Nex6

the really random password generator (Powershell)

2009-02-04T10:55:00.001-08:00

ok,

Here is a powershell script I wrote awhile back. thought Id post it. its a really random password generator:

$pwdlength = [int]
$pwdlength = Read-Host "please provide desired password length"
$bytes = [byte[]][byte]1
$pwd = [string]""
$rng = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.RNGCryptoServiceProvider
for($i=1;$i -le $pwdlength;$i++)
{
$rng.getbytes($bytes)
$rnd = $bytes[0] -as [int]
$int = ($rnd % 74) + 48
$chr = $int -as [char]
$pwd = $pwd + $chr
}
write $pwd

enjoy.

maybe later, I will modify it to control special characters. or if someone wants to figure it out, I will repost the code.

-Nex6

using powershell to reslove a host name to IP

2009-02-04T10:33:00.001-08:00

ok,

Here is the best part you'll need:

$rs = [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses($i)|select-object IPAddressToString -expandproperty IPAddressToString

now, I wrote this and tested it using powershell v2 ctp3, and it should work on the Lower versions but have not tested it.

with that line, you will have just an IP address in the var, $rs. from there you can do other things and fancy stuff, all aglore.

the select statement cleans up the output of: [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses($i) otherwise the output is not really useable as the output is formated in its own colums, with outher propertys. the select-object strips everything out except the IP address.

-Nex6

Daemon, by Daniel Suarez

2009-02-03T13:42:00.001-08:00

This book, Daemon, is really good. its a techo-thriller and if you like

cyber, and techo types of books this book is one for you.

-Nex6

basic ruby script

2008-08-09T00:13:00.001-07:00

I have been playing with Ruby, thought id post a basic hello world style script....

/code

#!/usr/bin/ruby

print "what do you want to print on screen: "
str = gets
exit if str.nil? or str.empty?
str.chomp!

print "\n"
print str

/end code

-Nexus6

going forward

2008-08-05T23:07:00.001-07:00

Everyone always likes to speculate on the future of IT and computers / tech in general. One thing for sure, there will be changes because. There always is changes, the trick is to stay current and technical enough to have it not matter. weather thats getting a mac, or a linux desktop or if your a mac user getting a windows machine. using all of the different OS's and at least playing with many of the different languages and other objects / items as yo can will help you in the long run.

-Nex6

random bilthering

2008-08-05T22:51:00.001-07:00

In the dawn, of the information age indecision and lack of clarity would hamper innovation. The large guilds, would all vi for power and control of that information. The cyberjockys that can
wield it. All of the large guilds, would have there own cyber warriors, each battling each other across the empty space of the NET. With, the mundane users and peoples all plugged into this this massive power.

and, unwittingly the mundane become fodder in this new age.

-Nex6

Productivity

2008-06-10T21:58:00.001-07:00

A lot of people on blogs all over the NET always say, OS [ insert type ] gives me more productivity. Things like, I switched to OSX or Linux etc and it made me 100% more productive.

My opinion is, that the OS you know. gives you, more productivity. say for example, a long time windows user who is productive on windows. switches to Linux, FreeBSD or even OSX.

now, said windows user who has many years of experience on windows. starts using Nix, he/she will be far less productive for a long time until such a time as he/she. gets

very used to the new OS. though some users will get used to the OS faster the others...

Though, all that said; some OS's like OSX or Linux (running E17 -enlightenment {shamefull plug}) can, make some more productive due to Virtual desktops, unix shell etc. though

now, Microsoft has powershell. which is shaping up pretty darn good.

I am all for open standards, and open standardized formats.

things like ODF files, and firefox plugins. that let you read the files nativity in the browser, will change things.

-Nex6

Fedora 9 and E17 - Enlightenment

2008-06-04T08:18:00.001-07:00

http://optics.csufresno.edu/~kriehn/fedora/repository.html

enjoy

-Nex6

E17 - Enlightenment installs updated

2008-05-23T12:28:00.001-07:00

There is a new repo for Fedora E17 installs (yum), and in genral for installing E17. its located at:
http://optics.csufresno.edu/~kriehn/fedora/fedora_files/f8/howto/e17-installation.html

lots of good information.

-Nex6

Damn good Perl artical

2008-05-07T22:14:00.001-07:00

http://perlbuzz.com/2008/05/perl-decentralize-diversify-colonize.html

Here is a pretty damn good Perl, article over at perlbuzz. he makes some very good points about things Perl at large
can do to increase mind share. I have blogged about the many scripting languages and the amount of job postings, of which
Perl is king. so; Perl is not dying anytime so. and in fact there are major places building new stuff with Perl, like amazon.

Nex6

programming language data mining and tracking

2008-05-04T13:38:00.001-07:00

way back in January I posted this:
http://nex6.blogspot.com/2008/01/perlpythonphp.html

which details all thw job posting form monster about alot of different computer related jobs. here a few months later is anther one:

Perl 4326
Ruby 647
C# 5000+
Java 5000+
Python 1257
Ruby on rails 258
Asp.net 4437
Vbscript 883
Powershell 81
C++ 5000+
Flash 3634
Sliverlight 2
Bash 360
Zsh 0
Ksh 235
Php 2586
Javascript 5000+
Applescript 19
Osx 164
Linux 5000+
Windows 5000+
Freebsd 115
Xml 5000+
Cobol 745

if you notice, some stayed excatly the same others, change a bit the only one to dramaitcly change is c++, which i dont have answer for, other then
one of the querry maybe wrong. will have the moniter, and look into the C++ thing.

enjoy.

-Nex6

mac OSX HIG and keyboard short list

2008-04-27T23:25:00.001-07:00

http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/API_Fundamentals/UserExperience-fund-date.html

two very good pdf's for mac users and the HIG PDF at the end has a complete listing of every OSX keybaord shortcut.

very cool...

-nex6

Mac thoughts ( Random blithering)

2008-04-27T16:52:00.001-07:00

ok, (longish) :)

I have had my new mac for a little while now. in the order of 3 months or so, Mac for sure has a different work flow and user flow.
They are not necessarily bad or wrong just different. Mac has its own way of doing things. like many things tend to by mousy like drag and drop to install software, drag and drop to remove. though, there is a fair number of keyboard jocky stuff also like real UNIX and iterm/shell (am a zsh user). one of the first things i did was switch the shell to zsh, and load my dot files for zsh.

the 'feel' of the laptop (MBP aka macbook pro) is pretty good, tho there is a bug in the sleep when shutting the lid. this is a known
issue and on the apple forums there is tons and tons of posts about it. work around is the use the menu to put to sleep. tho, once of the theory's
is having external USB devices plugged in while closing the lid. which for me is true (external USB mouse). so now i just use the menu. when i get arround to it, I think i will figure out how to make shortcut/alais or script something and have it on the dock and just click there to send it to sleep.

noticed, on the right click menu there is no "rename" for most things. though I can use the shell. i wonder what the reason for this is?

I really like the user switching in OSX, where one user is logged one and you "switch" to another user leaving the other user logged on. this is really
first class. one click enter password and your in. in fact this is really cool for dev stuff. i can have test users set up and flip to them very fast.

the photo stuff is way better period, its not even close. and know with the new Microsoft RDP client, connecting to work machines is a breeze and works just like a native client. (tho, Linux has an RDP client also I think the Mac client is a little better)

The touchpad, is anther thing that's way better, the touchpad once you setup the non default options like tap to click, it way way better then any other touchpad period. two finger scrolling two finger tap for right clicking etc very nice.

I am waiting for my copy from work of vmware fusion so i can load all my Windows, Linux and FreeBSD vm's.

Vim is there so life is good on that front, and macports and fink allow installing in a more BSD/Linux way of some someware. tho, i wish mc(midnight commader) had a mac version. though i may still install the source version.

hmmmmm thats good for now...

-Nex6

Apple and P.A Semi

2008-04-25T21:54:00.001-07:00

here is a pretty good artical about Apple and PA Semi, which I agree with:
http://www.macworld.com/article/133191/2008/04/pasemi.html

-Nex6

Windows Preformance tools

2008-04-23T11:56:00.001-07:00

Here are some links to windows preformance tools:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/perftools.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/default.mspx

enjoy,

-Nex6

Cost of modern software development

2008-04-21T08:04:00.001-07:00

Here is a poston osnews:

http://www.osnews.com/story/19662/The_Cost_of_Modern_Software_Development

now, the orig artical and many of the posters have gone back and forth on this. I think,

computing is an evolutionary field. I don't think C/C++, ASM and other low level or close to the metal

languages will ever go away. OS's, and other high performance type software will always need to

be written in lower languages. (at least for now).

but;

There are productivity gains, by using managed code. For business and enterprise

software, managed code is best. because; its all about being productive period. that said, there are

many exceptions to this rule. but the trend is for enterprise shops to move to managed code. well, really its

mixed. As some shops will create there own C/C++ library's and use managed code on top of that...

In the long run, this is a good trend as software moves up the stack. the OS will change too. and what

will happen is you will have a computer and a platform, that handles all your software. the OS will be far less important

as most of the work will be by frameworks and vm's.

OOXML and the ISO vote

2008-04-02T07:43:00.001-07:00

well, looks like OOXML is approved:

slashdots linkage:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=08/04/01/2229207

and groklaws linkage:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080402003610230

When you read through those threads you'll notice allot of comments about how Microsoft must have cheated somehow. and that OOXML is flawed, and

should have been rejected. my take is this;

maybe OOXML is not perfect, but neather is PDF or ODF. hell the only really clean standard is probley HTML. Microsoft has the disadvantage of having tons and tons of functionality

that must be supported. where as ODF did not. also, pdf is also pretty ugly. ever try to create a PDF based app? good luck in having it not break from adobe reader version to version and from the different broswer versions. and if we accepted PDF? why not OOXML? and one thing Miguel de Icaza has commented alot about OOXML both on his blog and in slashdot threads about OOXML.

and he and some of his team had been invloved during some of the early stages. Now remember Miguel and his team wrote Gnumeric and worked alot with the Microsoft formats. and they thought more documentation was better, and would help in the long run. so many of the 6000 pages are samples etc see the below links for a run down.

I for one think OOXML in the long run is a good thing.

here are some of Miguel de Icaza's posts: (about OOXML)

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Mar-26.html

and a really good post about ODF and OOXML in general:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jan-30.html

-Nex6

FreeBSD 7.0 install On DC7100 F1 prompt error

2008-02-28T09:27:00.001-08:00

I did a fressh install of FreeBSD on a DC7100 and got a f1 prompt with beeping.

i used this post to fix it:

http://osdir.com/ml/os.freebsd.devel.mobile/2002-11/msg00163.html

in short use the install CD to switch boot loaders to standard.

-Nex6

FreeBSD &.0 Released!!!!!

2008-02-27T15:01:00.001-08:00

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=3236+0+current/freebsd-announce

FreeBSD Project has release FreeBSD 7.0. geat work guys!

-Nex6

Mac - (got a mac)

2008-02-14T12:15:00.001-08:00

Got my first mac about a week or so ago. I got my work to pay for it. its a macbookpro 15 w/4gb ram. over all

I am pretty impressed hardware is first class, as is power management. Now as a long time IT pro, I used only Windows and Linux

(some freeeBSD) It came with "tiger' and an upgrade CD to leopard, i left "tiger" and figured i would use tiger first for awhile then upgrade to leopard.

I upgrade once the recent patches for leopard came out (10.5.2) so I had about 2 weeks maybe less with tiger. now as a "power user" or developer,

I am fine in the shell, and learning new stuff is just part of what I do. I noticed, that mac has what i call "macisms" things that only mac does.

like fior example: alt-tab in windows cycles through all open apps weather there minimsed or maximised, not so in mac. if an app is minimised to the dock.

and you try an cmd -tab (just like windows and linux alt-tab) only open apps cycle, like wise if you have more then one safri session open it will

not cycle thru each one only the top one.

lots of little stuff like that, but overall i like the mac. power management is first class. better then Xp, vista and linux.

(i am a heavy laptop user so i use sleep alot)

and, I am still putting it thru its paces, in the future i will writeup a macisms post with alot of the macisms i find.

-Nex6

Time-Warner Considers Per-Gigabyte Service Fees

2008-02-05T07:31:00.001-08:00

the Slashdot linkage:
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/05/1322213

I think this is so not the way to go. I think they should instead reward those customers that use less then the 5Gb cap. sort of like going green, now we know they don't want to lower
the existing bills, so just think up some programs to reward people who use less bandwidth. simple, and for the big users give them more bandwidth and charge them for it. like 10MB/1mb for 99$

its not the hard. and i think it would hurt the economy, and the nature/culture for the Internet to not be open...

-Nex6

PERL/Python/php

2008-01-23T06:12:00.001-08:00

thought I'd touch on the PERL is dead long live python debate...

on monster.com, The following stats (not very scientific the tho very telling)

job postings for:

PERL: 4443
Python: 1185
PHP: 2471
c#: 5000+
vb.net: 3181
Ruby: 649
Ruby on rails: 248
asp.net: 4868
lisp: 45
Cobol: 46
XML: 5000+
C++: 387
fortran: 225
haskell: 8
vbscript: 51
powershell: 66
bash: 353
zsh: 0
ksh: 193
tcsh: 3
Java: 5000+
javascript: 5000+
applescript: 12
sed: 119
awk: 137
Linux: 5000+
Windows: 5000+
FreeBSD: 117
OSX: 165
flash: 3626
sliverlight: 0

you can look through the list and see for your self where the current trends are, at least for current job postings.

-Nex6

MacBook Air

2008-01-16T06:18:00.000-08:00

There are lots of posts and threads everywhere on the NET about the new Macbook AIR. Here are some:

http://www.osnews.com/story/19168/MacBook_Anorexic:_Where_Apple_Went_Wrong

http://www.osnews.com/story/19166/Apple_Launches_MacBook_Air

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/15/1842211

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/15/high_quality_macbook_air_superdrive_photos_notes_on_remote_disc.html

Ok, that done;

I have seen, posts about how this will fail or its to expensive etc. First to the detractors, these types of devices eg ultra-notebooks, are aimed
at people who want a super light bare bones notebook for traveling, and other on the go needs. The big goals are:

light
battery life
looks good
usable

That said, I know lots of people who would like one. Most people don't need all the features a typical laptop comes with anyways. And, some people who carry there laptops with them everywhere, would like one of these. Especially if there a mac user.

-Nex6

My Email setup

2007-12-21T10:42:00.001-08:00

Just a random blog post here, i use Gmail and alpine with Imap for all my
email. i works great, alpine is very good for mailing lists. over the
weekend i will post howto setup alpine with gmail and get all your labels
and folders.

-Nex6

Mark Russinovich: On Working at Microsoft, Windows Server 2008 Kernel, MinWin vs ServerCore, HyperV, Application Virtualization [Video]

2007-12-15T21:33:00.001-08:00

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=365911

a very good video interview with Mark Russinovich go goes over alot of ground and whiteboards windows server 2008, hyperVisor and some other stuff.
very cool.

-Nex6