WonkoTheSane's New Writeups

O'Reilly (thing)

2002-11-25T23:21:47Z

Most ~~people~~ geeks, when asked to articulate their thoughts about the series of symbols "O'REILLY", will immediately put forth one thought: animals on the front of rocking computer books. They are right, but believe it or not, O'Reilly did not start as a publishing company!

History
In 1978, Tim O'Reilly founded O'Reilly & Associates, which functioned at first as a technical writing consulting company. The first twinkle of the star that was to become the O'Reilly Publishing Press shined in 1984, when the company retained the rights to the manuals they were creating for Unix vendors. The fruit of their labor paid off one year later, when a drop in demand prompted the company to publish their materials as independent books.

These first books were what are now called Nutshell books - very short quasi-pamphlets that detail the basics of a subject. As demand fluctuated, O'Reilly continued to…

fireworks (idea)

2002-11-22T01:07:19Z

In Russia, they have fireworks too -- they put you up against the wall and yell "FIRE!" It works.

-- Yakov Smirnoff

Definition from WordNet:

firework, pyrotechnics -- ((usually plural) an explosive device that burns with colored flames)

Fireworks are pyrotechnic devices. That is, the general idea is this: You light a fuse, wait a few seconds, and something goes flash and/or bang.

Note that "fireworks" can refer to either the individual combustible units or to a display of such units being ignited.

First, I'll recommend that you check out the excellent node explosion in case you don't fully understand what an explosion actually is. While it's not necessary to understanding this writeup, it will be helpful in understanding what happens after you light that fuse.

…

LaunchBar (thing)

2002-11-21T02:14:31Z

The Bare Facts:

Software Title: LaunchBar
Developer: Objective Development ( www.obdev.at )
Platform: Mac OS X / NeXTSTEP
Genre: System Utility / Productivity
License / Price: Shareware, ~~$25~~ $20
WonkoRating: Upvote, C!

All right. Take a moment to shift your focus from Everythingto 2 that most barren of wastelands, your hard drive. Now, if you've used a computer for any length of time, you've probably set up some shortcuts on your computer to allow you access certain files with a minimum of overhead. Fair enough.

Now imagine that you can access anything on your hard drive.

Instantly.…

ipfw (thing)

2002-11-19T22:50:46Z

Some context, (remotely) relevant links: firewall, ipchains, ipmasq, ip, TCP/IP, port, NAT, router, switch, proxy, subnet mask

Although this writeup will discuss only the computer-centric definition of "ipfw", I should note that IPFW also stands for Indiana University-Perdue University Fort Wayne. http://www.ipfw.edu. See also Fort Wayne, Indiana and Indiana University. Now then, lets get down and dirty, shall we?

Great Walls of Fire!:

ipfw is a software firewall (Internet Protocol FireWall) distributed on many *nixes (BSD variants, Darwin (e.g. Mac OS X), etc. Linux has iptables and ipchains).

Well, technically, it's a "user-land control utility to ipfirewall and dummynet." Bah. Although a rather more in-depth writeup…

November 19, 2002 (place)

2002-11-19T05:59:44Z

dmd came over last weekend with his girlfriend, Anna, and a friend named Caitlin. I had met both girls online, but never face-to-face contact. It was a busy Sunday; the first thing out of dmd's mouth when he got here was "Entertain me!"

After sufficient pleasantries and, most importantly, a nice lunch ("FOOD ME!"), we agreed to go to Longwood Gardens. Just an easy day of walking around, looking at the pretty trees and plants and talking.

It's incredibly refreshing to hang around really intelligent, quirky people, in real life, compared to the people I'm used to being around at school. And now for something completely different. Because of the way ticket prices are laid out, my ticket in to the Gardens was two dollars while Daniel's was fourteen. I pointed out to the girls that I was…

November 17, 2002 (person)

2002-11-17T02:40:59Z

Whoooaaa! Wheeee! It's been quite a while since I've posted here. My on-again, off-again relationship with E2 looks like it's ON AGAIN, and hopefully it'll stay this way for good. School has finally settled down into a somewhat predictable rythm, so prospects for staying look good. Hee hee hee! I'm glad the Honor Roll way finally put into place, even though I don't benefit...yet.

For what it's worth, dannye has redeemed himself in my eyes. Perhaps an explanation should be given. Let me tell you a story... When I first got here, a year or so ago, I stumbled across a one liner writeup, no longer here, written in 2000, by a fairly well-known user. I, having been a good newbie and read the FAQs in some depth, noted that the posted rules on writeup nuke submission went something thus:

Submit writeups under this node that you think should be deleted, along with a good reason.

Well, I figured, what with the current stance on one-liners,…