Originally written 05.03.2002.

• downloaded the bash patch from http://project.honeynet.org/papers/honeynet/bash.patch and the bash-2.03 source RPM from ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/6.2/en/os/i386/SRPMS/bash2-2.03-8.src.rpm. Installed the source RPM, copied the patch to the /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/bash-2.03-syslog.patch and commented out the other patches in the RPM spec file. The changes I made are here:
  

  
  10,16c10,15
  < Patch0: bash-2.03-syslog.patch
  < #Patch0: bash-2.03-paths.patch
  < #Patch1: bash-2.02-security.patch
  < #Patch2: bash-2.02.1-arm.patch
  < #Patch3: bash-2.03-profile.patch
  < #Patch4: bash-2.03-bash2.patch
  < #Patch5: bash-2.03-requires.patch
  ---
  > Patch0: bash-2.03-paths.patch
  > Patch1: bash-2.02-security.patch
  > Patch2: bash-2.02.1-arm.patch
  > Patch3: bash-2.03-profile.patch
  > Patch4: bash-2.03-bash2.patch
  > Patch5: bash-2.03-requires.patch
  44,52c43,50
  < %patch0 -p1 -b .syslog
  < #%patch0 -p1 -b .paths
  < #%patch1 -p1 -b .security
  < #%patch2 -p1 -b .arm
  < #%patch3 -p1 -b .profile
  < #%patch4 -p1 -b .bash2
  < #%patch5 -p1 -b .requires
  < #echo %{version} > _distribution
  < #echo %{release} > _patchlevel
  ---
  > %patch0 -p1 -b .paths
  > %patch1 -p1 -b .security
  > %patch2 -p1 -b .arm
  > %patch3 -p1 -b .profile
  > %patch4 -p1 -b .bash2
  > %patch5 -p1 -b .requires
  > echo %{version} > _distribution
  > echo %{release} > _patchlevel
  	

  
  
  I then tried to build a new RPM with the command "rpm -bb --clean --rmsource bash2.spec" and the bash executable compiled fine, but something messed up on the documentation. So much for building an RPM.


• 
  copied the modified bash files to the honeypots. overwrote the normal /bin/bash with the patched version. deleted /bin/tcsh and /bin/csh. /bin/bash2 and /bin/sh are already symlinked to /bin/bash.
  


• 
  here's a look at some logged shell commands on hermione sent to the remote syslog server, ron:
  

  
  

  
  May  3 07:29:31 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx bash: HISTORY: PID=572 UID=0 cd /bin/
  May  3 07:29:31 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx bash: HISTORY: PID=572 UID=0 ls
  May  3 07:29:34 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx bash: HISTORY: PID=572 UID=0 ls -l sh
  	    

  
  

  
  


• note that this type of dcap isn't particularly effective since any cracker worth her salt is going to replace the shell as soon as the box gets rooted.


• modified my honeynet setup scripts to copy common files to the mounted honeypot filesystems.


• began looking at the firewall configuration. i'm going to use iptables to start to keep things simple. figured a good place to start would be the honeynet projects sample iptables config at http://project.honeynet.org/papers/honeynet/rc.firewall. looks like i should read the NAT howto and the packet filtering howto at http://netfilter.samba.org/documentation/


• changed the networking of the virtual honeynet so the honeypots have unroutable ips (192.168.0.*) because it seems like the honeynet project's firewalling script wants to do nat. who am i to argue?

Originally written 05.02.2002.

from an intersting salon article on no limit texas hold 'em:

In his book "Hold 'Em Poker," Kevin Sklansky, a world-class player, says you should never play hole cards worse than a king-9 unsuited (belonging to different suits).

played another game of poker with marco and rob. got shit cards all game. marco was playing recklessly and virtually gave away his money to rob. i played conservatively, but went all in at the end on the first good hand that i got. i thought that i had rob thinking i had an amazing hand because i had been playing conservatively all game, but his hand was better and i lost my pound. thank goodness we're all poor so the pot is always really small.

originally written 05.02.2002.

• Set up ron as the remote syslog server. I'd like to use syslog-ng in the future, but in the interest of getting things working, I'll just use plain old syslog for now.


• Tried to configure named on one of my virtual hosts to provide DNS for the honeynet. The config looked ok for a simple caching only nameserver, and the process came up, but to my chagrin, netstat -a didn't show port 53 as being open. I think named is segfaulting for some reason. Maybe my poor beleagured virtual host doesn't have enough memory alloted to it.


• e-mailed archie to try to get more ram.

Originally written 05.01.2002.

wasted untold amounts of time writing an e-mail to some silly college journalist who wrote an editorial that tim pointed me to complaining about people who were pretentious name droppers. i think tim gains a great deal of enjoyment from my disdain for such editorials. at least he hooked me up with some cap'n jazz and pedro the lion mp3s (how's that for name dropping?). later on i read a d.h. lawrence short story that tim told me to read. i'ts called rocking horse winner and apparently there's an emo band or something that named themselves after the story's title. i think they're playing this years krazyfest. and that's the thing: i like the idea of semi-obscure bands making semi-obscure literary references. it's like a treasure hunt. it makes life more interesting. can't remember the last time i got that "wow, that's interesting" feeling from an mtv band.

been listening to the new weezer release maladroit. don't see the drastic improvement of the final versions of the songs over the demos that peter was talking about. still, as i said before, i like them in an entertaining, let's go party and cruise around the township with our windows rolled down sort of way.

it's mayday and all across europe people are taking to the streets. in edinburgh there was a pro-palestine rally, and on the news wire i saw photos of thousands upon thousands of french left-wingers protesting le pen's write wing politics. in berlin people got crazy and fucked shit up, and i saw footage of londoners bicycling through the streets to bring rush hour traffic to a grinding halt.

met with one of my lecturers who is overseeing my uml honeynet project. we discussed the project a little bit and he said he wants a 20 page report on the thing. bloody hell. but i need to figure out how to write like that if i ever plan to do anything in academia. it's pretty impressive over here. the third years are doing a system design project which sounds a bit like the robot project i did as a freshman. couldn't quite make out what the project is exactly, but i heard the phrases "monolith that emits morris code using ir", "legos", and "apache". sounds rad. most of the fourth years seem to be doing dissertations. at osu, hardly anyone does.

my family must be naturally anal. at least the males. tim's busy putting lyrics and liner notes into his mp3 files. i didn't even know you can cram that stuff into id3v2 tags. i'm busy writing ridiculously over-engineered oo perl code to setup my uml honeynets. it sucks, and is probably a waste of time, but once i get started doing something i feel compelled to finish. at least i learned some stuff, like how to pass arguments to the "wanted" subroutine used with file::find. the solution which i found on the perlmonks site is to write a subroutine to generate anonymous subroutines:

	$wanted = make_wanted(\&wanted_1, $arg1, $arg2);

	find($wanted, '../');

	sub wanted_1 {
	   my $arg1 = shift;
	   my $arg2 = shift;
	   
           ...
	}

	sub make_wanted {
	   my $wanted= shift;                      # get the "real" wanted function
	   my @args= @_;                           # "freeze" the arguments
	   my $sub= sub { $wanted->( @args);  };   # generate the anon sub
	   return $sub;                            # return it
	}
      

my own personal hackathon lasted until 8 before i figured i'd better walk back to the flat. again my timing is shit. as i started walking down the road it started pouring. i couldn't see from the water drops on my glasses, and they kept slipping off my nose anyway. the drops stung my eyes, and i was starting to get a headache either from the constance pounding of the rain or the continuous grimace that was developing on my brow. between fuming over code not working and getting drenched it was less than a fun walk home.

no amount of rain could ruin the night completely though. the mark thomas product is on television. "how i became an arms dealer in eight days." awesome.

i think that tonight was paddy's birthday or something because he and all his stupid friends were being quite loud and chucking stuff out of the windows. well, at least it wasn't our flat this time. paddy is this agricultural student who lives in the building and is basically the type of kid who still hasn't outgrown the notion of bullying. i remember him getting drunk and trying to pick a fight with an also drunk marco. he kept calling marco a poof and i think marco responded byy saying "oh you're a great wanker". for some reason that just incensed him. it would have been hilarious if i hadn't been worried that someone was about to get trashed. so we all do these paddy impressions where we grunt and talk like cavemen and it's totally juvenile but completely hilarious. we've been throwing around the idea of writing a sit-com pilot around paddy's life.

Originally written 04.30.2002.

spoke with tim on im today. maybe we'll live together next year. that is, if he gets packed like a sardine 4-to-a-room at osu. he told me he thought my web journal was pretentious. he also said that he would read it if i changed the name of the journal to "g's harangue of hilarity" and mentioned halibuts. i'll placate him because despite the normal sibling bickering, i respect his opinion more than just about anyone. ok. so i think that this project is pretentious. and of course tim would think it was pretentious because he is one of the least pretentious people i know. most everything i have ever done is to gain accolades, notoriety, or attention, and tim doesn't operate like that. but, at the same time, every day i hear lots of things that i can't identify with or that i think are downright ugly, and every day i meet people who never say anything about what's going on in their lives and the world and i think that's really sad. at least i'm going to record the state of my life and what's in my head because i think that i mean something in the world and i want other people to know that they do too. what i write and what i say might not always be right, and it might not always be kind, but at least it's something.

updated the old web page in general, fixed the search so people can go ego surf and find out if i slagged them off.

waded through tons of e-mail. seems like i got a scholarship from the cis department, but that i have to go to some awards ceremony to receive it, but i can't because i'm in scotland. hope i don't have to forfeit the money.

spent way more time than i should have buying football (the american variety, not the good kind) tickets for erin d. apparently the e-commerce server couldn't handle the load of students rushing to buy football tickets. at least a term of distributed systems lectures gave me something to think about while the pages took ages to load before spitting out useless error messages. i eventually was able to buy the tickets, and erin sent me payment via paypal which is always a cheap thrill for me. paypal might be my favorite web technology save for blogger. it's just a really clever idea and i find it to be incredibly useful. next year i'll finally be able to pay my share of the rent without messing around with checks. awesome.

got home in time to watch the man utd. game where man utd. played to a disappointing draw and had their final dreams dashed on away goals.

after the game played some poker with rob and marco. rob was pretty drunk as he had been drinking away his sorrows over his team's loss. still, he was sober enough to take our money. we played no limit texas hold 'em, a type of poker that i hadn't played before, but was pretty fun. it's the kind they play on late night poker on the bbc, and as rob puffed away on his cheap cigars, he either fancied himself one of the professional gamblers on the show or one of the gangsters in his novel.

Originally written 04.01.2002.

After buying my train ticket to London and sorting through tax hell at the Internet cafe, I realized that I needed to get to the venue as well as procure some film. After running around looking for a shop that carried film for a while (Princes St. goes dead after 6), I eventually found a newsagent that carried film. My camera hassles weren't over then, however. I got into the venue w/ my camera unaccosted, but as I was exiting the toilet, a security guy stopped me and informed me that cameras weren't allowed in the concert hall and that I would have to check my camera somewhere. After being handed off to a half-dozen security personel, it was eventutlly decided that 35mm cameras were ok. After some deliberation as to whether or not my camera.

The show's venue was Edinburgh's Usher hall, a concert hall that usually plays host to middle aged rockers comeback tour. Under the large rotunda, there are 2 balconies of seats and then the floor. The place reminded me of Philly's Troc., both in size and decore, but w/o the dank.

I arrived at the venue just after doors oppened, and already kids were pouring in. Apparently the "rules of rock" don't apply in Scotland. There are tons of kids w/ B&S t-shirts displayed proudly. Good for them, I always thought that rules like that were daft anyway. The air was light and jovial. Friends roughhoused while couples sat cross-leggen on the floor, exchanging the occasional romantic glance or comment, a few rows back.

There were 2 opening bands, and I was going to write about them, but their performance was so overshadowed by the headliners that it hardly seems neccessary to mention them. Belle&Sebastian were just that good.

Belle&Sebastian, until recently, were always a band that I avoided because I perceived them as being awash in indie rock pretense, their name utterred only by pale, emaciated boys in the back of record stores. It wasn't until I actually listened to the pile of Belle&Sebastian albums of my flatmates that I realized that the band makes some of the most accessible and enjoyable music that I have ever heard. Their performance provided more than ample further evidence of this fact.

A phrase that is often used to describe the band is "chamber pop". Despite my love of multi-word genre classifications, I'd like to focus on just the "pop". Yes, Belle&Sebastian have strings, and pianos, but to me, it is theih overwhelming popiness that is the essence of the band. While the performance of the band Rachel's, another group that often gets the chamber adjective is moody and intimate, Belle&Sebastian are engaging and, well, big.

The label "pop" often seems to imply a lack of musical ability. This was certainly not the case with Belle&Sebastian. As I was watching the road crew, I realized why the band was playing a proper concert hall instead of an arena-like venue. The stage was massive. There was a
baby grand piano, organ, and synthesizer, a cello, 4 violins, a drum kit, and an assortment of guitars. Through the course of the set, the ensamble of 12 or 13 musicians (I lost count) were constantly switching between instruments and introducing new ones like flute, recorder, and a plethora of percussion implements. Not only is the effect of this constant switching impressive, but it's fully entertaining. More than that, the audience is caught up in the musicians' utter love of music. The band was smiling and cracking jokes with each other between songs and th
s was contageous. Most of the audience had these stupid grins on their faces through the entirity of the show. The musicians seemed like what high school band geeks would be if they were engaged in constant creative bliss instead of getting wasted after the half time show. It was enough to make one want to dust off that 3rd grade recorder, if only to learn the solo to "The Boy With the Arab Strap"

Originally written 04.10.2002.

so this is it. done and dusted. after 8 days in london i'm back on the train to edinburgh and back to revision for exams, my own bed, and skating good old bristo square instead of london's exotic concrete parks. i'm left with a feeling of fulfillment that is the hallmark of any good vacation. sure, i never did get to see the inside of westminster abbey and there are numerous bands left unheard, vegan delicacies unsampled, and spots left unskated, but if not refreshed, i am ready to get back to my old life, to stop being a tourist, even if that does mean real responsibility.

what i've realized is that this is my first vacation as an adult - where i've booked my own transport, arranged my own accomodation and set my own agenda. traveling places as a child in the back seat of the family plymouth voyager on fmaily vacations, i was always entertained by the novelty of a new place, but in some ways, i wasn't really getting away from it all. i was still under the rule of the parental units and though they were generally accomodating in the end, it was they who set the agenda. traveling alone, i found that places i went, the things i saw, and the things that i did took on additional value because i chose them. those experiences were exclusively mine. if i had the knowledge that i do now, i would have skipped the trip to spain, france, and italy during high school and instead saved the money for when i could tear across europe on my own.

i never quite understood why people chose to to go on vacations on cruise ships or to resorts. they're just another version of that school trip. a person is just ristricted by the same ridiculous confinement that you face in everyday life. "do i go to the casino or do i play shuffleboard?" "do i get blitzed at the cheesy bar with overpriced drinks or do i get blitzed at the cheesy bar with overpriced drinks?" for me the vacation always meant freedom and escape and the aforementioned examples just don't do it for me. give me a subway pass and some maps, a train ticket and some loose guides - now that's freedom.

i think vacation is a really important institution. hey, if they made a this american life show about it, it's got to be right? for one thing, vacation tends to bring out all aspects of someone's personality. in traveling by myself, i get an idea of how my parents shaped who i am today. like my dad, i'm too cost conscious and always wanting to get off the beaten path. still, like my mom, i try to keep things somewhat low key and don't stress too much about things not being perfect. it was strange really, i fealt laid back in a way that i wasn't last week when my girlfriend came to visit. it's hard to realize that one doesn't always show one's best side to loved ones, but i guess stress tends to bring out undesireable aspects of one's personality and having someone you care about dearly thrust quickly back into one's life after a long absence, and then, just as abruptly removed again, no matter how enjoyable the time together, is definitely stressful. being on vacation, alone this time, allowed me to reflect on the barrage of emotions that i fealt last week (that was the stressful thing about the previous week, i think, feeling so overwhelmed with feelings of affection and confusion or fear, feeling, because of the time constraint, obligated to act somehow, but, again because of the time restriction, not being able to process everything and think things through). this week in london was different. it was slow and meditative, even self-indulgent - probably just what i needed.

i look out the window and see that the train is now cutting along the craggy english coast. i zoom past the remnants of the once thatch-roofed hut right near the water and at the farmer's fields going right to the very edge of the cliff, a scene that is foreign and completely new, and i realize that my entire study abroad experience in the uk has been a vacation of sorts - a departure from a place that was feeling too stagnant and too confortable and from a self that was seeming too willing to accept life's inadequacies. and, jast as the most recent vacation has been an extension of self and an opportunity for growth, so is this larger vacation. as the train pulls into waverly station, one vacation now at an end, i think that maybe life could just be one vacation after another.

Originally written 04.29.2002.

i was totally stoked today because i got to eat my beloved microwave organic vegan "mexican-style" fajita, which despite the "-style" is still rather good, and more importantly, rather cheap. i would kill for that kind of product to be offered to students. hell, i would be thrilled for any kind of food to be offered inexpensively to students. the cool thing is that a number of university facilities are completely run by student organizations, and for the most part, they seem to do a really good job. they're having an election right now, and, of course, there's the ridiculous flyers everywhere. the thing is, it seems that they take politics far less seriously here which is really refreshing given the yearly quests for world domination that one sees every year at osu. the posters have a juvenile quality more reminiscent of junior high elections than the ridiculous seriousness of osu's student government elections. however, when i look around thiw university, and all the things that students provide for other students, and i compare it to osu where it's pretty much bullshit politics, it reminds me of what is really wrong with politics - too much politicking keeps people from actually doing something useful. in fact, i can't think of one thing that usg at osu has done to benefit me. when i went to one of their meetings to talk about sweatshops for cusas, i fealt physically ill from the scene. it was mostly spoilt rich kids bickering over miniscule points and planning their social calendars. fuck that.

Originally written 04.29.2002.

i went to see about a boy, the recently (at least in the uk) released cinematic adaptation of the awesome nick hornby novel. nick hornby is hands down one of my favorite authors because he crafts novels that are simply entertaining and fulfilling and he does so in a manner that is straightforward yet completely perceptive and completely grounded in contemporary culture. so, even when the books get compressed over to the silver screen, and the really good endings get replaced by hollywood cheese, i still love it. hugh grant was pretty darn good. i'm by no means a hugh grant fan, but he was able to pull off the aging hipster role more than adequately. his young co-star was also rad and i was happy to see that the young actor got a significant share of the screen time. i think movies have a tendency to ignore young characters and it's good to see kids acting like real kids on screen. the soundtrack by badly drawn boy was also quite rad, but i might just be a sucker for single-band soundtracks. the movie left me feeling pretty sentimental and wanting to hang out with 12 year olds in the worst way. i'd love to have that opportunity to reconnect with my youth in that way, and i think that a lot of kids need adults in their lives who aren't related to them by means of some authoritative structure. i'm going to go and buy the new hornby book, recently out in paperback as soon as i get a chance. watching the movie has reminded me of how much i enjoy his writing. he just writes those novels that you don't want to end. you find yourself deeply caring about the characters, wishing that you knew them, that you got to share their experiences, which i think, is at least some kind of metric for good writing. after the movie, as we were walking home, iain, anaise (sp?), laura, and i got into a mini-debate about whether we would want to have job or not (the protagonist in the movie doesn't work, he lives off of royalties from his father's song writing). iain and i were firmly anti-job, and laura was firlmy pr-career. it's not that i don't like working. i just don't want to be defined only by my career, and i think that many people my age are getting sucked down that path. it's not like i have any kind of lifestyle aspirations beyond my current state anyway. if i can just pay for school and keep being able to aford skateboards, records, books, and show covers, i think that i would be perfectly content. to me, the thing that was always attractive about wealth was that it was freedom - freedom from being stuck in a place geographically, freedom to learn new things, freedom to be exposed to ideas that allow you to think in new ways, freedom from having to disappoint people. what i see happening to so many people is the pursuit of money taking away from their freedom, and i want none of that. i don't want to be the guy who works hard all day towards his only reward - some drinks with his pseudo-friends at happy hour.

Originally written 04.28.2002.

iain and i headed off to george square theatre and were luckily able to still score tickets to see chuck d (although they had been marked up to #12 instead of the presale price of #8). we took our seats, and by the time the show started, the university hall was packed to capacity. i really like events at univeristy venues because when they're smaller, they tend to have a certain intimacy and informality that is lost at commercial venues. so there were no openers. it was chuck d and all chuck d for almost 3 hours, but like the last spoken word event that i went to, jello biafra, one hardly noticed the length of the lecture.

chuck spoke, as he said, about "rap, race, and technology", an akward medly from the sound of it, but he managed to pull it off for the most part. much like biafra, chuck d tends to be outspoken and has a tendency towards rhetoric. he might not have his politics continually consistent, but at least he admits that he "doesn't know shit". chuck d is best when he talks about what he knows firsthand - growing up and being smitten by music and music technology and learning the ropes of the record industry and eventually beating them at their own game. he might have gotten mixed up about the reading festival being in scotland, and he might have mistaken the strokes for being a london band, but when it came to the record industry, he educated me on a number of points about which i was previously ignorant. for instance, he pointed out that digital music, and the sharing of digital music was just the end product of a process that was started by the record companies to exploit consumers. when cds were introduced, they were considerably cheaper for the record companies to produce than lps, but they were sold to consumers at nearly twice the price. similarly, "analog contracts" for artists required that 15 percent of the artist's cut go to the record companies to cover the 15 percent of the vinyl that was damaged in the manufacturing process. when the analog switched to digital, with only one percent of product damaged, the artists were still held under "analog contracts".

when chuck d got going, he was incredibly engaging, and often i found myself laughing hysterically. one of the high points was chuck's impression of dr. dre deciding that he didn't like mp3s. the point chuck was trying to make was that dr. dre could care less about mp3s and was basically just buying the story of his record industry handlers, but the whole play-acting scene was executed with such comedic genius that the point was almost lost. i can't recreate the scene in all it's glory, but it went something like this. (note: in the following dialogue, d plays both parts, walking back and forth across the stage to assume the roles of the characters)

lawyer: yo dre, people are stealing yo' money.
dre: [takes a big toke of an imaginary joint] fuck 'dem.
dre: [taking another toke] how are de' stealin' my money?
lawyer: they're downloading mp3s.
dre: [takes yet another toke] fuck mp3s.

d's comedic ability and his awareness of politics came through again when he play-acted a similar scenario to describe american foreign policy. he equated american foreign policy with shaquile oneil coming to your house, eating your food, stealing your car, and having his way with your women while you're powerless to do anything about it. awesome.

at the end of the lecture, he answered some questions, and although he rarely addressed the question directly, his thoughts were still really interesting. it's easy to be critical of people when they fuck up a response, but i'm not sure i'd do any better. i have a tendency to idolize artists who address politics in their work and people tend to like to point out their shortcomings and inconsistencies to me. watching chuck d, i realized that what i like the most about political artists is the fact that they represent the average guy waking up and deciding to care about the world around them. the important thing isn't that they get everything 100% right, or think everything through all the way, but that they've at least taken the step to start examining the state of their government and their culture. i can handle people who disagree with someone's politics, but nothing bothers me more than the people who are apolitical and distance themselves from having any oppinion on anything. if artists like chuck d can make one person in the audience think about their own lives in a manner that they hadn't before, then that's a great thing. it's just really refereshing to be in a room with people who are excited about another person who is really excited about something.

Originally written 04.27.2002.

today i just felt really restless. i wanted this to be a wild and crazy weekend in celebration of finishing exams, but i didn't do anything too special today. i went to the library and jacked into the net and played around with my user-mode-linux network a little more. added another host to be the syslog server for the honeynet, so now i have 3 virtual hosts up and running: harry, hermione, and ron :-). i'm pretty impressed, actually, because the system is only a pII with 64mb of ram. i also responded to some old e-mail that had been festering in my inbox for a while and sent off a rant about phillip morris changing its name to altria.

while at the library, i helped some korean grad. student set up her networking. it was a bit weird trying to figure out the settings when the fonts were all in korean. still, i was able to get her sorted, and as a symbol of gratitude, she gave me some korean world cup stickers. really odd, but if anyone wants a postcard adorned with cartoon soccer balls, email me and i'll mail you one.

so i had exams this past week - computer security on wednesday and distributed systems on thursday. they were a little harder than i expected, and i realized that my comprehensive study method was a bit of a waste of time, at least in terms of exam marks. i would have been better just focusing on certain topics that i suspected would be on the exam. the other thing that was hard about the exams was that they were in a really institutionalized setting. all the students crowded into this room full of desks where we filled out our standardized testing booklet that would hold our answers and put our ids on the table to make sure we were actually who we said we were. the hardest part was that the lecturer wasn't present for the exams, and i would have appreciated the opportunity to have some of the ambiguities in the exam paper cleared up. i killed the ban logic question on the computer security exam, but ran out of time on the question about rsa. i fared better on the distributed system exam, but was kicking myself for forgetting the meaning of the acid acronym with respect to transactions. not a lot of points, but ones needlessly lost.

we were going to play football with the flat below us, but that never panned out. bummer. i did get to watch some football, however, so at least that was cool. one of the things that i'll miss most about scotland is the football. living with marco and rob, i've really rediscovered a love of spectator sport. when i was a kid, i was really into watching sports. i remember always being into the indians, browns, and cavs. but then i moved to pa and found that all the kids who were into sports were jerks and just lost interest. well, here i have people to watch football with and its fun again. there just seems to be so much more passion for sport over here. you hear about families that have supported a particular club for generations and see grown men crying when the team they support loses. one of the coolest things about english and scottish football is the relegation system. you have the premiership which is the top league, and then the first division, the second division, and so on. the best two teams from a given division move up to the next higher division while the worst two teams in a division get relegated to the lower division. this is cool because it creates drama at both ends of the league tables.

this weekend is a big music festival type thing that spans between edinburgh, aberdeen, and glasgow. last night evan dando played a show which i was tempted to attend but decided against it because of hefty ticket prices. tonight, however, i went to see mogwai's staurt braithwaite and arab strap, both proper scottish musical acts. stuart played some solo guitar stuff that was pretty cool. i'm not sure how much of it was mogwai stuff, but most of it sounded like the song take me somewhere nice which he did play. it was cool, but he seemed a little nervous and even messed up a few times. that was alright by me. it gave the performance a certain intimacy - sort of like you were just watching someone write songs in their bedroom. at the end of the set, stuart played an admitedly "badly advised cover version" of kylie minogues can't get you out of my head.

arab strap was pretty good. i hadn't heard much of them before, but i was entertained by their quiet post-folk with strings. their set had the same looseness as stuart's with some tuning problems and problems with the sequencer. the vocalist drank quite a bit of beer and seemed pretty agitated. still, it was alright. he has a really interesting vocal style, the kind that comes off as genuinely anguished, which complemented the plaintive tone of the violin and cello accompanist quite well. all in all, not a bad way to spend a saturday evening. hopefully i'll be able to see cuck d tomorrow.

i got a lift with rob down to king's buildings and was about to swipe into the security system so i could get into my lab when i realized that i didn't have my card. i must have left it at adam's house after my exam yesterday (in a strangely authoritarian setting, we were forced to have our ids on our desks while taking the exams). luckily, when i dropped by later that day the id was sitting at the security guard kiosk and all was well.

my time at king's buildings was well spent as i finally got the 'net part of my honeynet working. it took me a while to get the routing to work properly (if i only understood ethernet a little better i would have probably figured it out sooner), but now i can ping my virtual hosts from the outside world. now i just have to start reading up on snort and iptables and start implementing the honey.

this kid from pittsburgh that i met on moc sent me an mp3 by a pittsburgh band called the ezekial. apparently, they've just split up, which is really unfortunate, because the one track that i've heard is really first rate. when i began listening to it, i was like "yawn, another token emo band", but the melodic intro soon transitioned to some dark, fast hardcore, then into a screamo part, then some more melody (both in the music and in the vocals) before switching to a slick maiden-metal guitar riff. sounds odd, i know, but it all fits together really well. here's the mp3 if you want to give it a listen yourself.

what's better than hearing that young people took to the streets in france to protest their parent's utter apathy towards rising facism? hearing charlotte church recount an anectdote where g-dubya asked her what state wales was in. you've got to love british television. i can't get enough of them taking the piss out of the american president.

Originally written 04.25.2002 .

maybe it's just that i woke up at 6am this morning, but the initial recordings of some of the songs off the forthcoming weezer album that i downloaded some time ago are really quite good. not pinkerton good. not even blue album good, but still enjoyable. they're the same power-pop as the green album, but seem to have at least a little more earnesty. it seems, at least, that rivers and co. is trying a little harder this time, and that's enough to satiate me until they put out a more introspective album. i wonder which of these songs made the final cut for the album, which weezer fanatics like peter seem to have already heard. his verdict is that the final recordings sound even better than the demos.

Originally written 04.22.2002.

up until 02:30 revising. finished all my computer security stuff. just need to go over it one last time before the exam. fell asleep listening to this american life. realized that i could use shutdown -h +60 so my box would shut down after the episode finished and i wouldn't have to hear the fan running all night. just as i was about to fall asleep, heard ruckus in courtyard. bastards.

had a dream where i wasn't really an active party in the dream but an omniscient third party. it was like watching a movie. something about a middle-aged southern woman who ran a small-town hotel and who was content servicing others. her teenaged daughter dreamed of a different life. really weird. don't know why i've been remembering my dreams lately.

woke up at 10:00 to study transaction processing (synchronisation, conflicting operations, dirty reads (hence today's title), premature writes, etc.). breakfast was a dr. pepper slushy.

an anectdote from a few days ago that just needs to be recounted: it was the middle of the night and i heard iain squeel, "oh my god, anne's doing horny dancing". it was late, so i just rolled over and went back to bed. the next morning i got all the gruesome details from iain. anne, an american (and an ugly american, in every sense of the word), got really drunk and knocked on our door. iain answered, and to his horror, encountered anne singing "i'm horny. horny, horny, horny". there was an acompanying dance. i believe it goes hip thrust, hip thrust, booty slap, booty slap, booty slap. good thing i went to bed early. yikes!

quick run to tesco to get some food for the next couple of days. quick and easy food for study nights and reward food for after exams. trying to find a good vegan chili recipe. bought some 52p/2L generic cola to get me through the night's revision.

realised that i don't remember the last time i showered. i don't really care much normally, and girlfriend across the ocean + exams = complete disregard for personal hygine.

Originally written 04.10.2002.

i had reserved my seat on the 14:00 train to give myself some time in the morning for last minute sight-seeing and skating, but i was too broke from eight days of holiday fun, and too broken, from last night's skate, to do either. so, i started trudging across town to king's cross. i had saved just enough money to take the tube to the station, but i figured i'd try to walk the 2 miles or so from lancaster gate to king's x and save the cash for food.

so, i started walking. urban backpacking, indeed physical exertion of any sort, is an interesting experience in a megalopolis. most of the cyclist i saw pass me wore these face masks which helped block out smog and dust. probably a good idea as throughout the week, i found disgusting traces of grey and black whenever i blew my nose. i know that this is just my nose doing it's job, but it's still totally gross.

half way in my journey across central london, i came upon regent's park. it seems almost unfair for london to have so many beautiful parks, of which regent's park is definitely one. green fields, perfect for football, playgrounds, and tennis courts, copious blooming flowers and a pond inhabited by various manner of water foul. i chilled out for a long while, just taking in the spring scene, realizing that i had been treated to a week of perfect weather! after a while, i hefted my pack upon my shoulders and headed on towards king's x. i arrived well early for my train so i just sat in the train terminal, wrote, and people watched until my train arrived.

Originally written 04.09.2002.

today was a chill day, imposed more by lack of funds than anything else. i dropped the majority of what little cash i had left on a one day travelcard and headed out. first i followed up on the "grail hub" for my dad. the bicycle hub is the sturmey archer asc and it's a 3 speed, fixed gear hub that hasn't been made since the 50s. most shops i enquired at had no clue. i thought i was getting close when one shop i found mentioned some old guy who did sa repairs out of his house. unfortunately, no one knew how to get ahold of this guy. i was directed to a shop that some thought would be in the know and once i got there, i was sent to the back room where a grimey handed mechanic told me th best bet would be a bike swap or the internet. hah! the internet. it's always fun to see my dad's street hitting methodology supplanted by technology. so, giving up the search for the hub, i hopped on the docklands light rail (an above ground subway system which connects to the london underground) to cutty sark and maritime greenwich. i didn't have the pounds to do anything much really, but i thought i'd walk around. greenwich is pretty neat - some quirky little record and kitsch shops as well as some maritime antique stores and lots of cafes. i headed for greenwich park and encountered an exceedingly lovely scene full of grassy hills, roman and saxon ruins, tree lined paths and floral gardens. definitely a good getaway from the madness of the city. there were tons of little kids running around, kids riding bikes, families playing football. it was really nice.

i made my way towards the center of the park and the sir christopher wren built royal observatory. i didn't have the cash to get in, but i thought i could at least look around and maybe jump a fence. surprise! i didn't have to. since my copy of let's go was published, the royal observatory had been made free to the public. so, i went in and saw the prime meridian marker as well as some cool displays of astronomical and navigation equipment. there was also a camera obscura which is like a room that acts like a camera with a 360 degree view projected onto a surface in a darkened view. cool.

i headed back through the park to another free museum, the national maritime museum. they had a large range of maritime artifacts that i wasn't very interested in, and a special exhibit on the history of the tattoo that i was interested in but that i found largely disappointing.

the free museum frenzy continued as i departed greenwich and took the district/circle line to the south kensington stop. this stop services a number of free museums - the natural history museum, the science museum, and the one i was interested in, the v&a. the v&a was originally to spur public interest in art and design and it continues in this tradition to create a really interesting museum. you have your traditional painting, sculpture, etc, but also exhibits on the design of fashion, musical instruments, printed work, and home furnishings. i wished that i had allotted more time for this museum because it was really quite cool. i did get to see the raphael cartoons (think big drawings/paintings made in preparation for another work, in this case tapestries, not the saturday morning variety, an impressive collection of 20th century objects with their design qualities discussed, and a very cool collection of european garments ranging from hundreds of years ago to the present. as part of this, they had an exhibit that erin would have loved. it was titled "men in skirts" and featured the evolution of skirt-like apparel for men and had examples of togas, kilts, frock coats, and discussed the influence of the punk, grunge, and fetish scenes on skirted fashion. the exhibit concluded with contemporary designers and their attempt to create skirted fashion that was free of gender association. it was an interesting perspective, but save for the kilts, i couldn't help but see most of the designs as being decidedly feminine. it is interesting to note how, in some ways, women are much more free in fashion than men. that is, they can wear slacks without having their femininity questioned, but with men, only the likes of uber-males like david beckham can get away with wearing a skirt.

the gender bending didn't stop at the museum, however. i went back to meanwhile for a final skate and discovered that the young girl skater, who was there on my last visit, was once again riding the bowls. this time she was there with a non-skater girlfriend who seemed a bit older and also to lack some of that tomboyness that fades with age. as the girl skated, her older friend has a look on her face that could only be described as envy. the girls who frequent the skate spot back in edinburgh seem so distant and self possessed, almost like mannequins completely oblivious to the skating going on. but, i'd like to think the girl watching her friend at the park was somehow aware of the additional freedom and confidence of her younger companion. then the younger girl did the most peculiar thing. she handed her board to her older friend and returned to her backpack where she retrieved a hairbrush and started brushing her hair.

at least to me, the juxtaposition of skateboarding, an activity which, though in no way inately male, certainly can be almost totally associated with male adolescence, and hair brushing, an activity undertaken with such public vigor only by pre-teen girls, was extremely potent. this scene is a better embodiment of feminism and gender equally than any i could possibly contrive. it is not the abandonment of traditionally feminine activities to prove a point. it is the freedom to choose, at one's discretion and without regard to the gender-ladenness of various things, the aspects of lifestyle that make one happy. how cool is that?

besides girls skating, it was a fun little session. i watched the italian family take turns dropping into the mini and teach and encourage each other in a display of family unity that seemed so stereotypically italian. i found myself learning some of the mini-ramp tricks i could never do in those halcyon days of adam graham's backyard ramp: f/s 5-0s, blunt-rock-fakies, tailslides, and some grindy pivot tricks whose names i don't know. my personal glory was cut short when i watched older locals do huge airs over the hips and do enormously impressive tech tricks on the coping of the mini-ramp-like bowl.

in between runs, i talked with some of the locals and i was once again impressed by the friendliness that skaters extend to other skaters. these kids, who i had only met 5 minutes before were ready to offer me lodging if i wanted to extend my stay in london. it was a tempting offer, but i had exams to revise for and only 2 pounds in my pocket. another time then.

back in junior high and high school, when we skated adam's ramp in carlisle, pa, we used to have this superstition that you would never say "last run" lest you, invariably, fall spectacularly. well, i've found that if i even let the thought "last run" cross my mind, i am surely doomed. thus was the case with my last run when i hung up on a rock and roll and slammed my hip hard on the unforgiving concrete illiciting concerned queries from the kids. this phenomenon was at least empirically corroborated by the bmxer who crashed hard on his last run and another skater who, ollieing down the big 3 set at the edge of the bowls, fell and ripped open some stitches, causing blood to gush everywhere.

i took the tube home and at paddington, i ran into jonesi who i had skated with earlier in the week. we exchanged knowledge of new spots and then bid each other adieu. i got off at my tube stop and hobbled, broken and bruised, back to my hotel.

Originally written 04.08.2002.

i woke up this morning nearly 12 hours after my ridiculously early bedtime last night. Turning it in early has been a good call. i awoke with no set plans for the day. well, i did have to change hotels, but other than that, nothing. i had realized yesterday that i was starting to get sick of museums. maybe it was my aching body telling me to turn it in, but after a while, the paintings and exhibits seemed interesting but lacked a more profound impact. it made me more than a bit jealous of the london locals who get to scope this stuff any time they want. i reckon that's one of the merits of living in a city like london. even as a kid, living only 2 hours away from free museum hubs philadelphia and washington dc, i didn't go all that much due to the overwhelming hassle of finding transport and parking once i got into the city. had there been trains to those cities as convenient and cheap as those in the uk, i would have gone all the time.

money's running low - only 24 pounds left, so it felt bad to drop the five pounds to see the interior of st. pauls. you can get in for free if you intend to worship there, but i felt about lying about my intentions (in a church no less). you need a tick to climb up the stairs to the whispering gallery (so called because its acoustics allow you to whisper against the wall and be heard on the other side of the rotunda), and the stone gallery anyway. sir christopher wren's masterpiece is a sight to behold and it is overwhelming to behold in both in size (being one of europe's largest cathedrals) and intricacy of its adornment. it is disturbing to see the frivolous graffiti scrawl of the tourists on the stairwells up to the stone gallery which provides a great view, not only of the skaters sessioning the stairs below, but also of the thames and much of london. looking out over the city, one gets a real idea of the density of the place.

below the main floor of the cathedral are the crypts which are the final resting place of such notable figures as florence nightingale, arthur duke of wellington, lord nelson, william blake, henry moore, and other artists, scientists, and military figures. st. paul's is actually london's third st. paul's with the first built by saxons in 603. the second, built in 1100, modified to create a combination of gothic and norman architecture, and later burned in the great fire in 1666. wren recreated some of the second st. paul's in the current structure, whose construction began in 1675.

i tried to scope westminster abbey, but it seems that it is a destination that will go unvisited on the trip to london - it was closed in preparation for the queen mother's funeral. what i did encounter was a very odd spectacle of public grief, if one can call it that. perhaps it's because i'm not from a country with a monarchy (thank goodness, though our current leadership suggests we're hardly better off), but i really don't understand the response to her death. i overheard the conversation of some young brits on the tube yesterday that share some of my bewilderment. i mean, it seems that the queen mother was a good person and all (or perhaps not as some of my flatmates have suggested), but it seems superfluous to see such a huge response to someone who, in my opinion, in the grand scheme of things, had such a small impact on the world.

what i saw was really interesting. no one was in tears. it was more like the tourism of death. people queued up for 6-8 hours to see her body lying in state. people were camped out on the sidewalk near westminster abbey and there was the pile of flowers that seems to have become essential to these public displays of mourning. i snapped some pictures of the onlookers as i thought a tourist's photo of these tourists seemed somewhat appropriate. the funniest image was of a little boy, posed by his father, holding a poster of the queen mother. the kid looked totally confused.

i'm not trying to be xenophobic in criticizing this kind of public pseudo-grief. in fact, i think that a similarly public figure would receive an identical public response. to me, this kind of public pseudo-grief is just an example modern (wo)man's obsession with the cult of celebrity. perhaps people feel that their life is made more significant by participating, even in an infinitesimally insignificant manner in the life (or death) of others. i just can't get over the number of wasted moments in the mass of people spending eight hours waiting in queue. one can't help but think that in all those hours, someone might do something significant and meaningful in their own lives. i just don't get it.

it reminds me of the discussion on punk culture that i heard on saturday. if there's one thing that i like about punk, it's that punk inspires a sense of personal action. sure, i'll grant that there are celebrities of sorts in the punk scene, but it seems almost impossible to ignore the fact that the person up on stage is very much like you. people often criticized punk's raggedness and simplicity, but in that i fin it's true beauty. it captures the inherent potential for creativity in everyone. if i, for a moment, get caught up in someone else's life, it's because i find what they're doing to be inspiring and empowering in my own life. if that's what the people find in waiting eight hours to see a corpse, fair enough, but i just don't see it.

i made a couple of stupid realizations today. first, that the term continental breakfast refers to the european continent and seems to be in contrast to the heavier english breakfast. second, i realized why harry potter departs from king's cross station on his way to hogwarts. london has a number of train stations (others like paddington also having children's literary significance), each providing service to a different part of the uk. king's cross provides service to the north, and since j.k. rowling is from the 'burgh, she'd use king's cross to get to/from london. so, it only seems natural that harry would use king's cross as well.

let's get one thing straight. time out is ace! if you're planning on seeing a show, checking out a gallery, the cinema, the theater, or doing anything at all in london, you need to score a copy of this weekly events mag. it offers reliable listings of all kinds of events and points out the freebies and best bets. so, that's how i arrived at the bluetones' in-store at the virgin megastore next to the tottenham court road tube exit. the last, and only in-store i had been to, by the ex-urge overkill frontman, made me feel like rock had died. it wasn't that the music was bad. it was the atmosphere - think spinal tap book signing. there were more curious yuppie parents with strollers and j. crew bags than people who actually know who the band was. so, i didn't have high hopes for this one, especially having heard the band, billed as "indie-pop". hopes were higher though when realizing that the turnout was at least 10x that of the aforementioned abortive show (easy to do when there were only about 10 people there).

the pop label is quite accurate as the bluetones seem largely the product of the long british guitar-pop tradition. sweet and simple, their music was pleasant if not particularly innovative. sweet and simple, their music was pleasant if not particularly innovative. the first american comparison that comes to mind is fastball, but i'm sure i can come up with something better.

the band seemed a bit flustered at the idea of playing an in-store. they made a number of cracks about it, but it was still odd to hear a band sing a song title "freeze dried pop", about the fickleness of popular music, while some of the guitar parts and other instrumentation was so obviously pre-recorded. still, it was a good time and the price was right. a note to anyone else wanting to check out a virgin in-store: when i arrived at 17:45, i was able to get a spot at the front rail. by the time the set started at 18:30, the coral was full and security shut off the floor. so, arrive early to get the goods.

time out is also how i arrived at verge (147 kentish town rd, nw1, 5 minutes north of the camden town tube on the norther line). the show was listed as emo and the lineup featured douglas who i had seen open for hundred reasons a month earlier. funds were now seriously running low, but i decided i'd rather see a show than eat.

i chose wisely and was treated to a night of intense post-hardcore. i had wondered where all the younger kids were at the last two gigs i attended, but the younger set showed up in force for this show, filling up the just right sized venue.

the first band, called jerry built, seemed to be another of an emerging number of younger bands formed by kids who started listening to pop-punk and then expanded their musical tastes. the end product was ataris-style melo-punk that also showed some hardcore influences. the kids were trying to get in all the new-hxc trappings, apparently, as they found away to include programming and tape loops in their music.

the next band to play was losone, from germany. they sounded very much like small brown bike and though not particularly original in style, they played with an intensity that made for a great set. emo is such a muddled label, but these guys were definitely emotional if not traditionally emo-sounding.

the intensity started by losone continued when uk band douglas took the stage. if i could use one word to describe douglas' set, it would be attack. douglas hurled themselves at the audience, both musically and physically in a manner so bombastic that it had the kids hooked. this band is crazy. i later realized that this is the same band whose singer had jumped from the balcony at the hundred reasons show and given some poor kid a concussion.

in my mind, there are two kinds of post-hardcore bands - the kind that are good because they're innovative and the ones that are good because they're tight, solid, and purvey their love of music by completely exhausting themselves on stage. i'll let you guess which kind of band douglas is. i hadn't heard of douglas until i came over here, but hopefully they'll tour the states in the near future. they're getting quite big in the uk and are even supporting saves the day on a number of uk dates.

the last band to play was dallas texas' red animal war. a band that surprisingly missed my radar when i was living in texas. surprising because they were quite good. i guess it underscores the intricacies of international record distribution - certain bands that get distributed over here are far bigger than others which are more well known in the 'states.

unfortunately, i thought they were a bit overshadowed by douglas' overwhelming set, but they were the more experimental of the two bands, playing more with rhythms and time changes as well as idiosyncratic melodies that had a distinct math rock influence.

so, it was a good night and the show ended just in time for me to make it back to bayswater via the tube.