Thoughts of Dan

easy capitalization in MSWORD

2010-03-12T08:20:00.000-08:00

double click on a word to highlight it. Shift+F3 capitalizes the first letter. Shift+F3 again capitalizes the whole word. Shift+F3 a third time lower cases the word. Probably should make a macro for this in Intellij...

James Beard Semi-Finalists in Masachusetts

2010-02-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

Below are the Massachusetts semi-finalists for this years James Beard Awards

I'm going to try to hit every one this year. I'm especially surprised that there are 2 such great restaurants on Nantucket. I'll come back and edit this post with reviews.

CHEF	RESTAURANT	CITY
Ana Sortun	Oleana	Cambridge
Will Gilson	Garden at the Cellar	Cambridge
Maura Kilpatrick	Sofra Bakery and Cafe	Cambridge
Richie Barron	Il Capriccio	Waltham
Dante de Magistris	Il Casale	Belmont
Gabriel Frasca and Amanda Lydon	Straight Wharf Restaurant	Nantucket
Steve Johnson	Rendezvous in Central Square	Cambridge
Michael LaScola	American Seasons	Nantucket
Michael Leviton	Lumière	West Newton
Tony Maws	Craigie on Main	Cambridge

2010-02-18T13:47:00.000-08:00

I read about Joseph Stack and his crashing a plane into an IRS building. I also read his manifesto. We're here.

This was a reprehensible act by a coward, striking at people who had nothing to do with his problems. Nothing out of this should be glorified nor used as an example. It's also an amazing trap for the conservative zealots. Just like you can't blame Israel or our Foreign policy for 9/11, you can't blame the government for this. As unfair as taxes are right now, it is not cause for murder.

I expect Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh to reveal themselves as the anti-american dirtballs they are by implying that this was justified, and that there will be more.

I likewise expect anti-liberty professional politicians to blame this on the "Tea Baggers." They would be equally mistaken. People speaking out against the government is exactly the sort of thing that EASES tensions like this. It doesn't mean however that they won't try to curtail our liberties more as a response to this.

There is a contract between men that we call the rule of law. Without the rule of law -- without the guarantee of liberty and equality of opportunity -- there is no justice. There is certainly a time and place for civil disobedience, but the key word is civil.

I fear however, this is the spark to something really nasty, unless we all speak out. So here's my bit:

I think that government has gone astray, but I respect the constitution and the rule of law. We must reform the country, but we must do so peacefully, and within the rule of law. If we cannot do so without violence, then the system we think we are defending is gone, and there is nothing worth fighting for.

2010-02-10T07:02:00.000-08:00

Did you ever wonder if you can have 2 servlets.xml files?

My new employer uses a machine generated servlets.xml. I'm not sure why someone thought that was a win, but whatever. My new part of the application is being rapidly developed and I didn't want to have to regen the servlets.xml file whever I added something, nor did I want to manually edit a file that says at the top "DO NOT EDIT BY HAND" (even though I did at first).

My solution was to add an entity to the web.xml

So

<!DOCTYPE web-app [

    <!ENTITY servlets SYSTEM "servlets.xml">

]>

Became

<!DOCTYPE web-app [

    <!ENTITY servlets SYSTEM "servlets.xml">

    <!ENTITY objectServlets SYSTEM "objectServlets.xml">

]>

And then futher into web.xml

&servlets;

became

&servlets;
&objectServlets;

And of course I made the objectServlets.xml file in the same dir and format as servlets.xml

2009-11-09T07:49:00.000-08:00

Just a little note to help myself and anyone else with this problem. If you're trying to use Tomcat inside Intellij and you have the free version of AVG, you'll get a "port 8080 already in use" exception.

This is because AVG blocks applications from getting that port. Interestingly enough you CAN start tomcat from the command line (\bin\catalina.bat start).

The easiest fix is to change the server.xml file in \conf\server.xml and replace every instance of 8080 with 8000 (or some other port). Then in Intellij in your tomcat configuration, make the broswer start page be localhost:8000 and fire it up!

I posted this on the Jetbrains developer board too: http://www.jetbrains.net/devnet/thread/279387#279387

2009-05-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

Gay, straight, black, white --
Marriage is a civil right.
Deny the few when you are many,
And when YOU need rights,
you won't have any.

Oppress the rich with your moral authority?
Welcome tyranny of the majority.

If the rich are forced to pay because the majority votes to tax them
Then any right can be lost if the majority decides to ax them.

2008-12-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS
computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS
declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

"Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with
the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into
conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and
Russia; however considering their entire body of work--including an
incredibly tough Strength of Schedule--our computers deemed them worthy
of the #1 ranking."

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS
commissioner stated "The US only had two major victories--Japan and
Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren't influenced by
head-to-head contests--they consider each contest to be only a single,
equally-weighted event."

German Chancellor Adolph Hitler said "Yes, we lost to the US; but we
defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks." Herr Hitler has been
criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn 'style points' to
enhance Germany's rankings. Hitler protested "Our contest with Poland
was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were
incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional
forces."

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented "
France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1
ranking they only fell to #2."
Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the
Philippines.

2008-11-05T06:10:00.000-08:00

Obama has won. He wasn't my first choice, but neither was McCain. I'm happy to see the will of the people fulfilled. The country is unified and I'm hopeful that Obama will be able to accomplish 4 things that could only be done by an enormously popular president:

1) Line Item Veto. This will end earmarks. It weakens the power of the legislature, but it is CRUCIAL to restoring fiscal sanity. The Republican congress gave Clinton the line item veto in 1996, and the economy took off and government spending was SIGNIFICANTLY cut. However Rudy Guiliani, then Mayor of New York sued, claiming that the constitution does not allow the president to alter legislation proposed, only sign or veto. The case went to the Supreme Court where SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in favor of Guiliani -- thus ending the line item veto. in 2006 Bush asked for a new version of the Line Item Veto, where the president could ask congress to veto lines of a bill independantly, thus getting around the seperation of branches issue. Though the 2006 line-item veto proposal was much weaker than the 1996 version, it nevertheless failed to find strong support in Congress. Senator and former klansman Robert Byrd called it "an offensive slap at Congress," asserting that the legislation would enable the president to intimidate individual members of Congress by targeting the projects of his political opponents.

Bah! The line item veto needs to come to pass. I hope that Obama will reintroduce the 2006 Line Item Veto act and with his new majority, pass it through. Earmarks, pork, whatever you want to call it -- all are killing government and corrupting spending.

2) Energy Independence. It's time to make the push. Renewable electricity. End ALL subsidies of oil, so that alternative energies can compete on a level playing field.

3) Defense of Civil Unions. People have been going about the Gay marriage issue the wrong way entirely. Instead of allowing gays to marry, how about allowing straights to have civil unions. Why is it that we say at a wedding "what got has brought together, let no man tear asunder" but when people get divorced they just go to a judge. Let's push a nation wide civil union proposal, that is open to all orientations, and is legally binding. Churches can perform all the marriages they want, but they will have NO legal significance -- only spiritual. As someone who was married by a Justice of the Peace in a restaurant, I feel like I have a civil union. I have no need for a church to consecrate or judge my relationship.

4) Election Reform: Voter registration, identification and verification is a joke. All citizens should be registered to vote at the federal level by default -- when Income Taxes are filed, each citizen will have his/her information recorded. People then can show up to vote with their tax payer ID number and identification, and vote. No more registration, no more voter drives. Everyone who shows up on a tax return is registered to vote.

2008-09-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

I wrote to my congressman, John F. Tierney to ask him to vote against the bailout. Not only did he do so, but he wrote me back and has earned my respect. I thought I would share his reply to me and my response to him. Here is his considered response to my request on him website to vote against the bailout:

----- Original Message ----
From: Congressman John F. Tierney
To: fishdan@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 7:17:34 PM
Subject: A Message From Congressman Tierney

September 29, 2008

Mr. Daniel Fishman

Beverly, MA 01915

Dear Mr. Fishman:

Without getting into the fine details, I thought I would let you know that I voted against the so-called Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (H.R. 3997) when it was brought to the House floor earlier today. There were compromises made in this version of the bill, ostensibly to gain bipartisan support. Unfortunately, such compromises were made at the expense of key priorities -- investment in helping homeowners, protections to ensure that the taxpayer will not have to absorb the full cost, and incentives to get the economy back on track.

This bill can be improved, and a different approach can be taken so that foregoing issues can be appropriately addressed.

As of this writing, it is expected that Congress will revisit this matter before the end of the week. I will keep you updated.

Thank you for weighing in.

Sincerely,

John F. Tierney
Member of Congress

Please feel free to visit my website at http://tierney.house.gov/ to learn more about my legislative initiatives.

And here is my open response to him:

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your email, and I would like to take this opportunity to applaud you as a man of principle.

I am one of those who has recently grown weary with partisan bickering I have recently felt that a class of professional politicians has usurped the rights of the people to govern themselves. Yet you have restored my feelings that the people ARE being represented. When the Speaker, the President, Congressman Frank and others ally themselves to push something through and congressmen such as yourself vote their conscience, fulfilling the wishes of the people, it restores my faith in representative democracy.

While you and I have differed on many votes, in the future I will know that you are first and foremost voting with the consideration that befits a representative of the people. When we differ, I will reconsider my position, and where our positions cannot be reconciled, I will be assuaged in knowing that men of good conscience do differ in opinions, and you have voted as you honestly saw fit.

Thank you for your service to the 6th District. I have included our brief correspondence on my blog http://www.fishdan.com

Daniel Fishman

Pretty cool eh? My only complaint is that even though he responded via email, I had to use the web-form to get back to him. Some of you may be shocked that I, a fervent supporter of Ron Paul, could be so happy with my democratic congressman. The truth of the matter is -- I don't have a problem with party at all, so long as elected officials are doing what they think is right, instead of blindly following the party line. Case in point, Joe Lieberman. The guy believes something. We should all be so lucky as to have persons of principle in office.

Well, I guess I am.

2008-08-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

The Clark Rockefeller story has been captivating people, especially with his unwillingness to reveal his actual background. It is also coming out that Clark has had many identities in the past. One more has recently been revealed, and with it, possibly the reason for his desperate attempts to shield his identity. In examining the photo's below, it is clear that Clark Rockefeller (left) is also former Black Mesa employee, Dr. Gordon Freeman (below). Dr. Freeman was responsible for the resonance cascade failure that destroyed Black Mesa in 2001.

2008-07-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick synopsis since FVS: I wrote the original version of this to reconnect with Ken Chow (who I just saw in SF in May), so don't think I'm crazy, and wrote it all "just for you" There are plenty of better reasons to think I'm crazy :)

1985-86 St. Bees, UK -- exchange student
86-89 UT Austin majored in PoliSci minored in Lacrosse, failed out in 3 years
89-96 Special Ed. teacher, varying populations. I started off with emotionally disturbed and ended with severe Autsitic
1994 left Austin (which I loved) and moved to Boston with/for live-in gf of 4 years. Thus we split a year later.

At that age I was just TERRIBLE at being alone, so jumped into another relationship immediately.

In 1996, I thought I might get married and start a family, and (I felt) I could not provide for a family in the way I thought I should on a Sp.Ed. teachers salary, so I went back to school. Of course the relationship that I thought was leading to marriage immediately fell apart. I had moved in with my boss, and then to avoid allegations of impropriety, she took another job. It turned out that without work we had nothing in common. I was shocked to find out there was that much karma left in the world (but that's another story). Still, I finished up a degree in computer science, and met my current wife while in school, so no regrets. I now write software for a living.

1996-99 UMass Boston BSCS
1999-2002 Anyday.com, acquired by Palm Inc
2002-now http://www.mghihp.edu.

I got married in October 2001, and we bought a house in Beverly. MA in 2003, and have been there ever since. My wife is also a computer type -- she's the head DBA for Helium.com (http://www.helium.com).

I'm deliberately working in a low stress job right now. Palm was awesome, but when it all fell apart (Palm laid off the entire Boston office in 2002) I started wondering if perhaps I could be more satisfied with less "killing." Academia is a good place for me right now. I've staffed my department with my best friends, and I've got a real sinecure. Recently however, I've been getting frustrated at the fact that I'm never challenged to be at my best. I'm thinking about throwing away the cushy position because sometimes it's nice to have someone ask me to be as smart as I possibly can be.

I celebrated my 40th birthday last October -- it was pretty awesome. The theme was 1967 and everyone came in costume, including the band (you can see some pictures in my photo album on facebook). I came as Elvis, and sang 2 numbers with band. I'm pretty pleased to be 40. As I said at the party -- I'm looking forward to the next 3rd of my life.

We just bought a new house, still in Beverly. It's designed to be our party house. It's got a pool and a bar and a fireplace and all sorts of other cool features. We're not planning on having any kids so we needed a house that we could do a lot of entertaining in. One of the things that has kept us in Boston is that we have a large group of friends close to our age who are single and also don't have kids -- but they all live in the City, so we need a way to lure them out.

My brother just moved to Denver from Dallas, so I'm letting him be the advanced scout for the large contingent that is there. I'm still in touch with Chad Harrison regularly and Lawrence occasionally. I just saw Ken Chow as I said, and I saw Darin Hart and Drew Thatcher at Jeremy's wedding).

So that's a good starting point I think. You don't have to write back nearly as much -- I tend to be enamored of my own words. I welcome emails from old friends. Send to f i s h d a n @ y a h o o . c o m

Dan

2008-04-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Where is fishdan.com? We recently moved, and I ran fishdan.com our of my house. For the moment, I'll point the DNS here to keep my fan updated. I'll do my best to write a thing or 2 about the new placem, the move, etc.

Does Draft Order Matter In Fantasy Football?

2006-11-28T12:51:00.000-08:00

A guy over on Sportsdot has a theory that in almost every fantasy football league the person who drafted 3rd took LaDanian and will soon be in the playoffs, and everyone who drafted 2nd took Sean Alexander, and is now eliminated from the playoffs. He's accumulating data, so your $0.02 will help

read more | digg story

2006-10-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Executive Summary: This article details how to minimize hack attempts on open facing ports on a *nix machine, by reading the attackers IP addresses from a log file, and adding the address to hosts.deny

Chances are pretty good if you've got a port open to the internet you're seeing unwanted traffic on it. If you've got a service such as telnet or FTP or POP that transmits passwords unencrypted, you're significantly at risk for a breach from a packet being intercepted, but even if you're using a secure protocol such as SSH, you're vulnerable to a brute force attempt to break into your site. As an example, here is a sample of a log file showing a break-in attempt on one of my servers:

Oct 8 13:54:18 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4554]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12
Oct 8 13:54:22 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4557]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12
Oct 8 13:54:27 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4560]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12
Oct 8 13:54:31 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4563]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12
Oct 8 13:54:36 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4566]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12
Oct 8 13:54:40 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4569]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12 user=root
Oct 8 13:54:44 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4571]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12 user=root
Oct 8 13:54:49 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4573]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12 user=root
Oct 8 13:54:53 chapelle sshd(pam_unix)[4575]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=59.13.157.12

On my linux box (Fedora Core 5), this is coming from /var/spool/messages What this shows is an attempt to login via SSH on the machine "chapelle." In some cases the login attempts were with no user name, in some cases, they were with username root.

The log files used to go on and on with these breakin attempts, as the users tried about 5000 common login names and passwords. And it could easily be more in the future. Although I use a secure username and password, and do not allow root to login remotely, I still am annoyed by the attempts. If you have users who have common user names, such as "john" or "jjones" or something like that, then these break-in attempts are more than just an annoyance for you. Don't think "I don't have anything worth breaking in for", because hackers certainly are not thinking that.

So what can you do? On a *nix based system, there is a file called hosts.deny -- on Fedora it's at /etc/hosts.deny If you add an IP address or hostname to this file, that IP address will no longer be able to connect. So, all you have to do is get the IP address of the attacking machine into that file, and you'll block them.

What follows is how I do it -- it's not particularly clever, but I think it's generic enough that anyone else faced with this problem can adapt my method to their problems. You could use this for any service that keeps a log file that shows offending IP addresses.

On a *nix box, sshd (the program used to run ssh) is set up to log all important messages to /var/log/messages. This log file usually contains alot of other messages too, so it's important to filter out some of the noise before trying to process the file. In order to do that, I run the following command:
(I made it tiny so it will be one one line. You're gonna cut and paste it anyway)

cat /var/log/messages | grep "`date "+%b %e %H"`" | grep authentication | grep failure | grep sshd > /usr/local/hourlyssh.log

I'll break down what this does step by step

cat /var/log/messages --> prints out the entire messages file
| grep "`date "+%b %e %H"`" --> only include lines from this hour
| grep authentication --> only include lines with the word "authentication
| grep failure --> only include lines with the word "failure"
| grep sshd only --> include lines with the word "sshd"
> /usr/local/hourlyssh.log --> overwrite the hourlyssh log with the new results

After running that command, you've got only the lines you want in a file. Now you just have to parse the file to get out the IP addresses and add them to /etc/hosts.deny You could easily do this in a shell script, or in PERL or really any language you want. I'm doing it in Java because I believe that's the lowest common denominator.

Save the following as ~root/DenyAddress.java


import java.io.*;
import java.util.Hashtable;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;
import java.util.Enumeration;


public class DenyAddress {

 public static final String HOSTSDENY_PATH = "/etc/hosts.deny";
 public static final String HOURLYLOG_PATH = "/usr/local/hourlyssh.log";

 public static void main(String argv[]) {
   try {
     File fml = new File(HOURLYLOG_PATH);
     String line = null;
     Hashtable toBeBanned = new Hashtable();
     BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fml));
/*
 This assumes your log format looks like this:

 Aug  2 06:01:27 myserver sshd(pam_unix)[7402]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=64.6.244.66


 If it doesn't you'll have to parse the ip out of the log yourself.
*/

     while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
       StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(line, " ");
       while (st.hasMoreTokens()) {
         String token = st.nextToken();
         if (token.startsWith("rhost")) {
           String ip = token.substring(6);
           if (toBeBanned.get(ip) == null) {
             toBeBanned.put(ip, 0);
           }
           else {
       //keep track of how many failed attempts per ip address
             Integer i = (Integer) toBeBanned.get(ip);
             toBeBanned.put(ip, i + 1);
           }
         }
       }
     }
     //we're finished with reading toBeBanned
     Enumeration en = toBeBanned.keys();
     while (en.hasMoreElements()) {
       String ip = (String) en.nextElement();
       Integer val = (Integer) toBeBanned.get(ip);
       //only ban people with 3 or more failed login attempts
       if (val <= 3) {


          toBeBanned.remove(ip);

        }

        else {

          //do nothing;

        }

      }

      //now read from hosts.deny to make sure we don't add an address that's already banned

      fml = new File("/etc/hosts.deny");

      in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fml));

      while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {

        if (line.startsWith("#")) {

          //ignore

        }

        else {

          StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(line, ":");

          while (st.hasMoreTokens()) {

            if (st.countTokens() == 2) {

              st.nextToken();

              String nip = st.nextToken().trim();

              toBeBanned.remove(nip);

            }

          }

        }

      }

      //append onto the existing file;

      FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(fml, true);

      PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(fw);

      Enumeration en2 = toBeBanned.keys();

      StringBuffer bannedString = new StringBuffer();

      while (en2.hasMoreElements()) {

        String bip = (String) en2.nextElement();

        pw.println("ALL: " + bip);

        bannedString.append(" " + bip);

      }

      pw.flush();

      fw.flush();

      fw.close();

      if (bannedString.length() > 0) {
       //write banned addresses to syslog
       //you can omit this line if you don't need extra confirmation
       Runtime.getRuntime().exec("logger \"banning " + bannedString.toString() + "\"");
     }
   }
   catch (Exception e) {
     e.printStackTrace();  //run this a few times manually to see if it works for you
   }
 }
}

//END CODE

So now I've got the code that does what I want -- now I just have to rol it all together.

I make a shell script called denyaddresses and put it in ~root

#denyaddresses
echo `date`
cat /var/log/messages | grep "`date "+%b %e %H"`" | grep authentication | grep failure | grep sshd > /usr/local/hourlyssh.log
cd /root
java DenyAddress
echo " ";
echo " ";

compile DenyAddress.java in /root by doing

$JAVA_HOME/bin/javac -classpath . DenyAddress.java

then as root do a crontab -e and add the following line:

*/5 * * * * ~root/denyaddresses >> ~root/deny.log

Note that this must be run as root in order to edit the hosts.deny file

I've tried to make this relatively generic. Hopefully you'll be able to adapt this to your own needs. If not, post here, and I'm sure the community can help you out.

2005-10-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

Arlo Guthrie is playing in Boston on 11/15.

My music tastes are eclectic and broad. I'm going to see Arlo Guthrie down at Symphony Hall. It's a larger venue than I like to normally see him in, but I'm glad he's popular enough to fill it.

Arlo's a real working musician. He's out on the road ALOT and I respect the hell out of that. Like everyone who went to school in Austin, I was in a garage band for a while, and I always dream that someday I might hit the road again with a guitar.

I'm sure Arlo's gonna go off on the Iraq conflict, and tie it in to Alice's restaurant. But That's Arlo. He's a child of the 60's, and political dissent is one of the most important things that happens here in the US.

It's something we can all learn from that generation: the fact that popular will can on occasion trump unpopular leadership. I look on the Vietnam war as the wrong conflict. Of course I wasn't there, and I was only 7 (almost 8) when Saigon fell. But I feel very differently about the 2 conflicts -- to me Vietnam was senseless, Iraq is sensible.

I'm glad to have a dissenter like Arlo around though. I want my opinions on this to be challenged. The daily butcher's bill from around the globe DEMANDS that we daily take the time to consider whether we are undertaking the best course of action. So far I'm in complete agreement with the destination we're pursing, if not necessarily every turn in the road. Arlo does the Alice's restaurant bit every year in Boston right before Thanksgiving, so I'm planning on going and then having a feast that can't be beat! (That's some Arlo humor).

Seriously though, Arlo's an American Icon -- if you get a chance to see him, you should.

2005-06-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

My full time sportsblog, Sportsdot, is where I spend most of my time.

I do think I should be post more of my own stuff.

2005-03-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

RHAPSODY Link