on my way into work. You see that petrol station? The police just love to camp out there, trying to catch people speeding (not for tax or MOT as far as I’m aware, just speeding). Now do not get me wrong, I absolutely 100% do not condone speeding – if you get caught then you were breaking the law. But why do we need to pay a copper to sit there with a van and all their equipment just to catch people doing 45MPH on the straightest road for miles with good visibility and no houses or paths, when not even 200yds up the road there is a national speed limit sign as you join the A14 dual carriage way.

What is that all about?

Not 200yds the other direction there are cars entering a village with a 30MPH limit (and I do 30MPH – the cars in front always disappear and the ones behind are up my exhaust if you know what I mean), with kids wondering up the road and goodness knows what else.

Wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to stick the copper in the middle there? Or am I just too stupid?

Regarding safe hex, on Linux – a topic at work today:

“A wise man once said to me,
‘The root account, you should not be.’
Alas my pride, for great it was,
‘I shall be root, just because!’
Rename this, move off that,
Getting rid of some old tat.
Then, behold! A stray forward-slash…
My entire filesystem, in the trash.

~

‘Take heed my children, obey these words.
Running as root, is not for nerds!’
So my lesson learnt, my hard drive burnt,
The painful task of rebuilding starts.”

Copyright (c) Matthew Hall (wally), 2010.

A poem of root. by Matthew Hall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at matt.matzi.org.uk.

To be, or not to be.

That is the question.

In pseudo code, it could be expressed:
question=(2b)||(!2b)

Therefore of course, the question is “false” – except for when 2b is naught.

I’m so bored.

Recently my PS3′s ability to use iPlayer stopped functioning properly: I couldn’t play programs, and the screen didn’t fit.properly.

Today I discovered a fix.  Just press triangle for the menu, and under tools clear all of the browser cookies, cache and finally reload.  Voila!

Hopefully this will prove useful for someone, if not only myself in 6 months time.

Before some big company steals it and I have a hard time proving “I thought of that first”, here is as captured by Google bots around the globe:

Wii sensor bar built into a TV.

Yeah. That’s one heck of a USP.

Many people observe (and comment) that they find my blog particularly negative.

Yeah, it can be. I don’t mean it to be. I just tend to blog when I’m under pressure, it’s a way of relieving myself. My blog is as much for me to look back and say “be grateful Matt, look where you could have been” as it is for the enjoyment of other people.

Today however, a very positive posting.

I just want to say how grateful I am to my Lord for the job that I have, and individuals who work there. I could be in a much worse situation – and I doubt I could be in a better one.

The last 3 days of my life have been spent wallowing in the deep grave of mud and syrup which is (drum-roll please) “Security Metrics’ PCI-DSS Vulnerability Scanner“.

I could rant for 3 pages, oh I really could. I admin a half-dosen of Linux boxes (shortly to be replaced with quite a few more) – which I take as much pride over as I do my own property. In fact, I probably take more pride in them than I do my own property.

If someone were to so much as accidently cancel a page load (port 80, HTTP) to our customer facing site, I’d know about it.  Once I caught the telephone system glitching out – I wondered why there were several 404 errors for “ourdomain.com/dotheyanswerthephones”.  Yes, I’m that observant.

These boxes are so secure, I’d happily put everything I own against them not being hacked.  They are the essence of epic.  Every T is crossed and lower-case J dotted.  And  then some.  And then some more.

Alas, I digress.

So what’s led me to blog this?

Well it’s not the score of 45 points which didn’t exist 4 weeks ago.  (Yes, I’m that proud of my work – I won’t settle for even the “warning” points).  Oh no.  It’s not the repetative emails saying “You’re not PCI-DSS compliant” (which is a load of rubbish – we are PCI-DSS compliant – we’re just just flagging some false positives on some third party’s Nessus install), and it’s not even the “Open SMTP relay” which relays mail for our own domains! (Google reveals I’m not the only one with this problem … some sanity remains).  It’s not even even even even the POP3 and SMTP ports which provide outdated SSL certificates (because obviously POP3S is POP3 with the S standing for “super”-SSL.  Oh no wait…).  And I will skip the detecting my Debian Lenny box as a Buffalo Wireless Access Point.  Idiots.

No today, this one started over the “You’re using an outdated OpenSSH version, please upgrade it – or wait for your vendor to provide a new version” (which is in-line with PCI-DSS) – yet continually report me as failing while I wait.

And then it finished with this (and I’m only a third of the way through fixing over 300 points of fail):

Description: scan may have been dynamically blocked by an IPS Severity: Potential Problem Impact: The scan results may be inconclusive. Background: An Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is a device which protects a system or network from attackers. An IPS works by monitoring a network for malicious activity, and blocking that activity. Resolution Temporarily disable the Intrusion Prevention System or configure an exception for the scanner’s IP address before starting the scan.

Oh my goodness.  You’re actually giving me a score of 3 points because you’ve (incorrectly) detected a possible IPS – which is protecting my servers from attacks?!

</life>

</sanity>

It’s not often I feel I just have to steal a link from a comic site, but this one just made me laugh so hard:

My life, perfectly summarised.

As some people (… family, co-workers, wife) know, I’m quite a fan of a particular classic Nintendo game …

Today I found myself the coolest ringtone ever!

http://www.supermariobrothers.org/mario-music.html

When you’ve grabbed that to your phone, checkout the utter awesomeness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcKurvm_0oE&feature=related