OPML-to-Markdown Conversion Script

In this post, I’d like to share a script I wrote to help with converting Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) documents to Markdown. If you read the recent update on my Linux migration plans, you may recall that I identified OPML files (created in OmniOutliner) as an area where some work was going to be required. This script is the result of my efforts in this area.

<aside>Before I continue, I want to very briefly point out that this script was written to help in my specific use case. It’s quite likely that you’ll want or need to adjust the behaviors of this script in order to meet the needs of your particular use case.</aside>

This script takes advantage of two tools: pandoc and sed. pandoc is a third-party tool that is easily installed on Ubuntu using apt or apt-get. (I haven’t checked other Linux distributions, but I suspect packages are available there as well.) pandoc is also available for OS X, making it a very handy cross-platform tool to have in my toolchest. (See this post for more information on how you can use pandoc in a Markdown-heavy environment.) sed, of course, is a Continue reading

Book Report: Machete Season

Overview

Jean Hatzfeld’s Machete Season: the Killers in Rwanda Speak is a much different book than the Pol Pot history that I covered a couple of weeks ago. It’s harder to write about, because it’s just what the title describes: the killers in their own words, interspersed with short contextual explanations of the events surrounding the Rwandan genocide.

Hatzfeld – who has also written two books about the horrific Baltic wars of the 1990s – argues that many of what the mainstream media call genocides should be described as war crimes instead: brutal, unacceptable mass killings of defenseless humans that nonetheless take place in the the context of reducing a population’s ability to wage war. Genocide, he argues, is a term that should be reserved to describe an effort to completely exterminate a population and leave it incapable of ever recovering. In the Rwandan genocide, for example, the Hutu killers often preferred to murder women and children first, because it would leave the Tutsi population less capable of carrying on to the next generation.

History

Modern Rwanda has three main ethnic groups: the majority Hutu, the minority Tutsi, and a small population of Twa jungle-dwelling hunter-gatherers. At the time of Continue reading

Looking Ahead To The Next Platforms That Will Define 2017

The old Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times,” is supposed to be a curse, uttered perhaps with a wry smile and a glint in the eye. But it is also, we think, a blessing, particularly in an IT sector that could use some constructive change.

Considering how much change the tech market, and therefore the companies, governments, and educational institutions of the world, have had to endure in the past three decades – and the accelerating pace of change over that period – you might be thinking it would be good to take a breather, to coast for …

Looking Ahead To The Next Platforms That Will Define 2017 was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Pot dispensary IT director asks for help after tracking system software was hacked

Of course, in the digital world, anyone can claim to be anyone. Yet a person claiming to be the IT director of a medical marijuana dispensary took to Slashdot in hopes of receiving legal advice after the point of sale system the MMJ used was hacked.Denver-based MJ Freeway, a medical marijuana “seed-to-sale” tracking software company experienced a “service interruption” – that turned out to be a hack – a week ago on January 8. The hack of the point-of-sale system left more than 1,000 retail cannabis clients in 23 states unable to track sales and inventories. Without a way to keep records in order to comply with state regulations, some dispensaries shut down, while others reverted to tracking sales via pen and paper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pot dispensary IT director asks for help after tracking system software was hacked

Of course, in the digital world, anyone can claim to be anyone. Yet a person claiming to be the IT director of a medical marijuana dispensary took to Slashdot in hopes of receiving legal advice after the point of sale system the MMJ used was hacked.Denver-based MJ Freeway, a medical marijuana “seed-to-sale” tracking software company experienced a “service interruption” – that turned out to be a hack – a week ago on January 8. The hack of the point-of-sale system left more than 1,000 retail cannabis clients in 23 states unable to track sales and inventories. Without a way to keep records in order to comply with state regulations, some dispensaries shut down, while others reverted to tracking sales via pen and paper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arris in bid for Brocade network unit: sources | Reuters

Arris wants to buy the Ruckus wireless business.

Arris is looking to buy Brocade’s network edge business, which is the most valuable of the assets being sold, according to the sources. Arris is not in talks to buy other parts of the business being divested by Brocade that include data centers, switching and software, the sources added.

Apparently talks to buy other parts of the business in whole or part are not working out.

Broadcom had divided up Brocade’s divestiture into three pieces after an earlier deal to sell the whole business to a private equity firm fell apart late last year, according to the sources. A private equity firm could still step up to buy all three pieces, the people said.

Arris in bid for Brocade network unit: sources | Reuters

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Response: Codec 2 700C | Rowetel

Acceptable quality open source voice codec in 700 bps

My endeavor to produce a digital voice mode that competes with SSB continues. For a big chunk of 2016 I took a break from this work as I was gainfully employed on a commercial HF modem project. However since December I have once again been working on a 700 bit/s codec. The goal is voice quality roughly the same as the current 1300 bit/s mode. This can then be mated with the coherent PSK modem, and possibly the 4FSK modem for trials over HF channels.

Codec 2 700C | Rowetel

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Response: Site Reliability Engineering – Medium

Four rules for SRE:

1. Always Know When It’s Broken
2. Avoid Global Changes
3. Moving Traffic Is Faster Than Fixing
4. Make Your Mitigations Normal

Good rules, can’t argue with this as starting point. The devil in the detail of all of these and Enterprise IT does none of them.

Site Reliability Engineering – Medium:

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Moving to a Single Domain

For various reasons, I’m changing my DNS provider; the new provider will not support the .guru TLD, so I’m going to drop it, and just stick with rule11.us. I think most folks are pointing to rule11.us anyway, but I thought I’d post this here so you’d see if it not.

The post Moving to a Single Domain appeared first on 'net work.

Moving to a Single Domain

For various reasons, I’m changing my DNS provider; the new provider will not support the .guru TLD, so I’m going to drop it, and just stick with rule11.us. I think most folks are pointing to rule11.us anyway, but I thought I’d post this here so you’d see if it not.

The post Moving to a Single Domain appeared first on 'net work.

Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite ERLite-3 Board Detail

I ran a Ubiquiti Edge Router Lite as my home firewall for a couple of years. The box had a nice GUI with CLI option, and had no problem keeping up with my > 100Mbps Internet connection. The box died after a lengthy power failure that drained the large UPS buffering electrons in my basement equipment rack.

I’m not sure what happened to the ERLite-3, but it’s as dead as the bird in the Python parrot sketch. The firewalls appears to boot. The lights come on, etc. However, the box passes no traffic and responds to no ARP requests. I can get no serial console output from it. I even tried a full factory reset, to no effect.

Until its early death, the little firewall had a trouble-free two year run. For $99 spent according to my Amazon order history, I don’t feel too badly about the loss.

Before throwing it in the bin, I decided to open it up and take a look at the mainboard. Here’s a notated picture for you. Enjoy.

Click image to BIGGIFY and see cropped text.

UPDATES

1. My thanks to @williamhulley for correcting the first version of this diagram.
2. @Brownout suggests that the firewall might have bricked due to a problem with the Continue reading

Maximum route metric on Linux

Ever wondered what is the maximum route metric value you can configure on Linux? man interface and man ip state that route metric is a number, but don’t specify its range.

# ip route add 192.168.113.0/24 via 10.0.10.1 metric 0
# ip route add 192.168.113.0/24 via 10.0.10.1 metric 4294967295
# ip route add 192.168.113.0/24 via 10.0.10.1 metric 4294967296
Error: argument "4294967296" is wrong: "metric" value is invalid

# ip route
192.168.113.0/24 via 10.0.10.1 dev eth0
192.168.113.0/24 via 10.0.10.1 dev eth0  metric 4294967295

It looks like Linux route metric is an unsigned 32-bit integer, ranging from 0 to 4294967295. As you already know a route with the lowest metric is preferred.

Getting started with TMUX

This is one of those ‘I must be living under a rock’ things.  I’m not sure how I’ve never heard of TMUX before but it’s really pretty awesome.  I initially came across it when searching for a way to share a terminal session with another user.  It does that quite well but it’s also a great terminal session manager allowing for pane, window, and session management.  Let’s take a look at a quick example to show you what I mean.

Here we have a server called ‘tmuxtest’.  The server already has TMUX on it by default but if it’s not there you can easily install it (sudo apt-get install tmux, etc).  So let’s say I want to start a new session.  The easiest way to do this is to just type ‘tmux’..

Now we’re in TMUX.  We are in what’s called a ‘session’.  The session can contain multiple panes and multiple windows.  For instance, if I wanted to create a second pane I could do by pressing ‘Ctrl-b + %’…

Notice that the screen on the right, the new one, has a green boarder around it.  That’s my active screen.  Now if I want to split this screen horizontally Continue reading

Turning best practice into capacity building for community networks development

Cisco Live Berlin

I will be speaking at the CCDE Techtorial at Cisco Live in Berlin February 20-24 (just a few short weeks away)! Come by and hang out, or meet Elaine and I for lunch on Tuesday to talk about the CCDE.

The post Cisco Live Berlin appeared first on 'net work.

Cisco Live Berlin

I will be speaking at the CCDE Techtorial at Cisco Live in Berlin February 20-24 (just a few short weeks away)! Come by and hang out, or meet Elaine and I for lunch on Tuesday to talk about the CCDE.

The post Cisco Live Berlin appeared first on 'net work.

Large Scale Network Design

The post Large Scale Network Design appeared first on 'net work.

Large Scale Network Design

The post Large Scale Network Design appeared first on 'net work.

Promoting Wikipedia as an Open Educational Resource in Uganda

Packet loss with Fast Reroute

Packet loss with Fast Reroute Do we still lose packet with fast reroute? One of my students asked me this question. And I would like to share the answer with everyone. Before we discuss whether or not we lose packet with fast reroute mechanisms, let’s remember what fast reroute is. It is pertinent to know […]

The post Packet loss with Fast Reroute appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.