mattlary's weblog

I was reading about stack buffer overflows, then the Morris Worm, which got me reading about the *nix finger command;

Very quick background for non unix nerds- finger is a command to find out who is logged into a machine, to get their contact info, and to read their ‘Plan’, which is like a user’s status.  It was handy when working in the CS labs during college to see who was in the labs.

Anyway, I found a newsgroup post from the creator of finger talking about how and why he created it;  it’s an iteresting article in general, but what stuck out for me was the following:

Some people asked for the Plan file feature so that they could explain their absence or how they could be
reached at odd times, so I added it.  I found it interesting that this feature evolved into a forum for social commentary and amusing observations.

So, it turns out people were updating their status way back in the ’70s, and we’re now seeing the same sort of evolution (or devolution depending on who you ask) of away messages, statuses, and tweets.  Of course, status updates and tweets today are severely lacking in ascii art.

     _    ___  ____ ____
 ___ |\/\ |  \ |_ _\|_ _\
|___\|   \| . \  ||   ||
     |/v\/|/\_/  |/   |/
 ___________________          _-_
 \==============_=_/ ____.---'---`---.____
             \_ \    \----._________.----/
               \ \   /  /    `-_-'
           __,--`.`-'..'-_
          /____          ||
               `--.____,-'

Rochester roulette:

The decision making process used when deciding whether to dress for warm or cool weather during Spring and Autumn in Rochester, New York due to the swings in temperature during those seasons.

Usage Example:

Person 1: “Why are you wearing shorts and a t-shirt?  It’s only 45° outiside?”
Person 2: “I played Rochester roulette this morning and lost.”

I bought a GPS data logger this week; it also communicates with my phone, so I can use some location based services.  The datalogging function is neat; I haven’t tried to tag any photos yet, but I’ve been leaving it on and tracking where I’ve been.  Here’s my day:

View Larger Map

If you zoom in, you’ll see that the times when I was indoors for long periods of time it gets really jumpy; all things considered, I think it’s working pretty well.  Maybe in the future I’ll post more interesting/useful maps

I saw the following on Facebook this morning:

Starbucks goes (RED).

Join us for World AIDS Day. On Dec 1, buy any hand-crafted beverage and we’ll give 5¢ to the Global Fund to help save lives in Africa.

5¢ is better than nothing; but really, this campaign will help Starbucks more than it will help AIDS research-  maybe a better campaign would be the following:

On Dec 1, skip Starbucks, and give the $5 you would spend there to the Global Fund to help save lives in Africa

Here’s the link where you can donate: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/donate/

Calin and I watched this this morning and thought it was hillarious:

It looks like Google added transit information to Rochester’s google maps recently.  They’re not very useful yet, but at least you can click on a bus icon and see which routes serve that stop.  I also noticed that the locations of a couple of the stops are off, and you can’t edit their locations like you can with addresses.  It would be nice if they put the schedules and routing in there too; perhaps that’s coming next.

Click here to see my stop in front of Thomson Reuters.  (It’s off by a bit like I mentioned)

Many news outlets are reporting today that the American Red Cross Disaster Relief fund is out of money, and that they’re in particular need because of flooding in the mid-west.

The good news is, you can donate right here- plus, many employers will match gifts made to non profits (West does this, contact me or check out thePoint if you want to know how).