JAFDIP

Just another frakkin day in paradise

Reviews

Camping on the USS Intrepid

Ok I’m not one to write about travel or subject office co-workers to vacation slideshows, but I simply must share the experience from last night’s little journey. For those people who have told me that they were lucky to dodge the bullet of the son ever entering into scouts. And to those who vehemently decry the organization as a result of social differences.

I would not have been able to take my 10 year old son on the trip yesterday were it not for our involvement in the Boy Scouts of America. All who participated in the fund raiser to achieve this goal were truly grateful once we had set foot aboard the ship. While I will not go into too much detail about the journey let’s just say that the experience was enjoyed by child and parent alike.

Therefore without further ado let’s break out the slides! Honestly just kidding, I will however present three photos that I took at sunrise this morning from the flight deck of the USS Intrepid.

The first is of a U.S. Coast Guard HH-52 Seahawk helicopter very similar to the first helo I ever flew in.

The next is the Lockheed A-12 Blackhawk also on the flight deck.

The last is of the Concord on the pier below the ship.

You see that wasn’t painful at all, in fact almost enjoyable. More importantly was the experience of walking aboard a vessel of this era, which was similar albeit much larger than the vessels I sailed on in the Coast Guard, with my son. Explaining to him how life was for me when I lived aboard ship.

In any event if you ever have the opportunity to spend a night aboard the Intrepid I highly recommend it. While I can not guarantee you experience will exactly like mine, it will without a doubt be memorable.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mikel King (http://twitter.com/mikelking) has been a leader in the Information Technology Services field for over 20 years. He is currently the CEO of Olivent Technologies, a professional creative services partnership in NY. Additionally he is currently serving as the Secretary of the BSD Certification group as well as a Senior Editor for the BSD News Network.

The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD

cover::The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD

By Dru Lavigne
ISBN13: 978-1-4302-2641-3
ISBN10: 1-4302-2641-2
Publisher: Apress

I was afforded the opportunity to review this book before the actual print date. For those who don’t already know PC-BSD is a well polished system and I commend the gang over at iXsystems for sponsoring it’s development. Dru Lavigne has out done herself with equally well polished volume. At first glance one would think why do I need a book about PC-BSD.

If the operating system is so good then who needs a book really? The book proves that the operating system is perfectly suitable for use by average PC users. Sure you can get by without such a text, digging through man pages and what not but if you are new to PC-BSD this book will help you go from newbie to power user in record time. One could easily re-purpose an older PC extending is usable life by installing PC-BSD.

Even if you are a veteran FreeBSD ranger, there are a lot of nuances to PC-BSD and the book does a lot to explain the why of PC-BSD. Dru does her best to explain common and advance UNIX tasks in a non-patronizing manner. Even as a long time user of FreeBSD I couldn’t help but discover some new ways of doing things.

My only gripe is that the book does not come with a PC-BSD live demo/install DVD. While you can download and burn the media easily enough, I have always found that people are more likely to drop a test drive disc in their system if one is included with the book. I personally feel that the topics covered are easier learned when one can follow along.

In any event the book has a lot of valuable information. For example in chapter 5 you will find a table listing the equivalents to common Windows applications. Since it is trivial to install these applications via PC-BSD’s PBI system even the novice user can look like a pro.

This book is the perfect compliment to a very good operating system. Yes you can muddle your way through on your own or, or you can jump start your progress with this handy guide by your side.

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Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts

Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts
Useful Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems
author: Steve Pugh
ISBN-13 978-1-59327-182-4

Having fun and solving problems can be mutually exclusive. Even for professional programmers and system administrators who chose their career because they enjoy problem solving, there can be times when finding a solution is an exercise in the mundane. Luckily, there are tools designed to ease the pain and frustration faced by programmers and admins. Ruby is a programming language that was designed from the start to not only provide a means of solving problems, but also to be inherently intuitive and fun to use. Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts, by Steve Pugh, is a book aimed to bring to light the fact that you can use Ruby to write concise yet useful scripts that solve difficult problems.

If youʼre a fan of the “Wicked Cool” books from No Starch Press, youʼll find the format of this book familiar. Itʼs not a hefty tome complete with syntax and “hello world” introductory lessons, rather itʼs almost a recipe book of sorts, divided into sections of problems and chock full of immediately useful Ruby code. This is the “Wicked Cool” book Iʼve been waiting for, because although I write PHP and shell scripts (not so much Java and Perl, other topics covered in the series), Iʼve always thought Ruby was the coolest of all. Right from the start, you can tell that Steve Pugh agrees with me.  His tone throughout the book is that of a friend who has something fun to share, never
browbeating or lecturing.  Heʼs not simply writing to show us that he knows how to write Ruby well, heʼs really trying to help us out. Honestly, some of the examples in Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts might leave you wondering why youʼd use such a powerful language like Ruby for such seemingly simple things. What Steve Pugh tries (and succeeds!) to show us is that Ruby isnʼt just
for writing massive web applications, but it can also handle tasks often relegated to the ubiquitous, but cryptic Awk or shell languages. Perhaps you still wonder why youʼd want to? “Just because you can doesnʼt mean you should”, right? So why bother? Because Ruby is “Wicked Cool”, thatʼs why.

So whatʼs cool? How about a simple file alteration monitor to help you see whatʼs changed on your system? Not cool enough? How about a web based photo gallery in about 50 lines of code? Still not impressed? How about writing a Metasploit module to attack one Windows machine from another? From general purpose utilities to system security and yes, even some games, Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts has enough in it to pique the interest of just about any programmer or sysadmin. I for one am finding it hard to concentrate on this review because I want to get back to writing Ruby. If youʼre a programmer waiting for a good excuse to try Ruby, or a Windows sysadmin wondering
what an open source programming language can do for you, youʼll find Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts enlightening, inspiring, and of course… cool.

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The Twitter Book

Cover Artwork: The Twitter Book
Cover Artwork: The Twitter Book
  • By: Tim O’Reilly & Sarah Milsten
  • ISBN: 978-0-596-80281-3
  • Publisher: O’Reilly

reviewer: Mikel King <mikel.king@jafdip.com>

Ok I felt this was onebook that I had to finish the review for today of all days. There is something remotely HHGesq about the book. In fact while reading it I often found myself thinking that the title should have been The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to Twitter. Therefore today being Towel Day and all I felt compelled to complete the review.

Honestly I found this books’ simple yet friendly manner to be both enjoyable and informative. Tim and Sarah’s complimentary writing style are the key to this book’s success. Honestly I think it would have been a diservice to attempt to over complicate the usage of Twitter by writing a bloated text full of huge pages with a step by step walk through guide.

It is a simple service that deserves a simple book, one that does not insult the inteligence of the reader and honestly this one does the job fantasticly. In addition the authors explain many of the Twitter enhancement services and and site available in a nice overview fashion. Nothing in this book is bloated of heavy, demonstrating just enough to illustrate the points without wasting ink or paper.

My only issue with the book is that I wish it were more of a pocket size reference, however; were that the case it would be difficult to actually see the pictorials included. Without these screen shots the booked would be half it’s size and probably less than half as useful.

Ultimately this is a good book to learn some wonderful insights to Twitter. Sure you could learn much of this by digging through blogs and wikipedia, and of course asking your tweeps, but if you want a fast start this is certainly the book for you.

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review:Sanctuary ‘The Five’ (Season 1 Episode 7)

‘The Five‘ fills in a lot of history, as well as helps develop some of the other characters. I found this one exciting as well as informative. A lot of ground was covered, and even more foundations were laid for future episodes.

Seriously in this episode we learn how Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping) became immortal, and Ashley (Emilie Ullerup) learns that crazy psychopants John Druitt (Christopher Heyerdahl) is actually her dear ol’dad.

We also learn that there are other people even more psycho than Druitt, namely Nickola Tesla who as it turns out is one of the five, and part vampire ever since undergoing the same treatment that afforded Helen with her longevity.

Mean while back on the home front Will (Robin Dunne), Bigfoot and Henry (Ryan Robbins) battle a serpentine creature ravaging the Sanctuary. Of course Will’s hunch is a bit off the mark as we learn something deeply personal about Mr. Foss and his reasons for working in the Sanctuary.

This was an exciting episode, in that it was nice to have multiple stories told concurrently while revealing some deeper subplot. I was great to learn so much about the back grounds of the characters. They have become much more interesting.