Saturday, January 28, 2017

Docker sockets

Not having much luck with the Docker sockets thing. A bit more research shows that using Ubuntu with Docker causes additional needs when trying to access the socket (somehow systemd is now part of the config). More research in the near future. Target: control Docker _and_ Munin from inside of containers.

This is going a bit slow as I'm in the middle of yet another compressed training session (40 hours training, 4 tests w/ required passing grade of 100% only). Since I'm one of the guinea pigs, the training is free, so...

Monday, January 16, 2017

Ideas from the HR Docker Meetup of 16 Jan 2016

Went to the Docker Meet-up tonight. The Jenkins-in-Docker talk gave me a couple ideas. One should be a solution to my having to separately support each and every instance of my web-based Docker management tool (I even have Docker installed on RPi's and a number of VMs). If I understand it correctly, using the Docker-out-of-Docker method (as opposed to Docker-in-Docker), I'll just need to maintain one Dockerfile and I can deploy the web tool as needed/desired. I'm thinking that I'll need some sort of automatic proxy (like what jwilder has done.

I'm also wondering if a single instance of the web-front end can control ALL of the Docker instances. Something for later I think.

The (on demand) scalable Jenkins-in-Docker caused me to look at Sphinx-in-Docker. Luckily, the Sphinx site already has an article about running Sphinxsearch (at least searchd) in Docker containers. This will probably take me the rest of the year to figure out but it's piqued my interest. The scary part is that it'll probably involve using NGINX as a reverse proxy for Docker Swarm Clusters (minus the DigitalOcean piece). Unless someone has already figured this out (and hasn't attached it to proprietary infrastructure), I figure it'll take a couple months to get working. In short, it'll be a lengthy "learning opportunity".

Will keep y'all posted.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

It's life Jim, but not as we know it... not as we know it...

TLDR: Uh, yuck.

Just watched the pilot for the new Mythbusters - Search. There's just so many things wrong with this pilot that I'm hoping that Street Science (which airs in 4 days) will make a decent substitute. As a MB fan, I find MB-S quite repellent.

The mix that was MythBusters was unique. It's why attempts to create competitive shows invariably failed. It's also why the pair was invited by "real people" to visit their job sites (NASA, the bomb site, F1 Racing, etc.). MB-S comes across as an attempt to resuscitate the show by injecting it with the "Big Brother" formula (where every episode must have some sort of personality conflict and a crisis which invariably has a manufactured "feel" to it).

Then there's the derogatory statements in this pilot. One player's use of "I'm an Engineer" [1] to support his stance was off-putting. Then there's the host's shots at "nerds". It gives the impression that the producers haven't recognized the demographic[2] of their previous show.

Overall, I'm thinking that any attempt to continue the MB franchise (at least in this manner) will only succeed in speeding the departure of original fans. I'll check back later, with the hope that a miracle occurs for MythBusters NG.

For now, I'm voting with my feet.

===

[1] This type of brutish chest-beating is usually employed by the insecure and the incompetent. The formula: when you can't make a strong technical argument, remind the other guy that you have quals which he lacks.
[2] That "the Engineer" received "immunity" [3] and the most nerd-ish participant was "voted off" of the show supports this impression.
[3] OMG. Really? On MythBusters? What's next, William Shatner/Patrick Stewart as the next Doctor? Mike Rowe taking over The View? Matt Le Blanc replacing Jeremy Clarkson? Oh, wait...

Monday, January 2, 2017

GPIO without the RPi

More silliness ahead, I think. Just as djjwm did, I went ahead and pledged a few bucks for the Pi GPIO on USB board. After conversion from pounds to dollars, it came to about $28 for a 2-pack. I'm wondering why no one has made these before.

Sunday, January 1, 2017

What was I reading in December 2016?

December was a very busy month, but (mostly) it was enjoyable. I was even able to squeeze in a couple non-reading-list posts.

2016-12-01

- Farm Hacks - Being a farmers' kid, I found this interesting.
- Help Us Keep the Archive Free Accessible and Reader Private
- Qubes OS Begins Commercialization and Community Funding Efforts
- Del.icio.us export disabled and support email down - I miss the original non-ad-encumbered del.icio.us. Of late, I've been wresting SemanticScuttle and Shaarli, trying to make them reverse proxy tolerant. Not much luck there though.
- Franc[e]sco's Gopherspace: /programming/c_without_standard_library_linux.txt
- Lua as a Python's secret weapon - Lua has been turning up in a lot of my projects lately...
- A security update for Raspbian PIXEL - Raspberry Pi
- Pwning coworkers thanks to LaTeX scumjr
- Theorem of the Day

2016-12-03

- Introduction to strace - This was valuable (this month) in determining the cause of 60 second delays in some legacy RadioShark code.
- Let's stop copying C / fuzzy notepad
- Amazon's New Truck Can Haul Five Copies of the Internet With Room to Spare

2016-12-04

- The Unsolvable Mysteries of the Voynich Manuscript
- OSS-Fuzz initial impressions - The Blagoblag
- Microsoft's IFTTT alternative is now open to everyone

2016-12-06

- A Most Civil War - My brother-in-law's book/blog
- Finding bombs in the forest
- Rooting an appliance for fun and maybe profit?
- Creepy Wireless Stalking Made Easy

2016-12-11

- Write a toy strace and gdb
- Tips for Self-Learning Programming
- German judges explain why Adblock Plus is legal
- Ticket Bot Act Passed by Congress; Heads to President
- Mr. Robot Killed the Hollywood Hacker - \o/ - Yay!
- How to Sleep

2016-12-15

- Practical Reverse Engineering Part 5 - Digging Through the Firmware
- Divided by a common syntax
- Crypto guru Matt Green asks courts for DMCA force field so he can safely write a textbook
- DMCA updated toaster penetration testing gets green light in America
- Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic - Allison Parrish Open Transcripts
- Unix in the browser tab

2016-12-17

- Galileo navigation satellite system goes live

2016-12-24

- Disassembly Required
- Creating and using your own C libraries
- Cool but obscure unix tools
- A convenient untruth (array notation in C)

2016-12-26

- Unix Horror Stories: The good thing about Unix is when it screws up it does so very quickly
- DNS over HTTPS - There's just so many things "not right" with this...

2016-12-27

- Understanding assembly Hello World

2016-12-30

- Issuance of Amended Executive Order 13694; Cyber-Related Sanctions Designations

Above was generated by a homegrown bolt-on script for Wallabag, which is a free utility for capturing web content so that it can be read later.