random thoughts

12.11.02

73 Comments

I’m putting my time into finishing my book this week, so updates may be infrequent, but I wanted to give up a couple of computer things:

  1. Over at Lockergnome’s Penguin Shell, Tony is running a great week-long tutorial on using procmail to get rid of spam. I’ll be following it all week, moving closer and closer to getting a sendmail server working here at home.
    Yeah, that’s right, sendmail. See, I’ve been having a real good time with computers for about a month now, and I need a reason to hate them again.
  2. Tonight, at 6:20 PM PST, I’ll be a guest on MacRadio. I’ll be talking about my iBook, Linux, my upcoming book, and stuff. It should be a good time, and you can listen in right through your browser.

Finally, my friend sent me this page of really cool fractals he made. I wish you would like it.
Now, I am leaving to go buy the good version of Lord of the Rings, before I park my ass beneath a tree in a park to write.
Life is good.

73 thoughts on “12.11.02”

  5. Those fractals are beautiful. Best of luck with the book. Personally I’m trying to participate in NaNoWriMo and having a very difficult time of it. Can’t imagine trying to write a real book.
    Yes, people, the links are broken due to what looks like a wee error, but it’s easy enough to get to the pages anyway.

  10. looking forward to the book, should be a great read. I’m also glad you are getting the good version of lotr, i will also be purchasing it to. Have a great day!

  11. Argh.
    See, I compose offline all the time, and cut-n-paste into MT to update.
    I usually use gedit, or some other simple text program, but I was sitting on my patio, enjoying the strangely warm November morning, writing on my iBook in Appleworks.
    Turns out Appleworks replaces lots of “special characters” with codes.
    Grumble. Stupid computers.
    Well, the links should work now.

  18. I can’t contact the owner of the fractals page, but was wondering if he’d be adverse to me printing them? I’m not going to sell them or anything, I just want to get them on cardstock and use them for custom covers for journals for a couple of writers on my Xmas list.

  19. Sendmail?
    Most in the know would recommend Postfix, Qmail, or exim (depending on, well, variaus issues). Sendmail’s got a bad reputation for exploits–think IIS. IIRC, the Moris worm was a Sendmail exploit (for what it’s worth).
    Just my two cents.

  20. Others have already mentioned the evilness of sendmail. Their suggestions are fine, but I thought I should mention my favorite MTA: Exim. It’s highly configurable yet very simple, and just works.
    My anti-spam solution is “Active Spam Killer” (http://www.paganini.net/ask/) which I’ve used for almost a year now and has worked perfectly.

  22. Here’s a pro sysadmin vote for procmail (having said that, I haven’t ever tried out exim). I was actually doing this work at the time of the aforementioned Morris worm, and strangely enough, I’ve steered clear of sendmail ever since. Unfair, since that was nearly 14 years ago? Sure, but the general design philosophy of sendmail (monolith process, maximum privileges) hasn’t much changed, so.
    For spam, I use procmail and bogofilter, one of the Bayesian analysis filters. It’s…interesting, at least.
    Wouldn’t you know the first time I said anything on your blog it would be something work-related?

  24. Don’t use AppleWorks… one word: BBEdit! http://www.barebones.com. You can get a demo, lite or the real thing. One you go BB, you won’t go back.
    Also, check out all the web services hooks into MT. Try Versiontracker. I don’t use ‘em myself (got my own PHP system) but I know there are some who are doing some totally slick stuff with blogging with MT. One more note: NetNewsWire from http://www.ranchero.com – Oh heck one more note: Watson from karelia.com – These are the tools that make the Internet your slave.

  26. Good luck on it Wil. I have the email from my domain routed to a server outside my home network, then poll with fetchmail to bring it inside. I’m way too paranoid to expose that much of a home server beyond my firewall. Then again, over the years, I’ve had to deal with way too many mail-based system attacks. ;-) I can’t speak for Mandrake, but the latest distribution from Redhat and some others defaults sendmail to only listen to the localhost (lo) and ignore external networks so you might need to check sendmail.mc or the dist. release notes as a prelim.

  27. procmail is a MDA, not a MTA. exim and postfix are both decent free MTAs. For delivery I use mailfilter (part of Courier), though if you’re a Perl person I’ve heard good things about Mail::Audit.

  28. Just don’t sit under a tree. Appealing as it may sound, there are lots of things that could go wrong (e.g. a bird deciding at that very moment that it’s bowel is just TOO full; you sit in the exact spot where a dog has just followed the birds example, etc).
    Gotta ask, going barefoot?

  30. Welcome to the Mac world!
    I see a few people already mentioned NetNewsWire Lite – I have it running all the time & I can see in my dock when anything has been updated.
    For a web browser, check out Chimera (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/chimera/) – it’s the nicest & fastest even if it’s still unfinished.
    I also can’t live without DragThing & ASM (http://www.vercruesse.de/software), which adds an application menu.
    If you want to get really geeky, check out Fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/) to install open source software including X11.

  31. ETA on the book? When can I expect to get my hands and eyes on it? Not to rush the creative process, but I am very much looking forward to reading it.

  34. Don’t use AppleWorks for your text… I’ll agree with the BBEdit chime, but OS X’s built in TextEdit works just fine too… just make sure you use plain text instead of RTF, natch (hit command-shift-T to convert from RTF to plain).

  35. Yeah, I just watched the new LOTR version and I must say that one of the greatest movies of all times just got better! Plenty more character interaction. Just glues the thing together. Fantastic.
    When do we get to hear more about the movie, Wil? What’s it called?

  36. Good luck on MacRadio tonight — I’m so pleased that you’ve come over to the creative side of computing. Couldn’t live without my Mac — G4 at work, G3 PowerBook and G3 iMac at home — they rock! And, pc people, don’t start some flame war, OK? I won’t change and I don’t care if you do or not. It’s just nice that Wil did.
    Wil is smart.

  38. Im very pissed off with Amazon of the new release of LOTR. My copy did not arrive today, as it should have done. I’ve had the damn thing on order since 6th October, and a friend of mine who also ordered it from Amazon, and who lives five minutes walk away from me, got his. Another guy i know ordered his copy from Black Star and he got his on SATURDAY!
    On the plus side, that meant I got to see it, and my god is it stupendous. It truly is an even better version than the origional cinema release. Its got even more depth, and its just beautiful. Many scenes make more sense and flow smoother.
    Thank you Peter Jackson. You made a fucking amazig movie of one of the best fantasy stories every written, and then you released a DVD version which was even better.
    Yeah, so I’m a geek/fanboy. Bite me.

  39. Hey Wil,
    This weekend I watched LOTR, having seen it only once before, and realized with a jolt that Elrond is played by Hugo Weaving, the same actor who played Agent Smith in The Matrix.
    Whoa.
    So here’s what pops into my head next:
    Elrond: You lead… TWO lives… don’t you, Missterrrrrrrrrr Baggins.
    One, a peaceful hobbit, in a quiet shire.
    The other, an advennnnntchurr-urrr…
    a Rinnnnggg bearrrerrrr…
    One of these lives, Mister Baggins, has a fewtchurrrrrrre…
    The other does NOT.
    heh-heh

  40. Thanks for all the links, everybody.
    However, I must set the record straight: I haven’t “switched” in the sense that I’ve gone 100% Mac.
    I have the iBook, and she is a wonderful mistress…but I am still married to my RedHat 8.0 box, and Anne and the boys use the Mandrake 8.2 box.

  42. Good luck finishing your book! I’m another of those NaNoWriMo.org pain-loving freaks, and I’m only at 19K so far. If your book is written anything like this website, I’ll definitely have to keep an eye out for it! :)

  43. Bought LOTR:FOTR Special Edition today. Watched it today before work. It made me late because it was sooooo long. But it was worth it! I’m going home tonight and watching all the extras. :)

  44. Been trying to connect for several minutes to macradio to hear the broadcast, but keep getting an “Internal Server Error”. So I’m probably gonna miss it unless it gets fixed RSN.
    Got a message from Amazon saying that they’ve shipped my expanded LOTR. I’ve had it on order since September, so I can hardly wait.
    The bookends woulda been neat, but I can live without. I need more bookSHELVES, but bookends.
    /wave,
    uman

  48. Joe Q Public
    Stop taking those pills, they aint doing you any good. May I also suggest that you ask your Doctor for a full frontal lobotomy, 10 rolls of padded wallpaper and some armless pyjamas.
    You ruined and terrible form of life, fucked up in a dribbling Uruk-Hai

  49. OMG I’M LIKE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING THE FIRST TO POST!!!!!!111
    You are sooo sappy and cheesy. To an almost pukey, gross degree. I keep reading it though. God, I’m sick.
    Congrats, good luck…woohooo and stuff.

  50. Your composing more of the book?
    Let me know when its done. I’ll take a dozen!
    Seriously is it going to be on distribution? Even in the UK?
    *hopes*

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