Heavy Rain

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Dad has a water-barrel system setup. The other night, it chucked it down with rain and as luck would have it, both I and my brother were at dad’s flat. Enough water came down that the overflow on the second barrel couldn’t cope, so dumped water out the side.

Photo taken with flash

Photo taken with flash

The perspex panes in the top are to let light through – there is two fish, a couple of mussels, and a few water snails in the green barrel. The fish like eating the mosquitoes who think that the barrel is a brilliant place to keep their larvae ;). Click on the image for the full-size version 🙂

Secondary overflow

Taken with the help of my brother, and a torch

phpmyadmin in ubuntu now being exploited en-masse

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Update: ubuntu patched this issue a couple of days after this post. If you’re reading, thanks guys! You just made my job a lot easier 🙂

At some point, I might try to look at helping maintain this, and other packages like it in the ubuntu archive. No idea how, though a colleague may be able to help…

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The versions of phpmyadmin in ubuntu (at least Dapper – Intrepid) are susceptible to arbitrary code execution, as the web-server’s user. A bug1 was reported on the 15th of June about this issue, and marked as high priority on the 21st.

The phpmyadmin team patched this problem in their software on May the 24th. 2

Debian patched this in their system on the 25th of June.

I tried talking to people on #ubuntu-security about this problem. They said “motu” and “we’re not interested, its in universe”. I tried talking to people in #motu, and they talked about work-arounds.

The main questions now are:

  • Please can someone work on the bug?
  • Why did it take so long between upstream report and launchpad report?
  • Why has the bug been left to the point where it is getting automatically exploited, en-masse? 3
  1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/phpmyadmin/+bug/387215 ↩
  2. http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/security/PMASA-2009-3.php ↩
  3. http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2009/Jul/0021.html ↩

BBC – Mixed results for green IT goals

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Mixed results for green IT goals.

Nice new BBC news article, about how the majority of govt~ IT managers don’t know that they’re supposed to be reducing their carbon footprint.

One of the hints is that the “proliferation” of “air conditioning of server rooms” (among other things) is the cause.

I’d like to see you run a datacentre (tonns of computer servers, really big pipe to the internet etc) without airconditioning. If we turn ours off for 10 minutes, the temperature gets swealtering. 30 minutes and old harddrives start failing. Dumb.

Current Cost – watt hours and pachube

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This is an email i sent to JT  so I apologise if it doesn’t make sense to y’all. Please ask questions if you don’t get me!

So we have this ‘Current Cost’ meter thing (free from Southern Electric) at the house. It’s a small wireless electricity meter. Well it’s more of a monitor or display actually but you get me….[insert pic].

Long story short, I’d noticed the RJ45 on the bottom and it’d got me wondering. A few google searches later and whammo i’d found what I needed. A bit of hardware, a bit of software (links on manyfacturers website!) and whammo….

I wired up the current cost (enegry meter) at the house to my laptop and it’s uploading to this Pachube (bless you) website:
http://www.pachube.com/feeds/2196

The graph is a bit useless atm (no history or dates on it 🙁 ) but the program here:
http://apps.pachube.com/google_viz/
Could probs snazz it up a bit.
There seems to be a binary pattern from some device that is turning on and off at regular intervals and using ~100w… i wonder if it’s the compressor on the fridge/freezer as it goes on thru the night lol.

Graph of peak watts and temperature from current cost and excel

Graph of peak watts and temperature from current cost and excel

The long jittery spikes are the washing machine/dishwasher/tumble dryer (the last being the biggest draw lol).

One guy is even trying to record signatures for each appliance and then work out from the data which appliance is causing the spikes.
http://chrishodgins.tumblr.com/post/33810511/via-chart-apis-google-com-so-its-the-bank
The idea behind this is if you can work that out, you can make a pie chart of the biggest consumers…

I have more results than are uploaded; i created a funky excel file which Should update from the mdb created from one of the apps i’m using but atm i think the file is locked or summat :(. Made a pretty graph to! Also predicting the future temperature based on a polynominal curve or something lol.

All gd fun. Now i jus want one of these tiny minuture computers:
http://www.fit-pc.co.uk/fit-pc-slim.html
or this awesome plug pc:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/258238/plug-sized-pcs-arrive-in-uk.html (sweet) (Ubuntu on a plug [ via Youtube])
to record/upload the results, although it would make more sense to use the ipcop or home server since they are always on and the current cost device is wireless. (unfortunately our model does not have internal data logging 🙁 ). Don’t know how to work out kwh from current usage of watts every 3 seconds… i might be able to put something from averages tho. Any suggestions  anyone? I might just be being dumb lol.

Now all we need is the x10 plug thru devices to monitor electricty usage (by appliance) and bobs your uncle – we know exactly where the electricity is going.

IMO  (as a soon to be Building services engineer in training) this technology should be wired into all new houses in the actuall plug sockets. Want to know which of your kids (or indeed partner) is using the most electricity? 😉

The trickle usage these measuring devices could be designed to run on could easily be offset by a small(ish) solar pv installation too! (i’m talking around 10-30wh/day here 😉 ).

Oh and here’s how to connect the current cost to pachube:
http://community.pachube.com/?q=node/100

On the upside i’ve also unplugged the fancy pants MPPT  solar charge controller and hooked the install back up to the basic on/off controller, and now it’s definetly shifting amps! I was a bit worried that in full sun 53watts of panels was ONLY putting through 0.3-0.1a @11.7 (i know, discharged). Hmm gonna have to find out whats wrong with fancy pants, he wasn’t cheap! :'(

Dear Apache

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Dear Apache. My idea of fun is not to find out about a missing log directory, when I test a website after a restart. My idea of fun would be for apache2ctrl configtest to actually, you know, work. Or, even better, don’t utterly die when you’re missing a log directory.

GRRRRR

Dear Customer. Please make sure you remove apache configuration, when you delete your users. I don’t enjoy being woken at 6am because logrotate restarted apache. Athough, on the upside, at least I get paid for it.

Youtube Comments…

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Johnathon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqUfPhMxmAg&feature=related
Paul: Q Ruled
Paul: There’s something very impressive about that clip
Paul: read the comments.
Paul: they’re youtube belmer free!! That’s stunning no “WAT IS THIS? THATS GAY!”
Johnathon: Probably the vidoes uploader has been doing some filtering
Paul: maybe
Johnathon: well, what’s the likelyhood that youtube has suddenly become a haven for well-spoken, well-mannered individuals? 😉
Paul: Some combination of incredibly unlikely events
Paul: a pig flying through hell as it freezes over during a blue moon at midnight
Paul: on feb 30th during a centenary leap year
Paul: the last bit is only once every 400 years

Games and Stuff

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My xbox 360 is currently in the dreaded red-ring-of-death stage, so of late, I’ve been playing computer games on my PC more than anything else.

Turns out, if you don’t play Real-Time-Strategy games enough for a long time, you get really bad at them. I used to be able to wipe the floor with 3 brutal AI’s in Red Alert 2. Went back to it the other day, to get swiftly crushed by one brutal, one medium, and one easy AI 🙁

Still, means I’ve been spending a little more time in Fallout3.. First time I played it through, I concentrated on the primary storyline mission. The game finishes when you complete that mission! GRRR… Finally got the will to go back and try to complete the game, fully, this time. Even set off the nuke, just to see it go boom! Then I restored from my previous save.. I’m not that evil 😉

Due to err.. circumstances beyond my control, I’m living with my father again, commuting back and forward to work. He’s got a bread-maker, and we set it going for the first time last night… to find we’d used yeast 9-years out of date! :S Still, new yeast, means I’ve just had a breakfast of warm bread and jam. Yum 🙂

Got t-shirts for JaydenAndCrusader.com! Postman delivered them yesterday.. they’re pretty nice 🙂 We’ll sell one, probably on ebay, later this year.