Die Vergangenheit entgleitet uns

Wenn ich diese Tage mit München telefoniere, höre ich Geschichten von den Büchern König Ottos aus der Bayrischen Staatsbibliothek. Neunzehntes Jahrhundert, eigentlich gar nicht so lange her. Jedenfalls im Vergleich zur Antike. Die Wege der Bücher und Noten lassen sich zum Teil schon nicht mehr komplett nachverfolgen. Spannend ist das, auch im Vergleich zu heute...

PGP κρυπτογράφηση και άλλες μοντέρνες παράνοιες

Αν μέχρι τώρα δεν εμπιστευόσασταν τα email για λόγους ασφαλείας...

Από τις 22 Απριλίου και μετά θα ηρεμήσετε.

Το HelMUG, διοργανώνει:

στις 22 Απριλίου 2007 και ώρα 13.00 στο χώρο του Dasein cafe, Σολωμού 12 στα Εξάρχεια το πρώτο θεματικό σεμινάριο: "PGP κρυπτογράφηση και άλλες μοντέρνες παράνοιες". Παρουσιάζει ο Sascha Welter (betabug).

• Παραδείγματα χρήσης
• Πόσο κίνδυνο ενέχουν τα μη κρυπτογραφημένα email
• Λύσεις για καθημερινές χρήσεις
• Τι κάνει και τι δεν κάνει η κρυπτογράφηση των ηλεκτρονικών μηνυμάτων
• Εγκατάσταση προγραμμάτων

Παρακαλώ δηλώστε συμμετοχή στο papakiteliatziar.gr/PGPSeminarAnnouncement!

Zwiki 0.59 is released!

Simon released Zwiki 0.59. This release includes a lot of bugfixes (some relevant to the neverending fight against spammers and vandals), and a few features. It's been well tested, so I'd suggest people upgrade to this. Of course if there are any problems or even feedback, let us know on freenode/#zwiki, on zwiki.org/IssueTracker or zwiki.org/GeneralDiscussion.

Zope/Plone Job in Athens

Line One, the company where fellow "Zopista in Athens" Ioannis (aka indyone) works, is looking for a Zope / Plone programmer to work here in Athens (Greece). Read the job ad at papakiteliatziar.gr for details. Note: It's not the company *I* work for, no such luck for you :-)

There Is Beauty Everywhere

Let's talk about beauty. Nothing fancy, just some stuff you can see every day around you. Just have to look and be in the spirit to see, I guess...

A Beta Boring Product

A few days back someone asked on #zope/freenode for a more modern example of a simple Zope filesystem "python product", something known as a "boring product". There are already a few of them out there, but most of them are a bit dated. They use dtml, are based on some authors product (which needs to be installed) or tell programmers to use a lot of Zope base classes.

Yesterday evening I sat down and wrote my own. It's only about 80 lines of code, but it gives you a base for doing simple things fast, and build up from there. I wasn't quite sure where to put it, that's why it went on the papakiteliatziar wiki as "BetaBoring" The wiki doesn't have comments enabled -- if you feel like, you may drop a comment into this weblog.

Ein Wald in der Stadt

Zentrales Merkmal eines Waldes ist, dass man sich verlaufen kann. Dass es hier in Ilisia einen "Wald von Ilisia" gibt, hatte ich schon gewusst. War sogar schon ein paar Mal dort gewesen, schöne Spaziergänge. Doch anscheinend war die Ecke, die ich bisher besucht hatte, nur der kleinere Teil. Heute bin ich etwas weiter gegangen, dann rechts abgebogen... und dann stehe ich plötzlich im Wald.

Die Bäume stehen dort viel dichter. Obwohl es viele Wege und Pfade gibt, ja sogar Bänke, Mülleimer und gemauerte Wegesböschungen, wirkt alles viel waldiger, nicht mehr nur wie ein Park. Ich machte einen guten Spaziergang, bis ich ans andere Ende gekommen war. Zwischendurch fand ich einen Hügel, der mit gemauerten Bänken und Plätzen von weitem wie eine Burg wirkt.

Auf dem Rückweg musste ich aufpassen, dass ich tatsächlich noch dort rauskam, wo ich hergekommen war. Ich fand zwar eine Orientierungstafel, doch die war mit Plakaten zugeklebt. Ansonsten ist der Wald recht sauber, viele Plastiksäcke zeugen davon, dass das dem Einsatz der Gemeindearbeiter zu verdanken ist. Ich bin ihnen dankbar, denn der neu entdeckte Wald ist meiner Lebensqualität zuträglich.

Μπανάνα!

Πρέπει να ομολογήσω κάτι (είναι και λίγο εποχή για τέτοια)... μου αρέσει πολύ το μιλκ-σέικ, ειδικά με γεύση μπανάνας. Όταν άλλοι βαράνε φραπέδες, φρέντους, ή καπουτσινοειδής, εγώ προτιμώ το γλυκό ποτό με παγωτό και γάλα. Στις καφετέριες της Αθήνας μια χαρά τα φτιάχνουν, και όταν στέκεται το καλαμάκι λέει πολύ.

Αυτό που δεν κατάλαβα ακόμα είναι γιατί οι περισσότερες καφετέριες δεν έχουν μιλκ-σέικ μπανάνας. Βανίλια, σοκολάτα, φράουλα: κλασσικά. Τι τους χαλάει να βάλουν και το δικό μου μπανανάκι; ΟΚ, μερικοί μπορεί να μην έχουν όλα τα παγωτά "stock", άλλοι όμως πουλάνε την μπανάνα παγωτό, μόνο που δεν την κουνάνε με γάλα. Εάν κάποιος ξέρει το λόγο, shake it και ενημερώστε με!

Make a Simple Evening Special

Today we went down to the seaside near Faliron. We walked along the coast for a bit, watched the sunset. It was a long working day too, one of those where you get some things done and go home with a feeling of a small accomplishment. Sometimes it's good enough to go home then, relax and maybe watch a movie. Today that little walk made the evening something special. It's been a long time that I was at the sea. Which is kind of funny, since some of the special things of living here is that the sea is so close.

It's also been a long time that I had a proper Internet connection at home. I'm no net addict (at least I think so), but sometimes it's nice to be able to look things up, do some open source coding, or keep connected with people I like. It would really be nice if Vivodi could get their act together and get us a line some day. I promise I will stay offline and go for a walk at the seaside, even with a proper connection at home!

As for the movie watching, we did that too. Seen "Groundhog Day" a million times, seen it one more time this evening. I really like this movie and I like to watch it over and over.

Automatic

This morning I've arrived at work all right, can't say I'm awake though. Luck has it that I've come used to going this way each morning and arriving at work. I've come here on auto-pilot. I can't really remember what made me stand up before the right bus stop, but that way I got off all right.

It sometimes works the other way too: I know I should go buy something on the way to work. I start out... and then, when I arrive at work (or some other point slightly before that), I kind of "wake up" and remember that I should have stopped at the store. The automatic system got me there.

Underground

A few days back I had discovered over at adamo's site a link to the online version of the book "Underground". I downloaded the book (of course choosing the plain text version - update: the old link lead to a scam site) and started reading. Kept me hooked busy for a few days of intensive reading. The book recounts the days of old, when teenagers dialed their modems into BBS's and later learned to "hack" (which in this context means to break into other people's computers). I enjoyed the book and it ignited some good thoughts...

Mail out from GPRS or from... anywhere

Since I still haven't got ADSL at the new appartment [1], I rely again (as in old times on Limnos) on a GPRS connection through my mobile phone to receive and send mail. Hmm, that "send mail" part is actually the interesting bit. Nowadays it can be hard to actually send mail when you're not in any "normal" Internet situation. For example: spam blocks on dynamic ranges of IPs let many mail servers not accept mail from my GPRS connection, while other mailservers do greylisting and that is inconvenient when you're relying on short timed and expensive connections [2]. But there is one setup that is almost guaranteeing that you get your mail out...

Preparations and Adaptors

I'm in the last preparations for tomorrows PGP talk. Today I made another attempt at finding a "mini-DVI to VGA" adaptor for my MacBook. After weeks of weeks of "we ordered them, they should arrive in the next days", I still don't have one. I've been to and called a couple of Mac shops here (not to mention the "official" AppleStore from Rainbow, who would have sold anything anyway, but I wanted to know what other shops they might tell me to look at).

In the end I'll be using my old PowerBook for the talk now. Takis made an incredibly cool poster for the talk, I'll get one for my room and I'll put a picture of it online. That's it, I'll be busy with more preparations now, cu tomorrow if you can make it!

PGP Talk went well

My PGP talk at the Cafe Dasein went well. I did some last minute preparations at home, made some good old notes on paper. Then we packed up and left for Exarheia. We arrived very early, and the cafe was already open. I started setting up the hardware right away, somehow expecting that something wouldn't work with my (somehow funny) setup.

Since I hadn't found a VGA adaptor for the MacBook I was using my old PowerBook G4 for showing the presentation and demoing the programs. All the while the presentation was on the Zope server on the MacBook. I hooked the two together with an Ethernet cable and unlocked the firewall. The PowerBook was parked a bit dangerous halfway into a shelf, because the projectors monitor cable was too short. During the presentation Takis went to the next slide and demoed the programs at my command.

There were very few attendants (about 10, while the room could host 30 without problems), but they appeared genuinely interested and the atmosphere was relaxed. I talked for 1.5 hours -- with lots of questions from the audience. Christos had brought a video camera, so we'll likely have a video either online or available at HelMUG meetings. The presentation is already online at the papaki (in Greek).

Speaking of Greek: This was my first seminar I've ever given in Greek. I think it worked out fine (though it sure will be fun listening to my own language mistakes on the video), so I'm pretty proud of myself :-).

Happy Nameday George and Gogo

We're listening to Edith Piaf and Rumba at the club El Pecado near Thisio. The ambiente is matching oriental / flea market styled.

Today all the people called Γιώργος or Γιωργία have their nameday, so we Party and say Χρόνια πολλά! Many years!

Speaking of "Underground"...

While I was doing some logspotting yesterday I discovered a couple of accesses that came from some hosts that looked like a lot of open proxies or a botnet or something. Someone was likely abusing them for scraping mail addresses off web sites. One of them rang a "Bell": I had seen the name "NorTel" in the book "Underground" (see this post). Even thouth the IP didn't have a reverse DNS entry, the "whois" showed it belonging to "Bell-Northern Research" aka "Nortel Networks". In the book, the "hacker" kids find a way into one of Nortel's telephone exchanges and later into their company network. So maybe one of the researchers set up a test server and forgot to lock it down? ...and now some "hackers" got into it?...

Ναυτική απορία

Είμαι στο δελφίνι για τον Πόρο. Στο δρόμο είδα μια πινακίδα και αναρωτήθηκα: Γιατί λέγεται "Αργοσαρωνικός", αφού φτάνουμε εκεί πολύ γρήγορα;

Islands and Lemons

It's amazing how far you can get from Athens in a few hours. This morning we woke up slightly later than normal, went down to Pireus and hopped on a flying dolphin. Same as we would take to Hydra, but this time we got off on stop earlier at Poros island.

Poros is right next to the Peloponnese peninsula. Really right next, you could swim over. We took a small boat over, after we had found a room. Then we took a long walk to a lemon grove. They say that there are 30000 lemon trees there.

We walked some while through them, then sat at a (currently closed) restaurant (pic). Went back the same way, then got some souvlaki (hungry from walking!) and took a nap (tired from...). Now we're going to see Poros town by night.