MLDS - All the Webhost You Will Ever Need

This Post by Arnold Kling reminded me of something I have to explain to people who don’t agree with my small government stance.

A very common assumption, of people who don’t agree with me, is that because I am for small government, and therefore implied anti socialist. That I am against any type of non-profit organization of services, and that everything must be for profit. This could not be further from the truth. This stems from my view of the power of choice, and to expand the availability of choice.

History shows that when you provide say non-profit health care, the result is fewer choices for the sick, government schools results in fewer choices for students and parents. In the end we all end up with only one choice which is not what I want. I am for choice, I just think history shows that when you provide services via government it crowds out options.

That is what I am for, If private people want to get together and form non-profit health care for people, fine, but you must do this on a same field as everyone else, so that people may choose between your plan, and others offered. The best for those seeking those services should (most of the time) be chosen by them. At no point does making a one size fits all hammer result in better services for the majority.

In summary, government crowds out other options, if similar systems are put in place outside of government and must compete with other similar services on equal footing (no special treatment from government as there is now). Choice for everyone, the availability and discovery of doing new things. When was the last time a government agency was shrunk or shut down? They last for forever if they do their purpose or not, that is not healthy and prevents newer better things to rise from there ashes. This concept is only and always has been a government phenomenon.

I was going to post my podcast on youTube, maybe someone random would run across it why not.

This process had some needs, I needed to make a video, out of audio. To make it less boring I took my RCE logo as a static background image. To do this I went to my usual tools mencoder and ffmpeg. Turns out mencoder did what I needed though not easy.

Mencoder has an easy way to make a video out of a sequence of images, if you use just one image, you get a 1 second video with 1 frame (fps set to 1). To get around this, you could just set the frames per second to 1/runtime of your mp3. But while it would encode it, things like QuickTime crash (includes finder which I am proud of breaking).

The solution (given to me by roo on the IRC channel) was to make that 1 second video, copy it in 5 times to make a 5 second video, use that 5 times to make a 25 second etc. Retarded I know, but it worked. I made a small (dumb) script that automates this. It uses madtime to find the time needed, some math, mktemp and your on your way.

Download the script form the usual location buildyoutube.sh. And see the results on my ….., well I would after I went though all this work, went to upload to youtube, remembered, they don’t allow public videos more than 10 minutes long, damn.

Anyone know how to get more than 10 minutes allowed on youTube?

Should I ever be anti something? I don’t think I should be, rather than knowing what I am against, I should know what I am for.

Let me expand, am I against required public schooling? Yes, err no, um wha?? I am for choice in schooling, thus vouchers. Because required public schooling, cannot exist with what I am for. Does this make me explicitly against? Should I directly oppose? Should the status quo be my target for destruction? Or should my goal be what I aim for?

If I am for something, wouldn’t my pursuit of it imply the destruction of that cannot coexist? This logically is true, but is one approach more moral?

I am not a philosopher, but yet I require a personal philosophy, thus my logic tells me, that destruction, hate, targets (for destruction) is not by its self constructive. My goals for new creation, should they destroy from their presence (think creative destruction) can produce value to me and mine.

Know what you are for, never be against for the sake of being against. Push for what logic tells you is right. Until proven otherwise I wish to live this way, for creation, not destruction, that leaves only ashes, I make ashes to grow better things, with the plan and focus of better things, not ashes.

Last show The Torque Resource Manager hit over 100 downloads from iTunes in the first week. Total download count for it stands at 140 as of May 7th.

Have to thank Jeff for all the help, and being the better voice on the air. The next show should be good, we had the most technical problems we have ever had, but the content is good. Never knew HDF5 was used in the Lords of the Rings movie.

Shows are very heavy on the technical, but if you enjoy that kind of stuff check it out: www.rce-cast.com

Brock Palen

Over the last two years I have really started to question a lot of my thinking. Not so much as what I believe but my right to impose my thinking on others. This has brought up a number of interesting topics, and while has not changed my views on issues (not to be discussed in this post), changes what “should be done” about them.

An wonderful example is gay marriage. Many activist messages want to pass laws or amendments to enforce anti or pro positions. What is interesting about this, is that the laws part in the hetero marriage is ok the way it is.

My change in thinking made me question if there is a right to impose actions on others to enforce a view (pro or anti) on the entire public. This got me thinking, should there be any law involving hetero marriage?

Think about this, while it has been common practice for years, you need a “License” to get married. You have the option to file taxes “married” or not. What does any of this have to do with life long commitment between two people? You can get a name change without first marriage to someone with that name. Heck marriage done outside the country is observed when people move. It is more of a social creation, than a law one.

Many if not most couples still get married in religious gatherings, and from the point of view that religious authorities (god or gods) are always higher than the flesh (thus people and government, an creation of people), why do you need the law to accept you, if your god figures do?

I really think there are more issues out there where we have let laws and government have more power over natural rights, that we have just grown accustom to, but should maybe not be in place, in modified, or any form. I think this also solves (a natural rights) question to some of these topics, even if people don’t like it. The question of do I have the power (maybe) or the right (probably not) to impose via law (go to jail) beliefs of others.

Let me point out that people do and should have the right in their own forum promote, with reason their views. Not only do they have the right to express their ideas, they should. Competing ideas are needed for a best outcome and understanding, even if you end up not agreeing.

When thinking about the problem of “it has always been this way, therefor it is right”, or that “change is always good and for the better” I should paraphrase Ayn Rand, if you like her or not she got this right:

…[It is irrational to] defend a political system not because it is right, but because our ancestors chose it, not because it is good, but because it is old. … It is irrational to use the new as a measure of value, to believe that a policy is good, merely because it is new.

Just a list of major goals for 2009. One quarter into the year not doing to hot so far….

• Move MLDS Networks from a DBA to an LLC.
• Double the amount of time spent at the Lake this year vs 2009.
• Lift, swim, and bike more regularly.
• Use a TODO list (iGTD)
• Track my car with Jeff a least once.
• Call my Grand-parents regularly and get their history
• Re-learn welding
• Write an Joomla! component from scratch
• Do important things first, not things due first
• Be active with my friends

Anything else I should have? Some are very strict, with clear goals, others not so much, and tried to attach a goal to them (not spend more time at lake, double the time, that is measurable).

I put these out in public, so others see them, helps keep me honest. I would be awesome if I had the will to do things just because I want to, that is I am good enough for me. But I have always had issues with that and goal setting. Being a little public helps me. I encourage others to do the same.

Brock E. Palen

Mostly notes for myself on how to release mail from the Amavis Mail Quarantine. To do this you need to know the layout of your quarantine, have AM.PDP enabled by Unix Socket in the Amavis-new deamon and have the mail id.

Enable AM.PDP, is quite simple, use the following code in amavisd.conf:

$policy_bank{'AM.PDP-SOCK'} = {
  protocol => 'AM.PDP',  # Amavis policy delegation protocol
  auth_required_release => 0,  # don't require secret_id for amavisd-release
};

Note auth_required_release is 0 (False) for me, because my mail server is not accessible by normal users, not only that buy my amavis socket is walled of by regular unix file permissions for any user but the mail admin user. Once you have added this code run

amavisd reload

To restart amavis-new.

Using amavisd-release requires knowledge of the amavis quarantine directories. These are customizable, so check first. If you don’t have the format right, amavis may return a cryptic error:

450 4.5.0 Failure: SQL quarantine code not enabled at (eval 63) line 340,  line 4.

Example:
If you break up quarantine types into buckets as I have:

$QUARANTINEDIR = "$MYHOME/quarantine";
$spam_quarantine_method           = 'local:spam/%m.gz';
$banned_files_quarantine_method   = 'local:banned/%m';

You have to pass the bucket (directory) name to amavisd-release:

amavisd-release spam/kAiuhY2-fB7x.gz
amavisd-release banned/UctrJo0mH2Wf

If other formats are used like ‘local:spam-%m’ use the name of your format. Look at your $*quarantine_method variables in amavisd.conf. Also don’t forget that cron job for removing quarantined mail after it is over a given age, find -ctime will do nicely.

I had been thinking of buying a Matrox Tripple Head 2go for a while now. This little box lets me take one video input (VGA or DVI/HDMI) and split it into 3 DVI outs. Even better it only runs off USB power, I love not having a power cord for it. This box is a great idea if you have a laptop like me, and you only have a single extra monitor hookup. If you work all days on computers. More screen space directly turns into better productivity.

So when I found that the I could get the HP 2408h from www.buy.com for $200 and free shipping, I picked up three of these 24″ monsters. I had to wait two weeks for them to show up, but they arrived and they work great. This gave me a total of 738 Sq Inches of screen space (20.5″*12″*3) not including the built in screen on my laptop. See the picture for reference.

Only problems I have with this setup is I can only run the displays at 3840×800 (3×1280x800). This is a limitation of the th2g supported resolutions. I could run the panels at their native 1920×1200 if I only ran two of them. I would like to use the 5040×1050 (3×1680x1050) resolution, which is only supported under XP and Vista. I hope Matrox fixes this in a future firmware update, or Apple makes a fix in an OS X update. Running at 3840×800 is fine, just things are not as sharp as they could be, and they show up quite large on at 24″ screen at that low of a resolution.

The other issues I have is the panels only support HDMI and VGA in. This was an easy fix because DVI and HDMI use the same signals, sense I had to buy cables anyway, I picked up DVI->HDMI cables for $6 each.

Issues going forward, I was going to replace my laptop with a new unibody MacBookPro, but Apple, in a really dumb move, switched from dual link DVI, to Mini DisplayPort. Short is, the port is not supported by anyone, and not my th2go for sure. You also have to have an adapter to get VGA or DVI out, so it is workable, but to run this amount of screen space, you have to have dual link DVI, like what is in my old MacBookPro, and used by Apples own 30″ display. Well Apple has a part of this for $100 (rip) and it doesn’t work. If you look at the comments on the product page, and online don’t even bother trying till it is fixed by Apple. So I am waiting to upgrade.

My new podcast is going well. Turn out is much better than I expected. I also only expect it to get better as more mailing lists, word spreads etc. The website is www.rce-cast.com and you can subscribe via iTunes.

I am warning you this podcast is very technical. It is meant for researchers and HPC administrators. Don’t be surprised if words are said you don’t understand. If you listen you will hear me be corrected by my guests a lot. It is because I don’t know what I am talking about ether! That would be why I am doing this podcast.

All for now: Brock Palen

I can’t stress it enough, with the new year it is time with the stock market being so low (buy low sell high?) that it is time to start buying a Roth IRA.

First pay off any debt you have (other than your house if you have one) but once that is done, it is no better time to be putting money into a Roth IRA. For details see my old post Retirement Planning for Graduates.

So why a Roth IRA? Well if you get a match from your employer plan, you should put money into that every month to get the match. After that use a Roth IRA, you can open a no fee Roth from one of the many discount brokers. Give me an email if you are having trouble I can give you some names.

The biggest reason for the Roth is if you are young, chances are your income is going to go up as you get older. Promotions, starting your thing, etc could push you into higher taxes when you are older. The biggest reason I see right now is all these bailouts? The ones most Americans hate other than all the bozos in DC? They are going to have to be paid some time, and one of the best ways to hedge against paying higher taxes in the future to pay for these bailouts, is to use a Roth IRA, pay taxes now, not latter when they are higher.

So what you should do if you don’t have one already, is set up a Roth IRA and if you can, pay the full amount and be done ($5,000 this year 2009), or have $96 taken out of checking every week automatically. You can talk with your Roth provider how to do this. The stock market is cheap, it is 30% off, it has been flat over the last few months, it could not be a bottom, and I am not one to time the market, but it is obvious, we will look back at this time 5 years from now, and be sad we didn’t buy all the stock we could.

Remember this is just my opinion, understand what you are doing before investing. And I am no way giving advice or binding to any obligation. And please, pay off the damn CC’s, and don’t lease cars. Save and invest.