name the reason for that blip

See that blip in requests around noon EST today? Should be easy to tell what it was...



yes, all those UM students and faculty who turned away from CTools to watch the Obama inauguration. Never noticed that blip for the 43rd president, but then again it is probably due to the fact that CTools is pervasive enough now that we can use it instead of Nielsen ratings. Or maybe not.

photos side-by-side aka montages

I seem to do this infrequently enough that I need to make myself a reminder, luckily I wrote a script that is pretty self-explanatory -- in this example it puts two photos side by side (similar method can be used to make 6 2"x2" passport photographs print on a single 4x6 print -- much cheaper than going to one of those passport places).


#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
local($|) = 1;

use Image::Magick;
my(@file) = @ARGV;

my($rv);

my($image)=Image::Magick->new;

$rv = $image->Read(@file);
warn "$rv" if $rv;

my($montage) = $image->Montage(
tile=>'2x1',
geometry=>'1704x2272',
mattecolor=>'#FFFFFF', #does not take?
frame=>'10',
);

$rv = $montage->Write('mp.jpg');
warn "$rv" if "$rv";


If you have ImageMagick installed but not the perl bindings, you can do this on the command line too.

terminal reset and why enter doesn't return

occasionally, if for some reason, my ssh session to a remote machine, probably running screen, doesn't terminate cleanly, and I have to return-~. to kill it, my Mac OSX terminal gets "screwed up" -- the number of rows gets reduced, the characters don't all echo, etc.. Usually, running the reset command will fix things, but sometimes it doesn't help. Of course I can't find the reference now, but some site suggested entering ^jreset^j (ctrl-j reset ctrl-j) repeatedly till it works. Incredulous, I tried it, and indeed it does work!

searching UMOD with JNDI

For some of the support tools I've been writing for CTools (in JSP with JSTL) I need to authorize against a group in the LDAP interface to UMOD. JNDI is very complete, so it should have been an easy task, but searching to see if a given logged-in (via Cosign) user was in the requisite group wasn't working. I had some example code in Perl that a colleague had once sent out, and a 1-to-1 transcription into Java using JNDI didn't work. It turns out that the scope for searches in JNDI does not default to "SUB" AND if you try to bind (even anonymously) the query tries to ADD the attribute instead of searching for it, and so had to be explicitly set. To help you (and remind me) avoid this pain, here is the requisite code:


private boolean isMember(String grp, String un) throws Exception {
   boolean isMem = false;
   Hashtable env = new Hashtable();
   env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory");
   env.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, "ldap://ldap.itd.umich.edu:389/dc=umich,dc=edu");

   try {
     javax.naming.directory.DirContext ctx = new javax.naming.directory.InitialDirContext(env);
     String[] attrIDs = {"member"};

     javax.naming.directory.SearchControls ctls = new javax.naming.directory.SearchControls();
     String filter = "(&(cn=" + grp + ") (objectclass=rfc822MailGroup))";
     ctls.setReturningAttributes(attrIDs);
     ctls.setReturningObjFlag(true);
     ctls.setSearchScope(javax.naming.directory.SearchControls.SUBTREE_SCOPE);
     String searchBase = "ou=Groups";
     javax.naming.NamingEnumeration s = ctx.search(searchBase, filter, ctls);
     String positiveMatch = "uid=" + un + ",";
     while (s.hasMore()) {
     javax.naming.directory.SearchResult sr = (javax.naming.directory.SearchResult)s.next();
     javax.naming.NamingEnumeration e = (sr.getAttributes()).getAll();
     while (e.hasMoreElements()){
       javax.naming.directory.Attribute attr = (javax.naming.directory.Attribute) e.nextElement();
       javax.naming.NamingEnumeration a = attr.getAll();
       while (a.hasMoreElements()){
         String val = (String) a.nextElement();
         if(val.indexOf(positiveMatch) != -1){
           isMem = true;
         }
       }
       a.close();
     }
     e.close();
   }
   s.close();
   ctx.close();
   return isMem;
  } catch (javax.naming.NamingException e) {
    System.err.println("Problem getting attribute:" + e);
    return false;
  }
}


There must be a better way of formatting code in HTML without JS.

my second cohousing head cooking trial

Tandoori murgh boti kebab (Chicken)
by aditya

This will be a non-vegetarian North Indian complement to my mother's vegetarian South Indian meal.

Vegetarian option: sorry, there will be no vege entree (too much work
on the carne entree for this occasional head cook), though the sides
will be vege

Carnivore option: grilled, moderately spicy tandoori murgh boti kebab
(skewers of chicken thigh/breast pieces) Rice or Naan depending on the
number of people signed up.

Kid option: less spicy chicken kebabs

Side Dish: saag aloo (sauteed mixed greens and potatoes North Indian
style).

Salad: diced tomato, cucumber, onion with cumin, pepper and lime/lemon
dressing on the side

Dessert: fruit in season

Organic: where possible

Dairy: easy to avoid

Wheat/Gluten: easy to avoid

worked out to $5.84 per adult (scaled appropriately for teens and big kids) there were 30 adults and 10 kids in total.

स्पेल्लिंग names

जय

reminder

When the Michigan winter is harsh, the wind bitter, my commute to work tedious and I don't get enough exercise or sleep or think about dried, sauteed green beans, I reflexively tell myself that this is stupid, illogical and pointless, and that we should move to a sane climate (Berkeley) and live without a car (Berkeley), be able to exercise outdoors year-round (Berkeley) without watching for icy patches, live in walking and biking distance of work, restaurants, Berkeley Bowl and a short BART ride away from Shalimar. I've served my time in Michigan, braving the weather and isolation from downtown, dependence on a car and far from the hill.

Yesterday, one of our neighbors said her husband wants her to move to California, but that though it would be nice, "it wouldn't be cohousing". I should have said, "I feel the same way", and tell her I've wanted to move Great Oak many times. In those moments I want to escape, escape the tedium of the weather, the petty indiginities of putting up with this or that less-than-considerate act, I ultimately get to this:

• People at Great Oak, and probably on the whole who want to live
  in Cohousing, are so reasonable, so much more so than the world at large.



• I want to do more and depend more on my neighbors,
  because I like them and I'd much rather spend time with them than
  living isolated in my home, as I might in Berkeley



• Living in community, especially this community is wonderful;
  most of the time we take it for granted, but it is so much better
  than not living in community.

Of course the fear is that we're missing something, maybe that other cohousing community that is in Berkeley would be the ideal place in the ideal locale and climate, and that's where we should be heading. But as a I learned so many years ago when travelling and looking for a better home than Berkeley, the memory is always better than the present, but being involved in the present community is the best of all.