Author: Simon

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Olympics and VPN

I run a VPN server at home.  This is for 2 reasons: to remotely access local services, and as a security measure to encrypt my phone’s traffic.  These reasons are what I feel to be the primary purpose of VPNs.  This is also what allows me to work at home with a company computer.

However, a consequence of this tunneling is that, from the perspective of any server to which the computer connects, that computer appears “physically” to be at the VPN’s emergence point.  This result, what I consider to be a mere auxiliary function, has caused VPN services to experience a surge in popularity for the sole reason of bypassing geolocation restrictions.  I snub my nose at those who subscribe to services for this reason, as I envision Millennials, deluded with a sense of feeling smarter than everyone else, bypassing “The Man” in order to access streaming content–with no appreciation for the actual security benefits that VPNs provide.

Then the 2018 Olympics arrived and I found myself unwilling to endure yet another year of NBC’s coverage.  Between their endless commentary and commercial breaks every 5 minutes, they’ve done everything in their power to make these events unwatchable.  And they succeeded, at least for me.  So I did exactly what I just expressed my condescension against, and shopped for VPN providers.

I stumbled across a site that actually explained the history of VPNs and their technology, a refreshing divergence from the usual array of clickbait-y sites (a la Gizmodo):

www.bestvpn.com/vpn-encryption-the-complete-guide

Given the comprehensiveness of the supplied information, I took their opinions to be acceptably educated, and subscribed to a month’s service from their top recommendation, www.expressvpn.com.

When the Olympics arrived, I connected to a server in Toronto and loaded the CBC’s live stream.  And behold!:

The CBC is mercifully low on commercials and commentary; and they stream live, rather than delaying for time zones.  I’d launch into some self-righteous rhetoric about runaway capitalism interfering with something who’s inherent purpose is contrary to this value, but I’m content to just go watch some more events and stop blogging.

Because, really, when’s the last time anyone in the US got to watch curling?

Simon

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See the Light

I hate what the information age has done to information.  By democratizing its access, we’ve devalued it entirely, which in turn has rendered its pursuit a non-viable economic model.  Instead, its value is now determined by aggregation.  The facts themselves are now worthless, but if one has enough sheer volume of facts, then they can drive traffic and by extension, capitalize upon secondary ad revenue.

So with the information itself demonetized, no incentive exists to analyze it–just to present it in a quickly digestible form.  The result is the same sub-1000-word article on every website.  Any academic value it originally had is diluted by this copy-paste method.  No one’s vetting the research, and very few are doing any original research.

I encountered this phenomenon while indulging in a casual curiosity.  The Super Bowl was playing, and there are few things I have less interest in watching, so I ate a can of sardines.  (I forced the child to try one for the character-building experience).

Delicious fish having been consumed, I was left with a can of oil.  I recalled hearing that the fish/olive oil made a good base for an improvised oil lamp (of course it would, seeing as that was the primary purpose of originally harvesting olive oil, which was a major step for humanity towards achieving ubiquitous and affordable artificial light–facts apparently lost to history).  So I rolled up a piece of paper towel into a wick, stuck it in the can, and lit it.  And, unsurprisingly, it burned with the steady flame of an oil lamp.

As I watched the flame, I wondered where I had read that article, who’s purpose was to list the unconventional sources of lighting one might find in their kitchen, for use in an emergency.  So I took to the Internet.

And this is where I became irritated with the scenario outlined in the first two paragraphs of this post.  I wouldn’t have much considered that the lists contained the same substances.  After all, there’s only so many combustible liquids in a typical residential building.  But what grabbed my attention was that every article added in the little quip about how burning the sardine oil would make the house smell like fish.  That was because, it didn’t.  The little flame is insufficient to bring the contents of the can to the volatiles’ vapor point, and the oil that was actively combusting was heated to the point where anything which would have smelled was denatured.  It was a clean, odorless lamp.

This indicates to me that the original author of the article probably put in the humorous aside, meant to be nothing more than a small joke, and was subsequently copied as a priori fact by content harvesters looking to add information to their own catalogues.

So for fuck’s sake people, do a little bit of original research.

It also bears mentioning that the sardine lamp burned out sometime after I had fallen asleep, so you do get several hours’ worth of illumination from it.  And the sardines were good.

–Simon

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Sidecar Revisited

I suspected this.  I knew that, were we to order a certain drink too many times, that it would immediately see a revival.

I recently wrote about a certain shared experience, wherein Liz needed a pretentious cocktail and after discussion decided upon the sidecar.  It was appropriate for the occasion, being classic yet not terribly well-known despite its former ubiquity.  This combination reliably produced a good drink devoid of embellishment, and reasonably priced.  Yet this hidden gem apparently would not be content to stay in shadow, and as I perused the beer shelves at the grocery, saw this cocktail mockery…mocking me.  MOCKERY!:

And like a fool, I encouraged this, because I bought it.  Damn my curiosity!

But it was good.  It was a hoppy ale with an orange accent, a significant improvement in orangy beer over that Blue Moon crap.  Yet the seed hath been sewn, and I suspect that soon we shall see the humble sidecar rebirthed from ashes, off in a blaze of glory to mediocre Americana restaurants everywhere–ultimately to share in the cruel and adulterated fate of the Manhattan.  Alas, sidecar, we hardly knew ye for what you were.

–Simon

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Geode

People are really weird about crystals.  There’s the crystal cult goofs who I guess think they channel divine essence or something.  And was it crystals that gave Merlin his magic?  I dunno.  I’m not terribly inclined to research it further.

But anyway, I was at some outlet with Liz and noticed a bin of geodes.  I recalled geode-hunting once in New Mexico, an old memory from my Texas years, and while I found some fragments, no one in the group discovered an intact geode.  And here was a pile of them as if they had been simply scooped up somewhere.  Maybe they had.  I didn’t know how common they were.

Wikipedia revealed the obvious answer: they are (the biggest one being a cave in Ohio) and no doubt $10 was a large up-charge for the small rock.  Still it was cool and dredged up a childhood memory, so I bought it for the kid.

The cashier helpfully informed me that I should break it open gently, rather than wail upon it with a hammer, as they break easy and hitting it too hard would just crush it.  Apparently that was a common complaint.

I had planned to saw it evenly in half, though it turned out that I lacked the equipment to do so.  So I got a chisel and hammer.  I held the chisel while the kid tapped the hammer, and the geode fell apart into 3 nice chunks.

It was a cool enough experience that even the kid exclaimed in delight, distracting her away from her tablet for minutes.

Then she put it back together.

Weird.  OCD or something.  I dunno where she gets that from.

–Simon

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Portal of Print

To me, the printer is a medium.  I use that word in a way that people who believe it’s possible to communicate with ghosts do.  The printer in a means by which we can connect the material to the metaphysical.  Information which only exists in digital form–a specific pattern of magnetized bits–can be made tangible via the printer.  And despite everyone claiming that they want to live in a paperless world, the preference for paper media over digital for varying personal and/or practical reasons renders the printer a critical component to our collection of electronic devices.

So surely a device of such importance would be built well, with a reliable OS and hardware, built by trustworthy vendors.

Yet for anyone who’s ever used one of these machines, we know this to not be the case.  Apart from the general user-end experience, when it seems invariably impossible to print something when it’s absolutely critical that that document be printed, printers are plagued by a number of more nefarious problems.  Offhand, I can think of a few that have popped up over the years: proprietary ink cartridges embedded with chips to prevent the use of 3rd-party replacements, chipped cartridges coded with expiration dates that prevent their use after a specified date regardless the level of remaining ink, printers which cache all print jobs in non-volatile and unencrypted drives, printers with closed-source software containing obsolete encryption libraries…and so on.  In short–printers are evil devices used only out of necessity, and this necessity is exploited by manufacturers.

Now for my personal story.

I needed a printer (see above).  My laundry list included separate color ink cartridges and network operability, and after reading reviews I decided upon the Canon MP640.

Ultimately the scanner got more use than printing, amusing in that it more often converted analog media to digital than the other way around.

The device came with two NICs–ethernet and wireless, and from day one I had trouble with the ethernet.  The wireless worked okay, but I’d rather of used the ethernet for the usual list of reasons.  But the ethernet NIC was IP-sticky, seemingly ignoring NAT assignments and demanding that it be given .1–which was a problem because .1 was the router’s IP.  So the wireless was used instead, but years later I wanted to explore the wired again.  I disabled wireless and plugged in the ethernet.  Then, for whatever reason, I became distracted with other things and never got around to fighting the printer.

Then, a few days ago, I noticed the main network switch downstairs furiously blinking.  Every connected port’s corresponding status light was flashing simultaneously…as was the living room’s, and the center room’s.  That didn’t seem right, obviously.

But the switches are unmanaged and data wasn’t passing through the edgerouter which does DPI, so I couldn’t readily deduce the problem.  Still, everything had connectivity, so I let the problem go.  But there was an obvious lag, so I had to figure it out.

So in the dark hours of the night, which is when I do this sort of work, I began my super-technical investigation by systematically unplugging cables until the flashy lights stopped.  As this is a residential network, it didn’t take long to narrow down: the guest room cable.  This jack is connected to an older router, which is acting as a non-NAT access point.  Wireless devices jump on and off as they roam, but I had also plugged the printer into it.  Recalling my past troubles, I unplugged it and the network instantly fell back into its normal patterns.

I’ve debated getting a new printer, but then I considered the work Xeroxes–multi-thousand dollar machines with regular servicing, and even those won’t cooperate with the network on a regular basis.

I don’t know why these machines won’t play nice.  Maybe one day, when my consciousness has been entirely converted into a digital signature, I’ll no longer have need for a printer.  For now, I suppose I’ll just have to grin and bear it.

–Simon