28/11/2003 @13:50:16 ^13:53:32

finger aosaaf@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk

Oh gods guys I'm so happy

27/11/2003 @23:01:20 ^01:10:09

THE STORY OF CACO

An epic saga of the revivication of a sickly and intractable base unit, in several parts. Here's part one. If you came here, saw the title and thought the page hadn't changed, you're an idiot.

2. Disaster Strikes

Let's recap. It's mid-July. I have sitting next to my current workstation 'anARCHy' a hot and noisy base unit with the hostname 'goatse'. It contains two network cards; the one supplied with the box itself and another one which I added. The former is plugged into the cable modem and the latter is connected to 'anARCHy'. 'goatse' is functioning successfully as a NAT router and firewall. iptables is cool.

FROM GOATSE TO CACO

First problem clearly was the choice of hostnames themselves. There could be no other goatse than goatse and the joke was rapidly wearing thin. Furthermore I needed a naming scheme that was extendable and related to something I liked and cared about. I had considered Simpsons characters, South Park characters, random stuff from SA and other things before the solution hit me and when it did I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before because it was perfect.

Doom! Specifically, the monster names.

"homer" is a proper noun, the name of a cartoon character. "goatse" has the same problem, it's a proper noun, the name of a website. But in Doom there isn't actually a monster named Imp, there is just a particular type known as an imp. "The brown thing in the cage is an imp", "Imps are fun to kill one by one with the shotgun", "On Hell Revealed map09, when you pick up the key, over a hundred imps teleport in" etc.

Which monsters to use for names took some thought but eventually 'anARCHy' became baron and 'goatse' became caco. I guess technically it should be 'cacodemon' but who'd be arsed with typing 'ssh cacodemon'?

DHCP DIGRESSION

At some point I decided to try to get the whole thing to configure itself by DHCP. I put dhcpd on caco. Then, baron, with absolutely no modification whatsoever, was instantly able to get itself configured. However, despite initial successes like a nice workaround for Debian Woody's ifupdown to be able to run dhclient on two interfaces without horribly confusing the process IDs, I couldn't get caco to configure itself. The events as described in /var/log/daemon.log went something like this; I might have the protocol slightly wrong but you get the idea

Time   Event
   0   dhclient broadcasts a DISCOVER for an address. dhcpd broadcasts an OFFER.
       dhclient broadcasts a REQUEST and dhcpd ACKs it. All is well, until...
 0.5   dhclient starts trying to renew the lease by REQUEST. dhcpd appears to
       fail to hear them or at least doesn't respond.
0.75   dhclient gives up sending directly and starts broadcasting REQUESTs. All
       of a sudden dhcpd can hear but it responds directly. dhclient doesn't
       appear to receive the response.
   1   dhclient gives up and we return back to time 0 after a small time in
       which the interface is deconfigured.

Time is in days or more generally in multiples of the default lease time. I have no idea why dhclient and dhcpd can't send to each other, but can hear each other's broadcasts. Thinking about it now I don't know if you can have two different processes listening on the same port so perhaps dhcpd and the two copies of dhclient were blocking each other. I gave up and configured the whole thing statically.

FROM STABILITY TO SCRAP

caco ran for three weeks without fault, during some of the hottest weather this country has ever seen. Despite my concerns over noise and temperature it appeared to be stable. Of course that didn't do much for my room temperature, but I like ridiculous heat.

Now it was very loud, but it was a regular, constant sound that didn't keep me awake, especially since at the time I was necessarily pursuing a policy of going to sleep only when I'd been awake for so long I was losing consciousness involuntarily. However, a noise developed that even the proud owner of three clocks with very loud ticks couldn't sleep through.

It was a kind of intermittent rattle. It would start, get louder and louder, then there'd be a clonk or a scrunch and it'd shut up, but begin again five minutes later. For a while I thought to my horror that it was the hard disc but eventually I traced it to a thin, flat fan below. It was a strange device that screwed onto the bottom of your hard disc and which the previous owner had clearly thought necessary.

I thought maybe it had some dust or something in it. It really was annoying even when I wasn't trying to sleep. So, I decided to take caco offline and give all the fans a clean. That was easy. Take the side off, take out some cables, undo some screws, you know, not necessarily in that order, do your thing then put it all back together and turn it back on.

It didn't boot.

what

Seriously, the screen stayed black. I couldn't get to the BIOS. Nothing. Not exactly in the best of mental states already I instantly concluded that technology was turning against me too. I think I screamed and lugged the whole thing into the back room out of sight, then collapsed sobbing into a corner. I'd taken something troublesome but beautiful into my life and then had it without warning forsake me and take itself away, forever. Not again!

What next for caco? Is it dead? More importantly, can I stop being so melodramatic? Until next time...

26/11/2003 @22:48:43 ^00:48:07

THE STORY OF CACO

An epic saga of the revivication of a sickly and intractable base unit, in several parts. How many, I haven't decided yet. The point is there's no way I'll write this whole thing today.

1. "Christ, what a bleedin' racket"

caco started its life at the Realm on a hot day in mid July. I bought it off a guy on ebay in what I felt was a good deal, although I decided not to reveal the price to avoid morons going "haha you've been ripped off". While I admit it was more expensive than I wanted it to be, I was still well within my budget (i.e. the money I'd earned for that week of data entry in the students' union in May) and it had a better specification than I felt I needed.

Having installed a second network card in place of the largely useless 56K PCI modem I powered it up. Three things became apparent. Lastly, a brand new installation of Windows XP Professional. In case anyone remembers it, this was how XP LOL 2, a screenshot of an MS Paint window in which was scrawled "I am using XP hahaha", originated. But before that I'd gone into the BIOS and noticed how hot the CPU temperature was reported to be. 60°C for a 600MHz Duron processor? Fuck that, my 800MHz sits at around 35°C or 40°C! And before that, in fact as soon as I'd pressed the power button, I noticed the fans. This thing sounded like there was a helicopter under my desk.

Nevertheless it seemed to be operational, and at least I could fix the first one. I made a Debian net install CD-RW and with not inconsiderable satisfaction used it, without making any attempt whatsoever to preserve the previous installation. With hindsight I was probably a little hasty here. There are a few reasons for having Windows around. Several Doom source ports and all the good WAD editors have no linux version. There's no decent music sequencers. And so on. I was hasty, especially since to be honest I've got this 80 gig disc I haven't actually done much at all with yet.

Anyway Debian installed fine, as it does if you're careful. In fact it surprised me, it managed to download 40MB of packages without any trouble at all. This was the first hint I'd ever had that the other machine's frozen internet connections might actually be caused by its network card instead of a dodgy NTL installation. Of course being lazy, listless and miserable I didn't investigate that fully until four months later but there you go.

To go with my previous machine's stupid choice of hostname, 'anARCHy', I made an equally stupid choice of hostname for this new box. There's a huge clue in this update if you can't guess. The idea was hilarious at the time, what more can I say? So I plugged the cable modem into one of goatse's network cards and connected goatse's other network card to anARCHy with my shiny new crossover ethernet cable. A few changes to configuration files and they could talk to each other! A bit of screwing with iptables and they could both talk to the rest of the internet as well. I was very happy. All that time reading networking HOWTOs and man pages had paid off! I'd even managed to pick up the fact that there's two ways you can wire an ethernet cable, and purchased the correct type!

Next time: a slightly less retarded choice of hostnames, and disaster strikes when I try to do some maintenance! Stay tuned!

23/11/2003 @21:41:07 ^23:01:36

CACO LIVES

Damnit I was so happy I burst into tears

IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME

I'm no longer searching for forms that probably don't exist or are in bits and will never be found properly. I have finally moved on to doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing, that is going through the boxes that have already been scanned and making sure that's been done properly. It's easy, I get to use the computer, and there is the sense of making some sort of progress.

I still don't have my own login, but, uh... I know people's passwords, so, uh... yeah, at least I can get on with my stuff without having to pester people in the mornings. I still have my desk. I'm still doing cards but the machine and I get on pretty well now. Indeed now if the person is there waiting for their card I'll ask them if they want their photo retaking as well. If they do, I get to fuck with the camera, which is even more fun!

The academic office did a big thing for Children In Need so hardly any work got done on Friday. There was a raffle and a buffet. I didn't win anything but spent the whole day full of cake, crisps and chocolate. All in all it was a damn good week.

Seriously, savour the moment, how often do I go "best week ever"?

caco lives. CACO LIVES. I made a decision to spend some money on the grounds that "if this doesn't work I can afford it haha" and bought some stuff and it worked. I looked at it and had the thought. "caco lives." I only got as far as the L before I burst into tears from sheer joy.

I'm serious. CACO LIVES. I'll explain all this shit when I get time.

That was Saturday afternoon, anyway. When I'd calmed down a bit I thought the only way this day could get any better would be for me to break the blastem2 speedrunning record by some large margin...

...2'41". OH SNAP. I spotted a minor route adjustment that took four fucking seconds off the time. Of course if only I could just record a demo that wasn't full of stupid fuckups like catching the wall and losing all your speed when running round a corner...

16/11/2003 @22:10:10 ^23:50:59

we're rolling

Over the past hour (the time as I type this is about ten past ten) I have recorded two 2'49"s, a 2'46" and a 2'45" in blastem2. And I'm still not satisfied! The 2'46" is actually a marginally better demo than the 2'45" because there are slightly fewer blatant fuckups on camera!

person most likely to break something in senate house is...

...I never thought it'd be me, but as I was lifting down some boxes on Thursday I caught a flourescent tube diffuser. It came crashing down and the end shattered. I felt pretty damn stupid I can tell you.

Various people said things like "never mind it was loose anyway, estates'll fix it, don't worry" and "are you okay, it didn't land on your head did it?" Unfortunately I didn't say "it might have been better if it had landed on my head, because then it wouldn't have broken, having landed on something soft" but I never thing of these things until well after the moment has passed.

Never mind, at least I can post about it on the internet! That's the beauty!

they're going to take my bloody desk away

So on Tuesday I'm doing the usual sifting through dusty boxes looking for the UCAS forms and other bits and pieces of people on this list I've been given. As I keep saying it's really really dull, but occasionally you find one that's either someone you know (hi Julie!) or full of hilarious drama.

Anyway this guy comes in and he wants to rip out my desk because the phone junction box is behind it. Okay, fair enough, I'll just go sit over here in everyone's way and carry on going through this box which even before I've been into it I can tell it's not going to have any of the ones I'm looking for but I have to look anyway, godsdamnit.

Eventually the guy finishes up work having ran a cable halfway up the office to the only spare desk, and we get my desk back into its place. And it's good because we've used this as an excuse to take all the files and heaps of paper that have always taken up half my desk back to the postgraduate office so I actually have some room to work now!

But no it turns out that there was a huge mistake, really the phone should have gone in at my desk itself because it won't be my desk for long! They're giving it to another temp who started a few days after I did and who is apparently really good. "Sparkette", so called because of a certain uncanny resemblance, has accepted the offer of a job for a year, part of which will be working with the people who have the desks next to mine. Thus it makes more sense for her to sit where I am.

What happens to me? Well I was in a bad mood at the time and I hoped I'd just get fired, but no I get the aforementioned free desk! Oh great!

It's not all bad news as I was told I would definitely be getting the login I asked for a fortnight ago. Just in time for my move to a desk where there isn't a computer. I'm going to shut up now before they find my site and I get into even more trouble.

14/11/2003 @20:23:49 ^21:27:08

The printer requires cleaning. Click OK to continue or Help for steps to follow

Apart from "enema cards" I have a new name for the cleaning strips it demands: "sanitary pads". But they don't have wings!

I have something hot for you here, it's 9'18" long

Apart from fixing the internet the other big piece of news from last weekend was this. Finally after months of alternately recording dozens of attempts and long pauses caused by sheer frustration I achieved my well-documented aim of breaking ten minutes on a blastem2 UV max demo. In fact as you probably can guess from the title, I smashed it.

I don't know how I took so much time off it other than the fact that any time under eleven minutes is down to luck; how many monsters get into fights with each other, how many don't get trapped in awkward places and take time to find, etc. and I guess I hit all the sweet spots at once. Well, it's about time, I've certainly put the effort in.

The overall target was a max demo under 10 minutes and a speed demo under 3 minutes, which, when achieved to my satisfaction would be posted here and possibly sent to the DSDA. But in addition, as luck would have it just in time for my demos being recorded Doomworld creates a demos forum for me to attention whore them in!

Well maybe later. Trouble is now I don't think the 2'51" speedrun I recorded in July is as good as it can be, so I've been trying to improve it. I mentioned that I'd made a 2'55" back then but somehow forgot that it wasn't the best one. Watching it again though I think there's very little room for improvement using my route, and just like the maxdemo the difference between beating 2'51" and being over three minutes is down to luck.

I have something else even hotter, so hot it'll burn your garden down

I came home on the fifth and found my mum had decided to buy a box of fireworks. This is unprecedented, especially as I got to set them all off, in spite of my history of setting light to things in my room, the plastic bin in the kitchen, etc. Well, I stand by my record of never letting a fire get completely out of control.

Anyway I saved them for the following Saturday so I actually had some light to make sure I could set things up properly. I waited for darkness to fall, and pausing briefly to staple it to the floor to prevent it from getting up again in a hurry, I lit the miniature bombs one by one. Most just shot fountains of sparks about six or seven feet high but there were a couple that popped blobs of spitting fire fifty feet into the air! That was really good fun! It's just a shame one of my fountains wasn't set in the ground properly, as I found out when it fell over and badly singed the plants.

But still it was better than going to a big organised display because instead of being assaulted by lasers and the Indiana Jones theme at earsplitting volume, you get to appreciate each beautifully mastercrafted packet of heavy metal and gunpowder fully by going "look, streetlight colour! that must be sodium!" and generally acting like an overexcited nerd. Also if you're going to play music on big speakers in a field, you should be playing music wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats, like all the gods intended. Fuck this cheesy shit!

PS sorry for not posting this earlier in the week like I promised oh well it's here now

10/11/2003 @20:02:13 ^21:13:28

take the red pill, find out how deep my rectum goes

Over the next couple of days we will be featuring, among other things, some of the stuff meant for yesterday's update. It was partially written but there wasn't time to finish it properly so I decided to split the thing up! Enjoy!

I fixed the internet!

Okay probably the most important thing from last week was my finding out that the acquisition of another network card has fixed my internet connection! As you probably know already it had a distressing tendency to freeze. Files would get to a point and then just stop and refuse to download further. I'd click on a page and half the images on it would fail to load. It was weird. My only theory was that something was corrupting my packets because I'd see lots of attempts to resend them via tcpdump.

Naturally I blamed this behaviour on NTL. Since the anniversary of the cable installation coming up and thus cancellation of the service would become possible, I was preparing for the hassle of trying to switch ISPs, having to work out how the hell ADSL is supposed to work, and how much expensive hardware I'd need to work it. But now I won't have to!

bonus rant

I wasn't supposed to have to do university cards again this week, but apparently the people who were didn't get their training session. Yeah, well, where the fuck was my "training session"? If I were a suspicious person I'd think this was deliberate because they know how shitty working the card machine is!

The printer didn't play up much today, only once when it refused to do anything more because it was feeling dirty. I fed it an "enema card", my horrible name for the strips of double-sided adhesive plastic which shut it up. On the other hand I will only know if I got all the barcodes and shit correct if noone comes back tomorrow going "my card doesn't work waaah I want to get into the library waaah" Yeah, like you really ever go in the library, you lazy cockwhores.

However I did find an enormous lump of blutack! I was in the toilets and there it was, just stuck to the top of the roll dispenser. What a find! I'm pretty sure it's not just a lump of turd that's changed colour through age; although I know your shits turn light blue if you leave them long enough, I also know they smell different.

09/11/2003 @22:33:02 ^00:46:35

it would have been better if it had been about ice cream

I just came back from seeing the third Matrix movie but unlike last time had no-one to whom to make stupid internet references afterwards. Oh well at least I have a site to post them on. Without giving too much away there's a bit with all these robots and I'm telling you it cries out for them to all shout, a thousand metallic voices in unison

YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLY

card printer hell

Work is rubbish. I spent the week alternately

I don't know what to do now it's all gone to shite