Coredump

Robot Sunday: Self-assembling, flying drones

Ian Dexter — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 04:38:03 +0000

Here’s another scary step towards a robot uprising.

A group of researchers are developing robots that dock together and take off by themselves. Called the Distributed Flight Array, the group of robots roams around independently and assembles randomly to form a flying vehicle. The modules communicate with each other to control the platform’s flight.

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Robot Sunday: Self-assembling, flying drones by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Google SSL search plugin

Ian Dexter — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:19:19 +0000

I added Google SSL to my search plugins in Firefox. The XML file is below:

~~I’ll host it later for a one-click install.~~ Update: Here is the one-click install.

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Google SSL search plugin by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Display user account info in a Windows AD

Ian Dexter — Sat, 29 May 2010 02:11:23 +0000

(Hell just froze over! I’m actually using Active Directory! In Windows! {Well, I did use Active Directory in a previous job, but that was because of LDAP…} {And I’m using waaay too many exclamation marks!} Anyway: it’s the command line — gosh, I miss the C:\ prompt. Not!)

To display user info in an Active Directory domain controller:

C:\> net user username /domain

Read this for more details.

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Display user account info in a Windows AD by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Zypper clean-up

Ian Dexter — Fri, 28 May 2010 01:38:26 +0000

So I was having this problem updating some Kerberos 5 patches in my SuSE test environment — apparently a patch RPM was broken. I tried fixing that by downloading them directly, not using

sudo /usr/bin/zypper up

but

sudo /bin/rpm -Uvh krb5.patch.rpm

instead. No dice.

Since there was no yum clean equivalent in the Zypper version (0.6.201) in my server, I promptly deleted all sources under /var/lib/zypp/cache, thinking I could just refresh the cache later on. Well, it didn’t quite work that way.

Zypper complained about missing sources, so I had to look for the source files that refer to the cached source directories:

sudo grep -l Source.garbage /var/lib/zypp/db/sources/*

and removed them as well. I did another run of sudo /usr/bin/zypper up and I was able to install the patches successfully.

There must be a better way of doing this…

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Zypper clean-up by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Robot Sunday: World robot population

Ian Dexter — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 02:23:41 +0000

The numbers are in (with caveats, of course): there are 8.6 million robots in the world.

Credit: Quasimondo on Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Robot Sunday: World robot population by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Taking Sugar on a Stick for a spin

Ian Dexter — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:47:48 +0000

So I wanted to try out Sugar on a Stick, and there’s this Eee PC laying around.

Grabbed the ISO image, and checked its integrity.
Got Fedora’s liveusb-creator as well.
Used Peng’s USB flash disk to “burn” the live ISO.
Set the Eee PC to boot from the USB flash disk.
Et voila! Sugar on a Stick live. Will play some more.

Obligatory screenshots below (crappy phone cam snapshots here — still trying to figure out how to nick the screenshots from Sugar).

Burning the ISO using Fedora liveusb-creator.

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Taking Sugar on a Stick for a spin by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Robot Sunday: Is the future

Ian Dexter — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:48:33 +0000

(Well, there’s “robot” in it. *shrugs*)

(In totally unrelated news, today is Pi Day. Yay!)

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Robot Sunday: Is the future by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Robot Sunday: Arlan’s Bristol bots

Ian Dexter — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:38:18 +0000

Fully articulated Transformer robots made from Bristol board. Credit: Arlan Esmeña.

The artist for this astounding work is Arlanzandro Esmeña, great Pinoy komikero Gerry Alanguilan‘s collaborator in “Where Bold Stars Go to Die”. He sadly passed away last February 18, 2010. RIP, Arlan.

(I haven’t had the pleasure of reading his work yet, but judging by what’s available on the web, I’m sure it is great, like the artists who created it.)

/via Komikero.com

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Robot Sunday: Arlan’s Bristol bots by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Bypassing SSH strict checking

Ian Dexter — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:25:40 +0000

I use an SSH gateway for work (one that requires two-factor authentication: an RSA SecureID PIN and an AES-encrypted Kerberos password). Problem is, since the gateway servers are clustered and change often, I sometimes get the following:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /home/username/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending key in /home/username/.ssh/known_hosts:1
RSA host key for gateway_server has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.
Connection to gateway_server closed.

Of course, I cannot clean up the known_hosts file since I could not log on in the first place — I had to go another route (through a remote desktop using another server, etc.).

Although it’s not really recommended (read the dire warning above), this restriction can be bypassed by using:

ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no

This way, strict checking is disabled, and the host key will not be checked against the file. Take note that this is insecure, and only works if you are absolutely certain that you’re logging on to a trusted host.

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Bypassing SSH strict checking by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Countdown to the May 2010 RP elections

Ian Dexter — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:38:15 +0000

100araw.com is a collaborative project among Filipino bloggers, media practitioners and technology enthusiasts. The aim: to provide a wealth of information to empower readers in making informed choices in the May 2010 election.

Read the articles, follow the group on Twitter and Facebook, and engage in the conversation.

(Disclosure: I am part of the group.)

Posted on Coredump - Work, play, and everything in-between, under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Original article: Countdown to the May 2010 RP elections by Ian Dexter R Marquez
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Reportage on the Glorietta blast