Saturday, February 27, 2010

NP: See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (Blind Lemon Jefferson)

Only one kind favour I ask of you
Well, there's one kind favour I ask of you
Lord, there's one kind favour I'll ask of you
Please [see] that my grave is kept clean

There's a long lane, it's got no end
It's a long lane, it's got no end
It's a long lane, ain't got no end
There's a bad wind that never came

Lord, there's two white horses in a line
Well, there's two white horses in a line
Well, there's two white horses in a line
Gonna take me to my burying ground

My heart stop beating, my hands are cold
My heart stop beating, my hands are cold
Well, my heart stop beating, Lord my hands are cold
It wasn't long [till I understood] what the Bible told

Have you ever heard a coffin sound?
Have you ever heard a coffin sound?
Have you ever heard a coffin sound?
Then you know that the poor boy is in the ground

Oh, dig my grave with a silver spade
Dig my grave with a silver spade
Well, dig my grave with a silver spade
You may lead me down with a golden chain

Have you ever heard a church bell toll?
Have you ever heard a church bell toll?
Have you ever heard a church bell toll?
Then you know that the poor boy is dead and gone

Friday, February 19, 2010

Nerd Food: SSH darwin awards

Like every other Linux user, I use SSH extensively to connect to different computers and run applications remotely (-X in particular is one of my favourites). SSH has a tendency to remember hosts you've connected to in the past, and stores this information under ~/.ssh/known_hosts. This works quite well for fixed IPs in the WAN, where SSH key to IP address is bijective. It doesn't work so well for people who connect to different local networks using the traditional 192.168.X.Y space, because the same IP maps to many different keys, confusing SSH. Any DHCP environment also suffers from this problem.

In the past, I've solved this the brute force way by trashing the whole of .ssh:

rm -rf ~/.ssh

This solution works fine. Fine, that is, unless you happen to actually have created a private/public key to authenticate with servers requiring it, such as GitHub. Just as I pressed the enter key, it suddenly occurred to me that I had in fact started messing around with git and said provider, and had made no backup of the key - even though the FAQ states quite clearly that one should do so. Classic Homer Simpson moment.

Fortunately, GitHub must have thought about this exact same mistake and made it really easy to update one's key. From now on:

rm -rf ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Thursday, February 18, 2010

NP: Singapore (Tom Waits)

We sail tonight for Singapore,
We're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny Moor,
Took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen,
Walked the sewers of Paris
I danced along a colored wind,
Dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me

We sail tonight for Singapore,
Don't fall asleep while you're ashore
Cross your heart and hope to die
When you hear the children cry
Let marrow bone and cleaver choose
While making feet for children shoes
Through the alley, back from hell,
When you hear that steeple bell
You must say goodbye to me

Wipe him down with gasoline
'til his arms are hard and mean
From now on boys this iron boat's your home
So heave away, boys

We sail tonight for Singapore,
Take your blankets from the floor
Wash your mouth out by the door,
The whole town's made of iron ore
Every witness turns to steam,
They all become Italian dreams
Fill your pockets up with earth,
Get yourself a dollar's worth
Away boys, away boys, heave away

The captain is a one-armed dwarf,
He's throwing dice along the wharf
In the land of the blind
The one-eyed man is king, so take this ring

We sail tonight for Singapore,
We're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny Moor,
Took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen,
Walked the sewers of Paris
I drank along a colored wind,
I dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me