- Meeting topic was “graphics”, but we pretty much had a free-for-all discussion.
- Last night I complied this list of graphics-related links. We really didn’t talk about this list all that much.
- Dave Weis from Internet Solver had swag to hand out (spiffy tees) in celebration of being recognized in the Business Record as a Best Of
- I brought some miscellaneous electronics and books to give away.
- We met at Raccoon River Brewery around 7 PM.
- The Iowa State Fair Parade was going on, so traffic was pretty bad getting in to downtown.
- Microsoft Server 2008 with Hyper-V R2 is coming out soon. Sounds like there are going to be some Hyper-V improvements.
- Debated security vs. business models for low-rate Web hosting. Many Web hosts do not pro-actively scan for security issues, adopting a strictly reactionary strategy. While economical, this can result in widespread outages if a vulnerability lands large numbers of hosts or entire subnets on black lists.
- Several members are busy gearing up for VMWorld 2009
I’ve not posted in a while. I do need to continue my Sun Tzu/IT thread, but I’ve been quite busy lately.
That said, I’ve set up a new feedback e-mail. Send your comments to the kristau.net domain, addressed to the username website_feedback.
CHDK – Firmware hack for Canon point-and-shoot cameras
- TJ reviewed the installation procedure and discussed some of the extra functionality to be gained.
- Installs to a CF card (must be under 4 GB).
- Booting to it does not replace anything on your camera, so camera’s firmware remains un-touched (read: you won’t void your warranty).
- CHDK Wiki
Linux-y stuff
- It does help to connect an antenna to your internal wireless card.
- What happens when you send /dev/null to /dev/null? How do you get it back?
Social Media
- Origins: USENET and IRC. MUDs, MUSHes and MOOs.
- Photo sharing sites such as SmugMug, Picasa, Flickr, Shutterbug, PhotoBucket, etc.
- OpenID use with sites.
- Facebook, MySpace, etc.
After-meeting at Raccoon River Brewery
Introductions
Group organization
- Discussed various ideas for how to organize.
- Competitions?
- Teaming w/ local educational orgs?
- Start with the basics and work up? Arduino, Parallax, MindStorms?
- Age groups? Any age is welcome.
Skills inventory
- Lots of programmers/developers.
- Not too many mechanical/electrical engineers.
- No venture capitalists.
Projects?
- Build something for a competition?
- Build a CNC machine which can be used for future projects? There seemed to be a lot of support for this idea. Agreed to continue discussion on the mailing list (http://groups.google.com/group/iowarobotics).
- Bring your own and share/seek assistance?
Matthew Nuzzum demo’d his VEX r/c platform wheeled robot.
- Controller from http://www.vexrobotics.com/
- Aluminum body with two drive motors and 4 wheels.
- Uses tank-style steering.
Gentleman from the Twin Cities Robotics Club (sorry, arrived late and didn’t catch his name) brought his ~70 pound robot
- About 30 pounds of the weight is battery.
- Has a sonar array and Web cam for sensors.
- Plans to put an on-board Linux computer.
Some links to Web sites brought up during the meeting:
Theron Conrey demo’d Nexenta Systems, an enterprise storage solution built on top of an OpenSolaris kernel with ZFS, an Ubuntu user space and some proprietary elements for managing the storage. Check out Theron’s take on this storage solution.
Theron built a Nexenta storage array within a VM on his laptop — probably the first time such a feat has been performed at Raccoon River Brewery.
Also held a long discussion about Virtual Desktops, SunRays and their adoption by businesses of various sizes. We pondered why this cool technology isn’t getting adopted as quickly as it should and where the ROI “cut off” is in terms of business size.
We are working on lining up Impromptu Studio for next month’s meeting. Stay tuned to The VUG for details.
Sun Tzu wrote:
II. WAGING WAR
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited
from prolonged warfare.
Avoid becoming involved in open-ended projects. Always insist on clear conditions or goals that indicate the project is considered completed. Make sure that deadlines and milestones are realistic and attainable.
No one wants to be involved in a project that is languishing. When deadlines pass and milestones are never reached, those involved in the project become demoralized. This is similar to laying siege. In Sun Tzu’s words from this chapter:
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.
So, too will your team lose their enthusiasm and have their creativity become dulled when a project turns in to a siege. One way to combat this is to break a larger project into a series of campaigns with clear objectives which advance the overall goal. Be sure to celebrate the small victories along the way to assure morale stays high.
If you find yourself pulled in to an endlessly mired project, there is only one thing to do. Retreat! There is no advantage to be gained by soldiering on if the end conditions are not clear. Retreat, re-group, re-evaluate and create a new plan which contains clear, achievable conditions for victory.
A single bacterium is more significant to our entire planet
Than our planet is significant to the Universe.
I didn’t take any notes during the meeting itself, so these are the high points as my memory serves:
The focus of this meeting was Security, and we didn’t stray too far off that core topic.
InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector.
Some of the interesting security tools or concepts discussed at this meeting:
- netcat is literally THE Swiss Army Knife of IP tools.
- port knocking and webknocking involves sending patterns of traffic to a server to trigger it opening ports and services to your IP address.
- MetaSploit Framework automates the exploitation of the latest vulnerabilities.
After the meeting, a large group of us walked over to Raccoon River Brewery for dinner, drinks and discussion.
Sun Tzu wrote:
I. LAYING PLANS
26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many
calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
The general who loses a battle makes but few
calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations
lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat:
how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention
to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
Whether performing a routine upgrade or making a massive infrastructure change, if you haven’t performed the appropriate amount of planning you will most likely fail. The more planning you perform the more likely you are to succeed, and the more likely you will be prepared for any problems you encounter.
When you make plans your imagination must be fully engaged. Visualize the tasks ahead of you, re-arranging them in time and space, step forward and backward through the process. In this way, you will recognize potential pitfalls and devise methods to avoid or mitigate against them.
As the plans solidify in your mind, document them in written form (Wiki, text document, paper, anything). Use this document to engage the opinions and imaginations of people you trust. Their experience and alternate view of the situation will help bring to light anything you may have missed. Use this information to refine your plans, incorporating their advice.
For small projects, a miniature version of the above process will suffice. You may not even need to write anything down for a small enough project, but don’t neglect planning. When scaling up for larger projects, make sure to build in some checkpoints for re-assessing your plans and dealing with anything which may have cropped up. As projects grow in complexity it becomes more import to build in extra flexibility.
No matter what the time frame, make sure to take time for planning. You will not regret it.