Every time I hang out with that kid I come out of it feeling rejuvenated and with a renewed faith in our ability to bring some measure of sanity to this benighted ball of rock. Plus he’s pretty hot.
I’m very spoiled by the virtual interface feature of Linux, and routinely have quite a few IP addresses associated with one virtual interface.
I’m building a cluster now, where all the machines have only private interfaces save one; obviously, I’d like the internal machines to be able to do their own updating, etc.
So I need to put in some sort of NAT. The problem is, iptables doesn’t recognize virtual interfaces, so you can’t NAT using the source/dest interface as your trigger. So here, then, is the simplest way I’ve found to set up SNAT on a virtual interface, assuming all your IP addresses are on eth0 and you are using a 10 network (in the example, 10.23.0.x) as your internal network:
cat 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING -d !10.23.0.0/24 -j MASQUERADE
I just saw an episode of Bones that dwelled quite extensively on procreation. One of the things I really appreciate about Dr. Brennan is that she consistently makes arguments I’ve made (at least to myself) before.
Among other pithy observations, she points out that having children is irrational, and that the magic feeling of having a child is really just the serotonin (though, to be fair, she probably should’ve said oxytocin).
Unfortunately, like all American moving pictures, sentimentality must win in the end, and this episode is no exception; it ends with an “aww, wouldn’t it be nice to have a kid” moment.
I’m also reading Our Inner Ape (which is much, much better than Primates and Philosophers). Dr. de Wall points out that whomever can’t get it up to pass on their genes, regardless of the cost, doesn’t make it into the next generation, thus leading to the present it-costs-more-than-it’s-worth scenario.
The thing for me, though, is that I’ve already got the feeling that I’ve jumped the shark; from little things like being cranky that kids these days can’t seem to spell worth a damn to the pervasive sensation that my body has started its long slide into senescence… if this were a game I’d've hit the reset button long ago.
Now, I’m not complaining, mind you; by just about any measure, I live one of the most privileged lives this miserable ball of rock has to offer.
Mostly it’s that I’m just recently climbing out of some problems that have dogged me for as long as I can remember, and I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like if I could’ve gotten over some of this nonsense earlier, or if I would’ve even had these problems had I grown up in a more enlightened environment.
For me, that’s one of the big things that makes the apparent negative ROI of reproducing worthwhile: not to live vicariously through my children, but simply to give someone the opportunity to grow up in an environment of respect and care for their emotional and intellectual well-being.
After seven months of more or less non-stop working like crazy to establish a foothold in Boston and keep up with the exigencies of life, I’m finally to the point where I can pay (some) attention to the work I wanted to do when I arrived.
The work itself is hard to articulate in less than a few thousand words, but a simplistic take on it is that I want to make a game.
In order to make myself focus on work, I ditched my MacBook Pro for a MacBook. Having no 3d capability to speak of, it eliminated the temptation to write games when I should’ve been working.
Yesterday I finally got myself a new machine that does have dedicated 3D; the 24″ iMac. For a thousand dollars less than the Mac Pro, it has enough graphics oomph to give me the graphic fidelity I need; I’m no super 3d artist or anything so most of the visual effects of the game will have to wait until I can con an artist into working with me.
I’m fairly happy with it. Firstly, the keyboard is a thing of beauty. It’s basically a refined version of the keyboard on the MacBook with slightly more spacious function keys and a full number pad. It’s commentary of some sort that a number pad makes me so happy.
I was this >< close to getting the 20″ iMac, but I have also developed something of a sweet tooth for TV on iTunes, and, well… the 24″ is juust bigger enough to be substantially more compelling when viewing at about six feet.
I’ve yet to figure out whether the built-in speakers will suffice for most of my video watching, but the screen will certainly suffice.
Even the Mighty Mouse is not as apocalyptically awful as I thought it would be. The ball, which felt horribly sloppy to me when I first used it, turns out to be very responsive to your movements, which almost makes it tolerable. The one thing that bugs me is that the right mouse button doesn’t seem to work if the left button is being touched at all, which is definitely requiring me to change my finger-wiggling habits.
Mac OS Leopard is also pretty durn spiffy; I haven’t used much of it yet, but the new look is a welcome change and the improvements to Mail.app quite welcome.
I also bought an upgrade to Unity, the 3D game environment I’m coding in, and I really look forward to diving into that – just as soon as the firm I’m consulting in association with gets around to getting me a machine like they said they would, so I can take this bad boy home.
Wunjo, pronounced vun-yoh, is the rune of joy, peaceful winning, and wishes fulfilled. I drew this rune after a rebirth at a solstice ritual. It is one of the few unambiguously “good” runes in the Elder Futhark, and it surprised and delighted me as portents are seldom so clear and kind. Here’s hoping it holds true.
Please, if you care for me one whit, do not get me any gifts this holiday season. Furthermore, please forgive me for not getting you any. I do not care for this time and do not care to participate in it.
So. Today was good as a client signed off on some really fun work that means I can relax about January being my Doom. It is bad in that I have finally sliced my wrists off with the bleeding edge; there’s some interaction between my ldap server, dns resolution, smtp server, and virtual machine environment.
Remind me never to stick essential services in a virtual environment without extensive testing for load-based failure modes.
At any rate, mail will be back up in a few hours, I hope.
I am in the midst of a radical change in my interpersonal affairs while trying to move from being an individual consultant to working with Charles River Web.
I’ve revamped the look of my site; now you too can push buttons. A special thanks to druidart.com for the great drawing of kali.
I’ve long been kinda fond of other living things, and so I always tried to brush off insects when they landed on me, for fear of harming them.
Beetles in particular have very grippy feet and they generally hunkered down when I brushed at them. When I then tried to lift them off, they would often just grab on harder, until I feared that I would crush them or break their legs if I pulled hard enough.
So I figured if they wanted to walk around on me, I might as well let them, especially considering there’s nary a beetle out there that’s dangerous to live humans. This policy gradually expanded to include the bulk of insects, so I have had a lot of beetles and other insects walking on me in my time.
While the little grippy paws – almost like a very gentle clasp – of beetles are my favorites, I appreciate the others as well. While they’re not strictly speaking insects, I appreciate the feathery touch of daddy long-legs. They’re so light it’s hard to tell whether they’re a light breeze or an actual spider. However, since several of the other spiders where I grew up were often at least decently damaging, I haven’t really given spiders the benefit of the doubt as much.
Ants are nice as well, though they’re the most finicky of flesh travelers. The big black ones from childhood tend to be the most mellow, but lots of them tend towards reflexive biting.
Bees and wasps are fun because of the risk factor. I’ve spent a few long minutes with a bee crawling over my popsicle-stained mouth. The feel of bee feet on my lips is something I will never forget.
Despite it being my totem animal, I haven’t actually had the experience of having cockroaches crawling on me; they tend to be too skittish. I keep meaning to raise them but have yet to be in a context where the humans around me are kosher with that. When I do, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.
The hardest part about living, for me, is when I am in a ‘forced choice’ situation where all my choices are potentially or definitely hurtful for someone I care about. It gets extra hard when some subset of those choices are things I very much want to do.
Usually in this situation I do everything I can to defer my choices; often life is kind enough to simplify the problem for me if I just wait long enough.
If I can’t do that, I generally pick the most “critical” choice. When I was younger, and life was harder, the critical choice was often something as obvious as the one that would provide food or shelter. I’m not living that way any more, and so my forced choice scenarios have stopped being so clear cut- usually what’s on the line is someone’s emotional state or desires.
If anything, the reduced severity for me makes it harder to decide. It is especially complicated when other parties have more at stake than I do. On the face of it, the fact that the situation isn’t utterly critical for me suggests that I pick the choice that hurts me in favor of those I care about, yet I’ve learned over the years that repeatedly picking the self-abnegating choice eventually leads me with nothing to give, emotionally or productively. Plus, my well being isn’t just mine any more.
Since the forced choice invariably involves putting someone out, it creates this “Rob Peter to pay Paul” factor; who among the parties is it “best” to put the hurt on? Again, when I was younger, my solutions to this usually involved blowing the whole situation up and starting over. Not really a place I’m interested in going these days.
I generally hedge things somehow- I do something extra to ameliorate the bad fallout – but sometimes no matter how I spin it there’s no silver lining or silk purse in the situation, and I just have to stick it to someone.
