Posts - ./victor -vv

Writing Aug 15, 2020

Switching to fish shell

Over the years, I’ve primarily used bash with occassional forays into zsh (and oh-my-zsh). zsh never seemed significantly better than bash, and it introduced enough friction in writing and running scripts that I’d inevitably switch back to trusty bash after a few months. I’ve played around with fish …

Writing Dec 21, 2018

The John Muir Trail

Back in early January my good friend Dave sent out an email to 20 or so people asking if anyone would be interested in doing the John Muir Trail with him. He mentioned something about going ultralight and doing it in 10 …

Writing Jan 1, 2015

2014

A little late, but this is my 2014 Year in Review. It’s so hard to summarize an entire year into a few paragraphs and a handful of selected photos. I’ve spent hours over the last few weeks going through photos and videos that I took the year, some of which I’m looking through for the first time. …

life
travel

View from Brooklyn of the NYC New Year's Eve fireworks show

Writing Jan 1, 2014

2013 Year in Review

Last night Rebecca and I watched the NYC New Year’s Eve fireworks show from our Brooklyn apartment. We are fortunate enough to have a direct view of the Statue of Liberty from our living room, around which the …

Writing Jan 2, 2010

EC2 Ephemeral Disks vs EBS Volumes in RAID

EC2 Disk Overview Amazon’s EC2 service is really neat, but its disk subsystem has some peculiarities that are not initially obvious. Up until very recently, root directories (’/’) at EC2 were limited to …

ec2
aws

Writing Jul 29, 2008

From CET to CDT

Memory is really strange. On the one hand, I’m amazed at how fast the last three years of my life has gone by. I remember walking into my hotel room on the day I landed in Stuttgart, a full month before Rebecca …

Writing Mar 2, 2008

FOSDEM over; Crisis averted

I went to Brussels last weekend for FOSDEM 2008, which was held at ULB Campus Solbosh. The free event was a good way to check in with the overall Open Source community and to see all of the interesting things people …

Writing Feb 10, 2008

Local root exploit in Linux kernel 2.6.17 to 2.6.24.1

Pretty scary stuff, even if you trust all of your users: victor@mercury ~ $ ./exploit ----------------------------------- Linux vmsplice Local Root Exploit By qaaz ----------------------------------- [+] mmap: 0x100000000000 .. 0x100000001000 [+] page: 0x100000000000 [+] page: 0x100000000038 [+] mmap: 0x4000 .. 0x5000 …

linux
hack

Writing Jan 12, 2008

Migrating to Google Apps (and getting everything working)

For the last few years I’ve been using Gmail exclusively and have been forwarding emails to @victortrac.com to my Gmail account. Google’s spam filters are the best I’ve ever seen, and the interface is elegant and fast, and combined with loads of storage and IMAP access, Gmail is nearly the perfect …

Writing Dec 18, 2007

Where's the "Undo" on Google Reader?

There’s been a bunch of press lately about Google Reader’s new features, most notably the “Friends’ shared items” section and Profiles. A handful of people were instantly complaining about the lack of privacy and control, but I don’t really see Google’s implementation as a …

Transit Map of the World’s Transit Systems

Writing Dec 8, 2007

Technology is Applied Magic

A few hours ago, Rebecca and I were walking through the Schwabstrasse S-bahn stop in Stuttgart, and as we reached the escalator to go up, we felt a cold wind coming down from the street level. I was wearing only a …

travel

Writing Dec 2, 2007

de.php.net has an invalid DNS entry

For a few days now, I’ve been unable to reach http://de.php.net, not because the site has been down but because of incorrect DNS configuration by de.php.net’s Germany host. When you request a PHP manual page, PHP.net does this trick of geo-locating your IP and redirects you to your closet PHP.net mirror. If …

Writing Oct 25, 2007

Upgrading a 1.0.2 iPhone to 1.1.1 Painlessly on Windows

I’ve been mulling over upgrading my iPhone’s firmware to 1.1.1 for the last few weeks but have been put off by the complexity of it. All the tools and steps had been outlined so it was merely just running through the steps, but there were a ton of them, and it seemed like more of a pain in the ass than it …

Writing Oct 2, 2007

iPhone owned

This is the first time I’ve been back in the States since the iPhone was released, and after getting a chance to play with one yesterday, I decided I had to go out and buy one today. The problem is that AT&T-locked JesusPhone doesn’t work in Germany without a little bit of hackery, and Apple’s …

Writing Sep 18, 2007

Google Docs How-To

The Network is becoming more the Computer.

google

Writing Sep 8, 2007

Gentoo upgrade to Apache 2.2

I upgraded my server’s apache from 2.0 to 2.2 today (see <a href=“http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/new_features_2_2.html" target=_new”>Overview of new features in Apache 2.2) and it was painless except for a few minor hiccups. I like to keep my server’s packages up to date with …

Writing Aug 11, 2007

I can finally check this off

A little bit of the YUI Library, lots of Drupal, and about two weeks of on and off work has resulted in a new theme for my site. It’s been long overdue for a makeover. The overarching goal was simplicity and good UI, and I’m pretty happy with the results so far. Yahoo’s YUI is pretty easy to integrate …

drupal

Writing May 8, 2007

2002 WSBF Taco Eat-Off

I shot this video while I was a DJ at WSBF, Clemson’s student run radio station. It was a fun event, although the video probably could use a bit more editing to make it shorter.

Writing Apr 30, 2007

A downside of VoIP

I live in Germany but maintain a US-based VoIP number through a VoicePulse.com account. The VoIP account allows Rebecca and me to cheaply call the US, and gives our friends and family a “local” US number at which they can reach us in Germany. I’ve got a standard digitally cordless analog phone (heh) …

technology

Writing Mar 5, 2007

Stuttgart's Besenwirtschaften

Stuttgart has these wonderful little hidden little charms that make it a really great place to live. One of our favorites are the Besenwirtschaften, which are traditional Swabian wine houses. They’re operated by …

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