Solaris: Simple Display of logged Entries in SunScreen

This is another entry for the I could remember this, but why should I? I have it on the blog. category.
I already wrote about the firewall in Solaris 9 called "SunScreen" here and here. Now a quick reminder for me and others who tend to forget the syntax of commands.
To display a list of all denied connections, the following chain of commands can be used:
ssadm log get | ssadm logdump -i - -t a logwhy 256
This command results in a list of denied connection-attempts to the machine, provided the entry for denying contains LOG SUMMARY or any other valid specifier for the LOG command. log get instructs ssadm to (no surprise here) get the log. It is then piped to another incarnation of ssadm which is instructed to read from standard in (-i -), to convert the seconds stored with every entry to a meaningful time and date combo (-t a) and to filter the entries for a why-code of 256.
BTW: One thing that seems to be really hard to remember for me is the way the numerous options of ssadm are named in the man-pages, e.g. man ssadm-logdump. Who would have thought of that, a hyphen, outlawed in *NIX to prevent confusing the different shells. Hm.

It starts to get annoying!

I'm about to cancel my subscription to the Music Perspectives PodCast. Don't get me wrong, I've been listening to it for quite some time now and I think it is excellent, BUT I can't take the lame Don't steal music stuff any longer. It's probably not even Ed Justen's fault that I am annoyed, but everybody has to draw a line somewhere and the last Music Perspectives PodCast contained this stupid line and this time it was one to many.
I DO NOT STEAL MUSIC! And I really don't like to be a suspected thief, either. If the record companies consider me a paying enemy, then I'm not interested in doing business with them.
My stand regarding DRM is simple – really simple in fact – if a CD contains DRM I ignore the artist. Completely, zilch, I'm not interested. The artist does not exist for me, period. I won't download anything from the artist, I won't buy the CD, I actually will switch the channel on the radio or TV when said artist appears, end of story.
This may sound extreme, but as I said, everybody has to draw the line somewhere. If I really care about an artist, then I will send an e-mail, explaining my view of the world to the artist. I do not expect an answer, though.
I am a published writer, but I would never think of putting a Don't copy my books, please anywhere, neither spoken, nor in writing. It is a matter of trust, you know.
;-)

Mac: Are we really that different?

The article Dear switchers remembered me of one occasion I found out (again), that we Mac users seem to be really thinking different.
I started working with Macs in '86 and continued to do so on and off until now. After an absence of about four years from the Mac-Scene, I got my first PowerBook in 2000. I really liked it and used it to work on a game-design document on a flight from L.A. to London. The flight was over night and the crew shut down the lights in the cabin after a while. I noticed that some people wandering in the plane gave me a Thumbs-Up when passing my seat. I tried to place them, but never met one of them to the best of my knowledge. Number ten or eleven solved the riddle for me: How do you like the Pismo?
I didn't knew about the glowing apple logo then.

InDesign CS2: Inherit Color solved!

I received an e-mail a couple of days ago from Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion of DesignGeek Central fame (if you are into design, check the site, seriously).
The solution to the problem described in this article, can be solved easily, if you know how. I was wearing my programmer hat as I tried to tackle the problem, I guess. If you CMD-click on the offending swatch in the GUI used to define the character-format, the setting reverses to the inherit state. It's that simple!
There goes the plan to create an AppleScript app to fiddle with this (and other) settings, though.
;-)
Thanks again to Anne-Marie.

Priorities: To Noodle or not to Noodle…

A client bailed out of an appointment this morning. Confronted with two days to spare, a tough decision has to be made: How will I spend the time at hand?
Cleaning the apartment? Yeah, right. Actually, I could work on my book (something I had planned for next week). Factually, I think I will do a bit of noodling (I learned about this word at Franklin McMahon's excellent PodCast Media Artist Secrets). It refers to play around with something in a creative way to find out about new and interesting uses for it. For example: I couldn't find the time to nose around in the new features of Reason, there are a couple of approaches to investigate them:

1. Read the manual (could be interesting)


2. Read in a book about it (could give another view on the subject)


3. Noodling

A real puzzler, what would be the most fun thing to do?
;-)

Mono: Yep! Works!

Title says it all. The -r switch did it.
BTW: This is an update to the post below this one ;-)

Mono: Compiling a WSDL

This post belongs to the I had a hard time finding this information so I put it somewhere I can easily find it again category.
I tried to compile a WSDL with mcs like this:

wsdl Service.wsdl
mcs /target:library Service.cs

and always got this error message:

Service.cs(22) error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Services' could not be found in namespace `System.Web'

I found this command after a long search on the Internet:

mcs /target:library Service.cs -r:System.Web.Services

Now everything seems to compile O.K. Let's see if the resulting .dll works.
I'll keep you posted.

InDesign CS2: Inherit a Color

I'm currently working on a book about using XML/XSLT with Adobe InDesign CS2. I have worked with the program and its competition like Quark XPress and FrameMaker (no link here since the Mac version ceased to exist) for quite some time now and I think that the XML support has matured quite a bit. It's not FrameMaker yet, but I keep my hopes up high that the program will eventually get there.
There is one aspect of the Character Formats which puzzled me, though. I could not find a way to change the color of such a format to nothing, the setting the format uses when it is created. If you change the color-assignment for the format in the GUI once, there is no way to get back to nothing, means the color from the enclosing paragraph format is inherited. Sure, one could simply create a new format and exchange it for the now non-working one. But in my case, the format is used (and mis-used) in a number of ways and I really don't want to check in all the places. So I came up with a simple AppleScript to do the switch:

tell application "Adobe InDesign CS2"
set myDoc to document 1
tell myDoc
set myCharFormat to character style "insert_cstyle_name"
set the fill color of myCharFormat to nothing
end tell
end tell

Yes, I know that this could have been done in a single line, but this line would not fit in this layout. (It might not fit on certain browsers anyway.) But still, here you go, switching back to nothing.

Writing: Organizing Ideas

After reading The end of One Big Text File at MacDevCenter.com, I found that I'm not alone in my approach. But (a big one, as always) I still advocate using lists, more than one, that is. As I wrote in my book Unix/Linux Survival Guide, I tend to keep lists leaning to a certain subject. They hold all the bits of information I deemed interesting at a time, but are too small or insignificant to create a whole file for one of them alone. On *NIX, these directories can be greped, on OS X they can be spotlight(ed) or greped.
Bigger ideas (think information spread over more than one paragraph) go into their own files with a speaking name. This mode of operation allows me to browse the little ideas or information on a certain subject for inspiration. No, they do not migrate into their own file if I expand on them. I want to preserve the bits a subject started from, when you start polishing something, a.k.a. rewrite it to fit a special purpose, some of the original information could get lost. Said information might give me an insight from a different angle and I don't want to loose that.

Movie: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

I went to see Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang a couple of days ago. Go and watch it, seriously.
A quick test if this movie is for you:

• If the first word that came to mind after watching Pulp Fiction was WOW!


• If you tried, like me, to buy another ticket for the same movie after watching The Usual Suspects.

Go see it, the script is great and I actually could not find anything that I did not like about the movie. Okay, there is one thing, no release date for the DVD, yet.
This movie is so not Hollywood (Will the audience get that joke or do we have to re-write?; OMG, the girl is naked, what shall we do about it?; What would be the target audience for this movie, and isn't it to intelligent for them?). In short: this is how movies should be made!

Confusing Adverts by IBM

Is it just me or should the guys in the new ads for the IBM Blades take a look at the link pointing to Tivoli?
The ad with the runner states: "If we are using Blade-Center, then we don't have to run to the machines." Didn't IBM buy Tivoli for that reason?
Just a thought.

What's next, ASCII?

Read the article Who owns XML?, maybe it furthers the understanding that the whole system is flawed.

All the World's a ... Noise?

The article called "You Know What? Just Shut Up" over at Wired hits it on the spot. Point in case, some of my neighbors use their car-alarms to wake up the whole neighborhood at 3 AM, maybe it's not their fault, maybe it is.
While agreeing with the article, I have to admit, I wrote an AppleScript that makes my Mac call (as in shouting) me if mail from certain people arrives. Gives me freedom to roam the apartment, you know.
;-)

The Curse of the Power-Supply

Yours truly treated himself to a new switch for the office. If you should be into making music or using things like hubs, switches, or something in that line of electronica, then you might already know what this rant is about.
Power-supplies that plug directly into the socket, just wide enough to block the neighboring sockets and render them unusable. The manufacturers of these things seem to believe that their appliance will be the only one in need for electrical power. Makes sense, people using things like switches will never use other devices that might need power as well. Who would use a switch to connect, I don't know, let's say computers for example?

Writing: First Review on Amazon.com

I got my first review on Amazon for the Unix/Linux Survival Guide.

Opinion: TV-Shows on Video iPod

The excellent Register has an opinion piece called Apple and Disney's two-inch disappointment. Granted there is a lot of truth in there, but (a big BUT) I'd be actually glad to pay for this content (being able to watch it the day after it aired) and not wait for an eternity, until some TV exec decides to show it in the part of the world I am at the moment. Regarding high-profile series like Lost or 4400, it is really hard not to stumble over spoilers that ruin all the excitement before I even had a chance to watch.
The article addresses this topic as well, but in the view of the world any TV exec seems to have, I'm not the customer, the ones that pay for the adverts are.
Just my 2 cents of wisdom ;-)

Internet Stamps?

My first reaction after reading the article Internet Stamps at ongoing was, this could actually work. On second thought, though, I really don't think so. (I want recognition for not using I don't think so, Tim. Did it anyway, damn!)
My point is, changes to websites would cost stamps as well. How will the cost (the needed stamps) be measured? Per link? Good, that would avoid link-farms – and punish people for linking into the Internet; who needs links anyway? Per website-change? What about link-farms?
Either I don't see it (only two cups of coffee so far) or the idea needs some more work.
IMHO, of course.

Listing Network-Connections

There are many ways to list the open connections on a *NIX-based system, the first option that comes to mind is usually netstat. The article CLI Magic: Trojan Scan at linux.com talks about two important things to keep in mind:

1. There is always more than one way on *NIX


2. There are tools on every *NIX box, waiting to be chained together to achieve results

I did not investigate the program the article is talking about, I will later, though. What tickled my fancy was the fact that I almost forgot that lsof can be used as well.
In a nutshell: lsof -Pni gives you a listing of the currently opened connections.

OS X: Getting used to Speech too much?

I found myself trying to instruct my Linux box via voice-commands this morning (before the first coffee). Am I getting too used to my Mac? Speech works like a charm. As long as my Sun does not start to do some serious work, that is. The frequency of the fans seem to cancel the reception of the microphone in my trusty PowerBook; same goes for loud traffic noises.
OTOH: If I'd start to talk to my Mac in the coffee-shop, who knows what people would think or do, anyway.

Writing: YES!

It's not my first, but it is always exciting when an author gets to actually hold the result of countless hours in his hands.