Author Archives: Peter

blacklist_to_modsec 0.0.0

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Today, I publicly released a piece of code called ‘blacklist_to_modsec’. This is a fairly simple ***Perl|http://www.perl.org/*** script, with a bit of hastily-written documentation. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now personally, and today on the ***ProNet|http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/*** mailing list, I offered it for public consumption as a possible aid to those who are being deluged by the recent rash of Trackback spam.

What does it do?
Basically, this script takes ***Jay Allen|http://www.jayallen.org/***’s ***Master Blacklist|http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/blacklist.txt***, parses it, and converts it into ***mod_security|http://www.modsecurity.org/*** rules. This allows you to block various types of spam before it reaches your website; for me, it has effectively blocked many trackback and comment spams, as well as spams targeted at ***Gallery|http://gallery.menalto.com/*** (the latest up-and-coming trend for spammers). In other words, using mod_security to block spam crosses the boundaries of blogging software; it would help those using ***WordPress|http://www.wordpress.org/*** just as much as it would help those using ***Movable Type|http://www.movabletype.org/***. By integrating this script into your system’s crontab, you won’t need to worry about whether your blacklist is up to date – it will update from the master blacklist as often as you like.

Where do I get it?
If you are interested in finding out a bit more, you can find the documentation (such as it is) and a download link ***here|http://prwdot.org/docs/blacklisttomodsec.html***. The documentation and code are pretty scruffy at the moment, but I’ll work on updating them as I have time.

Please note
You will need to know how to work with ***Apache|http://httpd.apache.org/*** and ***mod_security|http://www.modsecurity.org/*** before using this tool. I’m not providing any assistance on getting those things set up – I will only point you to their websites which contain all of the documentation you should need.

Credit where credit is due

  • ***Jay Allen|http://www.jayallen.org/*** for creating ***MT-Blacklist|http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/*** and maintaining the master blacklist.
  • Ivan Ristic for creating ***mod_security|http://www.modsecurity.org/***
  • ***Richard Bowen|http://drbacchus.com/*** for giving me the ***idea|http://drbacchus.com/wordpress/index.php?p=800*** to use mod_security to block comment spam.
  • ***Arvind Satyanarayan|http://www.arvind-satya.com/*** for giving me a ***further nudge|http://www.movalog.com/archives/general/mod_security.php*** in the right direction.

Update
Version 1.0.0 is ***released|http://prwdot.org/archives/002370.html***, with many improvements.

Well Met

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Last night’s meetup was, like the December meetup, a very fun experience. This time we met at Christopher’s in Porter Square instead of Grendel’s Den in Harvard Square. Both places make very good hamburgers – last night I had a “Burgah” with carmelized onions, thick juicy bacon, and tangy jack cheese. Yum.

I also got to meet a lot of interesting people:

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***Anonymous|http://peacebang.blogspot.com/***, a minister who keeps a blog, but is keeping it secret from her congregation. Not because there’s anything ‘bad’ about it, just to keep some privacy between her and the congregation and to give herself some space to post her thoughts.

***Joshua Darden|http://www.joshuadarden.com/***, a typeface designer working from Brooklyn, NY, but up to visit his friend and colleague, ***Susan Kaup|http://www.sooz.com/*** (also present at the meeting). He told me about some interesting projects he’s worked on, including designing a custom typeface for a newspaper’s printing presses. Joshua is also a Mac user.

Dermot O’Rourke, a charming gentleman from the Old Country, who is currently a visiting scientist at MIT’s Clinical Research Center. We discussed topics ranging from taking long driving trips, to the different meanings of “By-The-Sea” in the names of European towns as opposed to American towns. (For example, Manchester-by-the-sea in Massachusetts carries an image of upscale living, sophistication, and desirable real estate. Cardiff-by-the-sea in Great Britain, on the other hand, was a fairly rough town and not at all the image of sophistication that ‘by-the-sea’ projects in America)

***Mary Bridges|http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/mary_bridges***, a freelance journalist working for the Boston Globe. She was present to do some research for an article. The Globe has recently done some articles on Meetups, so I’m not sure if she’s working on another Meetup article, or something about blogging, or maybe both. (It’s been a couple of years now since my name was in the Boston Globe – last time was when the iTunes Music Store first opened, and I was quoted along with some other local Mac users. Who knows, maybe I’ll make it in again – though I was hardly one of the more interesting folks at the meetup.)

***Jared Dunn|http://www.jareddunn.org/***, yet another Mac user, who I had met at the last Meetup. He works as a lab manager in ***MIT|http://web.mit.edu/***’s Picower center, and is also a freelance web developer.

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There were a bunch of people down at the other end of the table, who I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to talk to: ***Rob Sama|http://www.robsama.com/***, Clair Degutis, ***Steve Garfield|http://www.stevegarfield.com/***, and ***Susan Kaup|http://www.sooz.com/***. Hopefully at the next meetup, our seats will be shuffled around a bit so that it’s easier to chat with other folks. Also, I at least have their blogs on my blogroll now, so I’ll be able to stay up to date.

I’ve got some photos from last night ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/boston_blogger_meetup_20050131***. Meetups are a lot of fun, and I’d highly encourage everyone to check out the ***Meetup website|http://www.meetup.com/***. Find some Meetups in your area, meet some new people, network, whatever. It’s a blast. And maybe I’ll see you at the next Boston Weblogger Meetup!

New Sounds

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We really enjoyed the soundtracks from two movies we’ve recently seen: ***The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou|http://prwdot.org/archives/002319.html***, and ***In Good Company|http://prwdot.org/archives/002344.html***. So we purchased the complete soundtracks on the ***iTunes Music Store|http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/***, for $9.99 each.

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Goodcompany Lifeaquatic
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Both have some really great, listenable music. Life Aquatic has some nutty Casio-tone keyboard songs, as well as some contemporary hits rewritten into Portuguese as performed in the film by Seu Jorge, one of the ship’s crew members. Good Company has a good selection of very mellow music by artists such as Iron and Wine and David Byrne, and some nice original compositions from the score by Stephen Trask. Both are highly recommended for your listening enjoyment.

Even Smaller

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Becky and I were out doing some shopping today, and we stopped at the ***Apple Store|http://www.apple.com/retail/northshore/*** to buy ***Tax Cut|http://www.taxcut.com/***. While we were there, I got to check out the ***Mac Mini|http://www.apple.com/macmini/*** in person for the first time. It is even smaller than I had thought, from the photos I had seen so far. It literally fits in the palm of my hand (well, with my fingers stretched out at least). It’s ridiculously small. If we weren’t planning this darned trip to Russia, we might actually be able to afford one. 🙂 Here’s some photos I took on the olde camera-phone:

ppp|My hand can cover it upMy keys for comparisonThe Apple Mouse on top, for comparison|ppp

Snow’d In

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I took this photo on Monday morning, upon arriving at work on the first day after the blizzard. You can see about half of our building peeking above the massive snowbanks made by the plows. That’s a lot o’ snow. 🙂

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Comparison

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This has been a pretty big storm, but it hasn’t been quite as bad as the Nor’easter of December 2003. The temperatures during that storm were higher, with wetter, heavier snow, which is much harder to plow. The inches of accumulated snow were probably about the same, but this year it was very light and fluffy and easy to move.

Here’s a photo comparison… December 2003 on the left, January 2005 on the right. 🙂

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Update
We’ve heard several mentions on the news of some big snowstorm in February of 2003, but we couldn’t quite recall the details. Well, thanks to a little searching of our own blog, I pulled up some blog entries for the storm of February 17, 2003 (which was nearly as big as this one and the one in December 2003): ***here|http://prwdot.org/archives/000692.html***, ***here|http://prwdot.org/archives/000693.html***, and ***here|http://prwdot.org/archives/000695.html***. For some odd reason, there are no photos from that storm. I might have to dig back in my iPhoto Library to see if I perhaps took some, but never uploaded them. However, I did find some photos from a snowstorm that happened about ***10 days|http://gallery.prwdot.org/snowy_friday_03*** before that one.

A Few Feet

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8:30 a.m.
The temperature outside is 18.7F. By my measurements, we’ve got exactly one foot of fresh snow on the back porch since I shoveled it off last night at around 5:15 p.m. On the front porch, we have well over a foot. And it’s still coming down – we’re close to a band that could be dumping as much as four inches every half hour! Insanity! Becky is making cran-apple pancakes for breakfast, and then later we’re going to venture out to see more of the snow. For now, we have some photos shot from ***inside the building|http://gallery.prwdot.org/blizzard_200501***:

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Well over a foot of snow on the front porch!|ppp

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Outside on the back porch and a view of the Home Style Laundry parking lot.|ppp

10:00 a.m.
Outside temperature is 18.5F. Becky and I just got back inside from a little jaunt around the block. We cleared pretty much all of the snow off of our front porch. It wasn’t too difficult because the snow is very light and fluffy. Then Becky tried out her cross-country skis. The conditions weren’t quite right, because the snow was just too cold and not slick enough for her to glide. But we went around the block just the same. We entered the building via the Home Style Laundry parking lot, and had to climb over/through a massive drift of snow left by the laundry’s snowplow. I was sinking in nearly to my waist! The ***gallery|http://gallery.prwdot.org/blizzard_200501*** is updated with more pics.

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Becky shovels off the front porch.|ppp

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Becky parks on the side of Cabot Street, in front of the laundry’s parking lot.|ppp

11 a.m.
We’re watching ***Return of the King|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/***, the extended edition, including the drinking contest between Gimli and Legolas. 🙂 The snow’s piled up on top of our basement windows, so we can’t see what exactly is going on outside, but it sounded like someone has come to plow our parking lot. We talked to ***Corey|http://corey.prwdot.org/*** online. He came back from ***Sunday River|http://www.sundayriver.com/*** last night and is venturing out this morning to the local Arlington ***Dunkin Donuts|http://www.dunkindonuts.com/***. (Update: He just got back. They were closed. 🙁 ) We talked to Becky’s dad on the phone. He and Dianne are in Baltimore, coming back from a trip to Florida. Sounds like they’ll be staying there over night since the Boston area airports are closed.

Snippet from movie watching. Gandalf: “We have just passed into the realm of Gondor!” Becky, to the movie: “How can you tell? Did the roads get worse?” “Is it like when you are driving back from New Hampshire into Massachusetts?”

4:00 p.m.
We finished watching Return of the King, and shortly thereafter we heard the sound of a plow outside! One of our landlord’s sons was out plowing the lot with a Bobcat. We went outside and helped shovel out snow from around the cars, as much as possible so that we can get our cars out if necessary. The snow has pretty much stopped, but from what we hear, most of Beverly’s side roads are not passable… including ours. So we’ll be holed up here for the foreseeable future!

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Here’s what our living room windows look like from outside|ppp

6:46 pm
Becky’s Turn to Update!
We just got back from a nice drive around town. The roads weren’t too awful… The main streets had been plowed, but there was still a layer of snow on the ground. Hopefully the sand/salt trucks will be out soon.

The good news is… I only had to hop out of the car and push once!

Area Bloggers
Other area folk update on the snow: ***Arthur|http://kizoku.blogspot.com/2005/01/for-those-keeping-score.htmlhttp://kizoku.blogspot.com/2005/01/for-those-keeping-score.html***, ***James|http://drjames.blogspot.com/2005/01/whitewashed.html*** (both in Beverly), ***Chris|http://amusings.journalspace.com/*** (in Groveland), ***Jeremy and Angela|http://thebiggspicture.org/2005/01/blizzard-of-05.html*** (in Hyannis), ***Nikkiana|http://everytomorrow.org/archives/2005/01/23/randomess/*** (near Concord, NH).

Turbo Cracks

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For the past few years, I’ve used Turbo Tax to do our annual federal and state income taxes. It’s pretty easy to use and I have not had any trouble with it. This year, I got a mailing that offered Turbo Tax at a discount, along with a few chintzy free software packages and free shipping thrown in, so I figured I would take them up on the offer. Couldn’t hurt to have it delivered directly to my house to avoid having to make a trip just to buy the software. Or could it? Well, it seems that I made a mistake when I placed my order.

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Apparently I ordered “Turbo Cracks” when I meant to order “Turbo Tax”. Thanks Intuit, this is going to be very helpful for getting my taxes done. Really brilliant idea to send your CD-ROMs in a soft-sided envelope with no protection whatsoever. I could blame the USPS for damaging it in transit, but instead I’ll blame you for not using sturdier, more protective packaging. Now the question is, do I forgive you, and just go out and purchase a copy of Turbo Tax locally, or do I spite you and purchase ***Tax Cut|http://www.hrblock.com/taxes/products/product.jsp?productId=34*** instead. It looks to be a better deal anyway, so maybe that’s what I’ll do. Bah.