Wanderings.

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This post has the potential to be convoluted, so I’ll try to clearly state why it is flowing out of my fingertips. There are three reasons really. First off, I need a liveCD to recover an administrator password on my laptop, and my KNOPPIX iso seems knackered. Secondly DEFCON is coming up, and I have been interested in all things security lately, so why not get a more security related liveCD. Thirdly, Mike, Jamyn and the late Wayne (he didn’t die, he just left) of the [bs] list are BSD fans as are many others. Maybe others would be interested in BSD live CD. Not to mention the fact that these same people all tend to be security minded as well. BTW, this article is in *NO WAY* intended to be exhaustive, just as complete as practically possible tonight.
As many of you know, DEFCON is coming up soon on August 4-6, and there is a bit of a buzz in the security community this time of year as it approaches. So this is a good time to look for developments in comptuter security.

Kris mentioned that Fyodor has come up with his top 100 security tools. This is done by popularity and is conducted on an nmap list. So, Fyodor left nmap out completely and admits that his audience has more of a bias toward “attack” tools rather than defensive ones. From this top 100, he extracted a Top 5 security related OS page. Of these five entries, there were three that caught were liveCDs: Number 1 of 5 was Backtrack, 2 of 5 was Knoppix, and 4 of 5 was Helix. For more information, go check out his review, but two of the three entries caught my eye. Here are Fyodor’s descriptions:

BackTrack : An Innovative Penetration Testing live Linux distribution
This excellent bootable live-CD Linux distribution comes from the merger of Whax and Auditor. It boasts a huge variety of Security and Forensics tools and provides a rich development environment. User modularity is emphasized so the distribution can be easily customized by the user to include personal scripts, additional tools, customized kernels, etc.

Helix : “Helix has been designed very carefully to NOT touch the host computer in any way and it is forensically sound. Helix will not auto mount swap space, or auto mount any attached devices. Helix also has a special Windows autorun side for Incident Response and Forensics.”

Now, Knoppix is pretty popular, it had a rank of 60/100 overall. Backtrack got 32 and helix got 94 overall. Keep in mind that 1) the survey was based on popularity, and 2) there is a bias toward the offensive. Forensics tend to be more passive. and Knoppix is really popular. Point being I think both Backtrack and Helix deserve some attention. So there were no live BSD CDs. (OpenBSD got #3, but it’s not a live CD). Once again keep in mind that this is based on popularity.

Moving along, Andrei Raevsky wrote an article in DistroWatch called “A comparison of BSD live CDs”. He says, “[he] tested all the BSD live CDs [he] could get [his] hand[s] on: FreeSBIE 1.1, FreeBSD LiveCD 1.2, Frenzy 0.3, AnonymOS 2006, OliveBSD 3.8 and NetBSD Live! 1.6 (editor’s note: a newer release of NetBSD Live!, version 3.99.7, is available from here).” He sums up: “My overall impression was that BSD live CDs are not on par (yet) with their GNU/Linux cousins, but that they are catching up fast. The clear winner from my, admittedly unscientific, evaluation was Frenzy, which was the only distribution to perform (almost) flawlessly on all my machines.” He gives credit where it is due, and in my “unscientific” opinion is fair. He has 4 machines he tested on, and many of them didn’t run on at least 2.

Although he was dissapointed with OliveBSD which is OpenBSD based, others have had plenty of luck with it, he says. I’m going to count that a security option just because it is OpenBSD based, though there may or may not be security or network related tools. Also of note, Frenzy boots really fast and the project defines itself as more Security and Network related. 1.0 of Frenzy was only just released in June so people really haven’t had a chance to try it yet. Anonym.OS has a privacy focus, using some tools few have heard about like Tor (or try the Tor Wikipedia article) which is a lot like the old Crowds. That’s beyond the scope of this article, so I won’t go fully into it here.

I’ll try Frenzy, and maybe the other two, time permitting. I’d be interested to hear anyone elses experiences or opinions after having tried it. I’ll post on my experiences as time and I permit.

Gopher is a internet phenomonon most people know nothing about, and for good reason – it is old and outdated. So why care? Well besides nostalgia, it does still have a use or two, so I decided to write about it.

Originating from the University of Minnesota, whose mascot is the gopher, it predated the web and was much like the web with a few key differences:

1. It was, and is, still all text based and menu based, so it is rigid and inflexible compared to www and http, though it is *seriously fast*
2. It defines each file’s type on the serverside rather than have the client handle it, so it is rigid and inflexible, but very consistent.
3. it is seriously fast.
4. Google doesn’t index it. That’s an important difference, isn’t it?

Wikipedia has an excellent article on gopher as well as on Veronica and Veronica-2 which are the most popular search engines for gopher. If you are really interested in gopher, you should read that article.
So how do you browse gopher? Well, I’m so glad you asked! In a nutshell, Firefox will do it natively. Opera never supported it. IE used to, but it was broken and vulnerable, so they disabled it by default. You can put it back with a registry fix. There are also lots of console/text based browsers as you might expect, and a few popular ones that ran on Windows 95. I’ll stop there.

So if you are using firefox, IE with the registry mod, or some ancient relic, go try Veronica-2. Veronica-2 is a new and improved Veronica that has over 6,000,000 resources indexed, which is a whole heck of a lot for gopher. By the way, also on Floodgap which is who hosts Veronica-2, is a heirarchical list of all known gopher servers in the world, which are presumably the only ones they index.
Did you notice how fast the search engine was? If not, go back and try it – and visit some of the links. (longer phrases take longer to search). We are used to speed with Google of course, but keep in mind, this is *one server* searching many entries.
OK, so on to my point.  Here are some things that might cause you to want to use gopher over a webserver:

1. obscurity – no one will find it unless they really really want to, and maybe not even then.  I’m not suggesting it is inherently more secure.  I’m sure a skilled hacker can take the now open source UMN gopher server and find exploits.  They have in the past.  But it probably won’t get much traffic.
2. speed – it is hella fast for downloading files, which is about all it is well suited for.
3. files – ftp files up to the directory just like you would with a directory listing in apache, but you have the option of putting more description about the files without having to write an index.html for each directory manually
4. No CMS – CMS is nice for some situations.  But it isn’t fast, and generally (tell me if you know better), you can’t upload stuff in bulk and do taxonomy at the same time.

Want to try it out?  There is an old school computer server/community you can find at http://sdf-eu.org.  You can sign up at that website.  They offer gopherspace, web, telnet, ssh, several servers to compile and develop on and much more.  It is a free service, with donations encouraged, hardware is nice (All DEC Alphas it seems), and the people seem pretty cool.  Apparently they have a band too.

As for installing the server software itself, there are more than just the reference UMN gopherd server now.  Pygopherd seems to be the way to go for functionality, and it is in the FreeBSD ports tree.  Running on python, it might take a performance hit, but the Pygopherd site is running pygopherd and it is pretty snappy.

I have been flying Frontier Airlines back and forth to Denver and Houston.  They are the ones with the “Whole Different Animal” campaign.  There is a different animal on the tail of each airplane.

They have a short film festival on their Wild Blue Yonder channel, which you can watch on the TV screens that are on the back of each of the seats.  You can watch all the films they show online as well.

My favorite is “My Name Is Yu Ming”:

It occurs to me that the new title of this blog is much more appropriate than anything subsequent. Not to say that I don’t have any direction at all in life. If that were the case I would be in bed all day like Sloth from Seven.

By saying there is no direction however, there is a Zenlike dynamic at work. A clearing has been created. I have created a clearing in which to create free from any guilt about *not* fulfilling on promises I have made. Have I broken a few to myself and others? of course. have I cleaned up the ones with myself? yes. Have I cleaned up them with others? Well, I’m willing to clean up anything I missed. Please let me know if you are reading this and have any quarells with me. I’ll put your eye out. Just kidding. About the eye I mean.

There will be a viewing of What the Bleep Do We Know!? on Saturday, July 1 at 7pm at my place. Comment if you are coming so there will be enough food!

Looks like we’re slowly giving another one away. The exclusionary rule, Tom Kirkendall writes, has been eroding. And with the recent 5-4 decision on the “knock-and-announce” case, it takes another blow.

The world is subtly changing every day. I’d like to hear some opinions on lawsuit abuse and the collective effect on loss of freedom. It seems feasible; I just wonder to what extent it is actually happening.

Rodolfo posts about Time’s Forgotten, the band. I gave them a listen. They produced well. It’s complicated. If they sound like this live it would be a lot of fun to go to a concert.

Not the kind of music I would work to, but definitely the kind of music I’d like to go out and hear.

Although “El Vegetariano canta, para frijoles” was a wonderful song to hear in El Observatario[sic?] this is certainly much bigger music. :-) Right, Rodolfo?

Yes, Jough, I would say that you may be drinking too much caffeine if the endorphines from running are not enough to get you home. :-)

Although not necessarily one per day.

I just had the fortune of rolling off my first project at a Big ((insert whatever number belongs here now)) Consulting firm and being able to take some time off before going on to my next project.

So I get to visit some friends! I’m in Dallas visiting Andy Brasseux and his fianceè, Michelle. I went to high school with Andy and have seen him a couple of times since, one time at our RazMan Monday night parties of 5 years hence. I randomly ululate at the thought of any of those parties. (Hi Ted, Bill and Jough)

Anyways, they are a good match. Michelle made really good Pad Thai for lunch today and we ate it all up and caught up. They were plannning their wedding.

Weather is beautiful here. Maybe because I am asthmatic, or maybe just because I’m human, air quality when I go in any direction away from Houston is so so nice. It is drier and cleaner here. Eventually I should move away. Why am I looking for a condo in Houston again? Oh yeah, because I live there!!

I do love Houston, but really I just love city, and people, and friends. Perhaps I can just cultivate a lifestyle where I can live everywhere.

B. Delicious, you have had quite the eventful life lately!

Ericka, Sheila and I went to play Ms. Pac Man at Late Nite Pie. It was lots of fun. Diana came to see too. I always score higher when Diana is there to cheerlead!

After playing and visiting for a while, I met this new guy, Glenn, who came up and asked to play a game. He was really good and we alternately beat each other with scores into the 100000s, but not breaking 200000 just yet.

Talked to Glenn for quite a while while playing. He writes songs, plays and sings and is finishing up an album. I’m excited about the possiblity of playing Tuba and or flutes on a couple of tracks. Now I just need to get a CD from him.

Thanks Ericka and Sheila and Diana for a great time at Late Nite Pie! The girl who works there was entertaining as well:

“Whats this on TV?”, mused Justin.
“..Oh, some crap that comes on Fox..”, she blithely answered on her way to taking another order.

Her roommate was there too. He was charming, loud and obnoxious. I love Late Nite Pie for just that reason. grit.

A new independent film has been in the making for a couple of years now, but it is in need of a small amount of financial support. Plasticuser, who is creating this movie, needs some donations to be able to continue. Your’s truly would like to do the music for this production. I would like to see this movie get made as the script is an interesting one with a couple of good twists, and it is in the hands of a very talented new director who won’t dissapoint us with it’s release date.

So, please make *any sized* donation toward the $15000 goal, and read more here: http://www.plasticuser.com:

Best Served Cold is the story of three ordinary women who decide to take back control of their lives. Following a string of disappointments, they embark on a plan to regain their self-respect by challenging the men who have let them down. Unfortunately, this often results in the deaths of the men. This comedy, which has a serious face, tells a story any woman will relate to. It needs to be told.

Ericka asked me to come play with her in this cool place in Tomball, called Main Street Crossing. Live music happens on Fridays and we were the live music on 12/23/2005 that night.

Main Street Crossing
111 W Main St
Tomball, TX 77375
(281) 290-0431

Ericka wrote about the experience in her 12/24/2005 post. Playing with Ericka is easy. She likes to just be in the moment, so it wasn’t an issue for us to practice for 30 minutes – 1 hour before the concert for the first time ever. Heh. Ericka’s songs are real and from the heart. I think we played about 7 or 8 songs. I hope Ericka has them written down somewhere. If not I’d sure like to post them somewhere with the chords and stuff so other people can play her material&copy.

I got to Talk with Mike Hon and Dennis for a while ( I hope his name is Dennis. Ericka please tell me if I’m wrong!!. He is in the picture to the left between me and Mike. He’s fun. He played my guitar for a while too.

I got to play Guitar, Flute, Tuba and harmonica on Ericka’s songs and she really liked the flute on one of the songs. It actually made a good harmony with her voice.

Ericka’s Mom and Dad, and sister Stephanie, and her child were there. Stephanie’s daughter was funny when she got tired. She made all kinds of faces at us. She was pleasent throughout though.

I got up on a surfboard today for the first time with Adriana A.. Gustavo Castillo taught us. He was on the national Costa Rican team here. Rodolfo, Adriana C., and Federico came later. We had already been out for about 3 hours, so there wasn’t enough time for him to get a picture of us actually up on the boards.

It feels really good to catch a wave.

After we turned in the boards, Adriana and I went back to the beach house. She showered, and I got back in the water. She didnt’ call her mom yesterday to tell her about the surfing lesson because she thought Mom would freak out, so she talked to her mom on the way back:

“Mom, I took a surfing lesson.”
“you did WHAT?!! its so dangerous!! you could be killed, etc……How was it?”
“It was fun”

I love being out in the ocean swimming.

Rodolfo, Adriana, Federico and I went to the beach at Jacó, crossing a hilly/mountainous area. Costa Rica has these dramatic differences in terrain in only a short distance from San José to the Pacific Ocean.

The place where we stayed was very local. Not at all like the resorts or higher end hotels. There was no hot water. From today (Wednesday), through Saturday would cost us about $60, but since the landlady had made a mistake about the price when she talked to Rodolfo a couple of weeks ago, we ended up paying something like $30. Split that 4 ways, and it was about $7-$8. A very good value, I’d say.

This partial panorama shows the place we stayed on the left with the white gate, and the pretty beach.

Last night after the rest of the friends left, Federico, Nayurive, Rodolfo and I watched the anime series, Evangelion (official Japaneese site with the storyline and pictures) until 5 the next morning, then got up and watched the remaining 3 episodes. It was very Japaneese, and kind of Zen like in some of the philosophy behind the story.

Now I can understand the references Rodolfo makes to the series. Its good to have another reference point, even if the website does make me want to eat lychee

We set out to find a coffee coop a little ways from San José.

We went to the Beneficio Libertad (Cooperativa de Caficultores de Heredia) today and talked to Francisco Gamboa H. Actually Federico got us there, and Rodolfo and Federico did the talking. He was kind enough to let us have several bags of the green coffee to sample.

Their market isn’t green coffee. They grow it, process it (wet and dry), roast it there and sell it. Also the coop supports sustainable coffee, which is important.

I saw coffee plants for the first time up close and got to eat the berries. Federico pointed out that the red berries were the ripe ones. I remembered that from my reading. What I didn’t know was that they would be sweet. They were actually fresh. After eating a few of the cherries and chewing on the beans, I can see why the Arabs must have enjoyed it and decided to invent this fantastic beverage in the 700s-800s. Even the caffeine in the fruit itself was noticable. It didn’t make me too jittery though.

We saw PerroZompopo tonight. . We really had a fun time relaxing, talking and just listening to the music.