I have long wanted to remove the sidebar on this blog. Today, the compulsion gnawed at me all day, and so I did.

Suddenly, the content takes center stage, and having nothing except these posts on the page is like a breath of fresh air.

I like it.

Because it becomes less about who writes the words or takes the image than what is written or captured, and because it represents the first step towards the eventuality that hangs in the air. To you, it may be merely a design tweak. A random one, even.

But if you know me well enough, you’ll know I don’t do random. Something is brewing on the horizon…

Following his perfectly acceptable performance against [insert team], there has been talk of [insert player name] playing his way into the England squad for next year’s World Cup in South Africa.

Speaking after the match, with the potent combination of sweat and adrenaline still coursing through his cerebral cortex [insert player name] said “If I can keep up this run, then who knows? It’s not up to me to decide. That would involve a radical restructuring of the England setup. I just hope that Mr Capello was watching”.  Although the England manager was at the game, it is believed that he left too early to see [insert player name]’s late contribution to the game, which included a speculative shot from 4 yards out which narrowly grazed a steward.

Seemingly confusing Fabio Capello as some kind of Jimmy Saville figure, the striker/midfielder/utility sweeper said that “it would be a dream for me to play in the World Cup. I have thought about it ever since I was a child growing up in Liverpool/Manchester/Pamplona”.

The player’s manager, [insert manager name], was similarly effusive in his praise for his player. “[Insert player name] just has to keep doing what he is doing – working hard in training, taking his chances, and remembering to say that it was all down to me whenever a camera is put anywhere near his uncomprehending face. And certainly to never mention the amount of cash that I had to give his agent for him to even contemplate coming here in the first place”.

"Noun. Noun. Nooooun"

Later on Match of the Day, Alan Hansen spoke glowingly of [insert player name]. “Today’s game showed it all. We’ve been talking about him for weeks, or at the very least Mark Lawrenson will say he has and make that silly little noise that means “Ee, I’m exasperated, me“. Gary will then ask a rhetorical, self-reflexive question about [insert player name]. And I will roll my eyes. Look, the boy’s got it all. Attitude. Ability. Anonymity”.

This was the first-ever elimination chamber match for the World Heavyweight Championship.

November 17, 2002
Survivor Series
Triple H (c*), Shawn Michaels, Rob Van Dam, Chris Jericho, Kane and Booker T.

*(c) means champion going into the match

WWE – Elimination Chamber SS
Uploaded by AntiFlag607.

Ok so I’m an Arsenal fan so you might think I’m bias and maybe I am. But as I’ve grown older I’ve noticed there seems to be a lot of hate for Arsenal in the media. First of there doesn’t seem to be many former Arsenal players in the media giving their opinions, while every other pundit seems to be a former Liverpool or Spurs player. The BBC have Alan Hanson and Mark Lawerson as the main pundits on Match of the Day, both former Liverpool players. Their bias towards Liverpool is so glaringly obvious a blind, deaf and dumb guy could see it. Having said that they do have Martin Keown and Lee Dixon on MOTD 2 quite often. Sky Sports follow a similar theme of former Liverpool and Spurs pundits. This isn’t my main issue however.

The main problem I have with the media is the inconsistency the media have in reporting. Take the Eduardo dive for example, they way the media ripped into him you’d have thought he’d been the first person to dive in the history in football. But then in the Man Utd – Arsenal (2-1), the same week! Rooney wins a penalty with what can only be described as a dive. He was at a 45 degree angle before Almunia even considered touching him for christ sakes. Does anybody mention this? No, they talk about how Almunia shouldn’t have rushed out, ignoring the facts entirely. Later on in the game Eboue then takes a dive, at which moment the commentators suddenly come to life to talk about how much of a disgrace it is. They’re right, diving is a disgrace, but for gods sake man your meant to be impartial! How can you clearly ignore one dive and then feature the other one so much! And then a week later the commentators spend the entire England – Croatia game (5-1) talking about his dive instead of the match.

I don’t know 100% why the media do this, it might be the pundits of former rival clubs stirring up trouble, it might be the producers of the shows, the journalists who write for the papers. There are a number of people, me among them, who think it goes down to the lack of English players Arsenal field. Think about it, Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard, Owen are all known English divers. They do it quite often, but the media look the other way so they can talk about the foreigners who do it. Drogba, Ronaldo, Eduardo, Eboue and Pires for example.

This was a great tag team match in a steel cage with CM Punk as the guest referee. Enjoy!

Smackdown! June 26, 2009

Jeff Hardy and Rey Mysterio vs Edge and Chris Jericho.

Steel Cage Tag Team Match

Special Guest Referee: CM Punk

Jeff hardy & rey vs Edge & Y2J Rage in a cage 26 / 06 / 09
Uploaded by rwandral. – Discover the latest sports and extreme videos.

Match of the Day or MOTD is something I will try to do everyday. Basically it means that I am going to post an Awesome match everyday from either WWE, WCW or TNA. For the first MOTD I have decided to show you one of the greatest matches of all time.

April 5, 2009

Wrestlemania 25

Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker

Part 1:
Wrestlemania 25 The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels … – MyVideo Schweiz

Part 2:
Wrestlemania 25 The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels … – MyVideo Schweiz

Part 3:
Wrestlemania 25 The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels … – MyVideo Schweiz

Part 4:
Wrestlemania 25 The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels … – MyVideo Schweiz

Part 5:
Wrestlemania 25 The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels … – MyVideo Schweiz

There’s something about this P2 theme that I like. Maybe it’s because the default font is Helvetica Neue, or maybe it’s the Twitter-inspired look and feel.

The P2 theme is really nice from a blog author’s point-of-view, with its AJAX-like live updates of posts and comments, and the post box up there at the top of the main body is really nifty.

But I was just alerted to the fact that this theme doesn’t scale well when viewed on the iPhone; you can’t double-tap to zoom in and out. Bugger.

The screengrab on the left shows how the P2 theme loads in Mobile Safari. It doesn’t reflow to fit the iPhone screen, and double-tapping to zoom out doesn’t work, unlike the Sandbox theme as seen in the screengrab on the right.

I’ll leave this on for a couple of days and see if the cannot-zoom-in-iPhone problem bugs me or not. Considering how I blog from only my iPhone these days, it probably will.

Fuck it; the inability to zoom is really annoying, so it’s back to the old theme. That, and the fact that all of you have made it loud and clear your dislike of the new theme. But I’m liking Helvetica Neue too much I’m slipping it into the previous layout.

Ok, business as usual…

This poll is now closed since I’ve already reverted to the previous layout.

Thank you all for the feedback.

Hoje tirei o dia para alterar e melhorar minhas configurações dos 5 servidores Linux que administro.

Uma das alterações que eu queria fazer era da mensagem de logon do serviço de SSH.

Encontrei algumas informações sobre alteração dessa mensagem, mas no final encontrei um artigo em um blog´s (não gravei o endereço, infelizmente) e me ajudou muito.

Abaixo segue as alterações, talvez ajude alguém.

Para alterar a mensagem que aparece, logo depois de colocar o usuário para acesso ao SSH é necessário mudar o texto do arquivo: /etc/issue.net (Pode colocar qualquer texto).

Eu particularmente coloquei um texto não muito amigável para o caso de algum intruso tentar acessar.

Imagem que aparece depois de digitar um usuário válido:

Arquivo de mensagem do SSH

Já para alterar a mensagem que aparece depois que o usuário colocou a senha e já vai ter acesso ao prompt de comando, tem que alterar o conteúdo do arquivo /etc/motd (Neste arquivo coloquei uma mensagem de LastLogon e o nome do servidor, como administro alguns servidores em localidades diferentes, fica mais fácil de identificar).

Imagem que aparece depois de digitar usuário e senha válido:

Arquivo de mensagem após logon SSH

Para visualizar o log de acessos ao serviço de SSH o arquivo é /var/log/auth.log

Espero que ajude alguém, se tiver dúvida/sugestão, manda um comentário.

To each and everyone who has written in requesting the password to those protected entries, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. Those posts are for my eyes only.

So why post them onto the main page? It’s for my convenience, really.

In some rare instances, some of them will be for a select few. If you are one of them, you’d already know the password.

If you see a couple of posts bearing an author name other than my own, don’t worry; my blog hasn’t been hijacked.

Mr. John Bickerstaff, an iPhone developer who has joined the WordPress for iPhone development team, has graciously offered to help me trace down a configuration problem that I’m facing with the app, so he’ll be poking around here a bit for a couple of days.

It’s business as usual.

Przepis na troszkę inny motd (message of the day).

Zawartość pliku /etc/motd jest wyświetlana użytkownikowi po poprawnym zalogowaniu się do systemu.

Poniższy opis, przedstawia jak zmienić motd na troszkę ładniejsze, pokazujące więcej informacji niż standardowe.

Instalacja

Instalujemy pakiet linuxmotd

apt-get install linuxlogo

Możemy teraz dostosować jak ma wyglądać nowy motd. Wpisując linux_logo, zobaczymy domyślny układ, który wygląda jak poniżej:

Pełną listę opcji otrzymujemy wpisując linux_logo -h

Gdy wybraliśmy jak ma wyglądać nasz motd, wpisujemy:

clear > /etc/motd

# PRZYKŁADOWO -u – pokaż uptime, -y – pokaż obciążenie systemu
linux_logo -u -y >> /etc/motd

Teraz, logujemy się ponownie na serwer i powinniśmy zobaczyć nasz nowy motd

Przywracanie nowego motd po restarcie systemu

Za tworzenie motd odpowiedzialny jest plik /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh

 # Update motd
uname -snrvm > /var/run/motd
[ -f /etc/motd.tail ] && cat /etc/motd.tail >> /var/run/motd

Piszemy sobie skrypt tworzący motd:

Przykład: vi /usr/local/bin/make-motd

#!/bin/bash
clear > /etc/motd
linux_logo -u -y >> /etc/motd

Aby nasz nowy motd nie był nadpisywany, wystarczy za-komentować te 2 linie i dodać nasz skrypt

# Update motd
#       uname -snrvm > /var/run/motd
#       [ -f /etc/motd.tail ] && cat /etc/motd.tail >> /var/run/motd
        /usr/local/bin/make-motd

Aktualizacja motd

W przypadku gdy nasz motd pokazuje uptime lub obciążenie systemu, przydatne będzie aktualizowanie tych wartośc w czasie gdy system jest włączony.

Najprościej stworzyć nowy wpis w cronie, który np. co 5 minut będzie nam tworzyć motd z nowymi wartościami.

Przykładowy wpis:

*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/make-motd

Public relations within football is a rudimentary part of keeping the celebrity status sports millionaires in touch with the rest of the world, whether it be press conferences, post match interviews or shirt signing days at clubs. It keeps fans of the beloved game up to date on the personal views and feelings of the games managers, players and even the big men upstairs in the boardrooms. It’s a way of communicating with some of the most loyal fans of sport, in the world, for some people football is not just a sport, or ‘their team’ to them, but a religion that they live by; through thick and thin. PR is hugely important to the fans that live their lives by the game, it is their link to the team they love, gaining access to information aplenty, that they would not be able to gain if it wasn’t for a clubs PR capabilities.

Most clubs will give out a lot of their information via interviews, press conferences and releases, usually directly from the managers and top players in most instances, there are a few exceptions however. One high profile manager that will not speak to a large media outlet; is Alex Ferguson of course. Fergie will not speak to the BBC and was furious for some time after a BBC documentary from 2004, titled ‘Father and Son’, which portrayed his agent son, Jason, as somebody who exploited his father’s influence and position within the game. The documentary portrayed Ferguson junior in the ‘wrong light’ and still to this day will not speak to the BBC, the legendary Scottish manager labelled the BBC; “arrogant beyond belief” and that has an “inability to apologise”, these remarks came from back in 2007, but still today he will not be seen talking to the BBC post match, his assistant will always be the one talking.

Ferguson is not the only manager in the game that refuses to communicate with the British media magnate. Blackburn’s Sam Allardyce and Spurs’ Harry Redknapp both, at one stage declined to talk with the broadcaster, following allegations made about them in a Panorama programme into “alleged malpractice in football transfers”. Personally I feel they have taken their stance the ‘Beeb’ but for the good of the supporters who look up to them so much, should break their silence and stop being so petty… Although Redknapp has been seen on MOTD once recently speaking, after the Spurs V Sunderland match.

New rules passed last month in November by the Premier League though; will force all three managers to once again speak to the BBC in post match interviews, as well as interviews with BBC Radio Five Live. The new rules to be brought in next season, could also force Fergie to give interviews to the written press, as he is still today the only manager in the Premiership who refuses to talk with journo’s…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/05_may/25/fergie_son.shtml

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/ferguson-will-never-talk-to-the-bbc-again-401487.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/manutd/6570541/Sir-Alex-Ferguson-will-be-forced-to-speak-to-the-BBC-under-new-Premier-League-rules.html

I’ve noticed the post about fixing the lag in Prototype has had quite a lot of hits since I’ve made it, so why not carry on by helping out by posting fixes to other annoying problems I’ve found?

I’m updating from my PC rather than my mobile broadband today, too.

A couple of fixes for Team Fortress 2 this time, these two are the only bad ones I’ve run into so far.

Fix invisible players

First off, the invisible bug. This usually happens after alt-tabbing out of the game and then back in. Most players will still be visible, but if you’re lucky enough, you’ll be killed by an invisible player. A tried and tested method of fixing this is to just restart the game, but why do that if there’s an easier way? You need not get a car rental to go buy a new PC!

1. If you already have the developer console enabled and bound to a key, skip to step 4
2. Go to Options -> Keyboard tab.
3. In the list of keyboard bindings, bind a button to toggle developer console.
4. Next time you get killed by an invisible person, open the console and type “record demo”, hit enter, then type “stop” and hit enter again. This is generally used for recording your game as a movie onto your hard drive – but it seems to fix the invisible issue too.

I’ve noticed that alt-tabbing also renders textures in the game purple sometimes, I’m afraid the only way I’ve seen to fix this is to restart the game (although changing server might work) or wait for a map swap.

Fix MotD and welcome message crashing/freezing

I was the only one who had this problem, but it gave me major headaches. I searched for ways to fix it, but there didn’t seem to be many people having the same problem back when I tried.

When you join a server, a message of the day or welcome screen will show up, this is usually a HTML page embedded into the game which can have pictures, music… anything HTML related. My laptop really didn’t like this, so it crashed nearly every time I joined a server, forcing me to CTRL+ALT+DEL.

One of the methods I first tried was to uninstall Internet Explorer (which I don’t use) from my Vista. This still might work, but it didn’t for me because IE seems to be intertwined with the version of the OS I have, and is impossible to uninstall in any way (no menu icons, not in control panel). I then resorted to setting IE to offline mode, this was pretty much a band aid fix, as the game minimized every time I joined a server and made me click ‘Stay offline’ about 6 times, and still crashed now and then.

The last method worked perfectly, and turns off everything that is HTML about the MotD. Yes, I do feel like an idiot for not seeing it before.

1. Go into Options -> Multiplayer tab.
2. Click Advanced.
3. Scroll down the list until you see ‘Disable HTML MotDs’ and check it.

There’s also some other helpful options here, like setting the medic gun to always heal your target instead of having to hold it down, auto reloads and auto scopes.

It’s been an absolute age since I updated Challenge Lawro. For those that can’t remember, we’re taking on ‘expert’ pundit Mark Lawrenson at the predictions game. Also playing is the Football Guy. 30 points for a perfect score, 10 for a correct result and -10 if you’re wrong. We made a good start but are now lagging behind. The shame…

.

Challenge Lawro Week 10 - Very bad.

Challenge Lawro Week 11 - Not bad not good.

Challenge Lawro Week 12 - Bad.

Challenge Lawro Week 12 - Alright actually.

Challenge Lawro Week 14 - Quite bad again.

Challenge Lawro Week 15 - Here's hoping...

.

For what it’s worth Sportboy P is slightly more responsible for our shitness as even though he gets less wrong and more right overall, I get more on the money.

.

Sportboy T:

Correct Results: 24 (240 points)

Perfect Scores: 8 (240 points)

Wrong results: 36 (-360 points)

Total: 120 points

.

Sportboy P:

Correct Results: 30 (300 points)

Perfect Scores: 4 (120 points)

Wrong results: 34 (-340 points)

Total: 80 points

.

T.

I know that I just posted, but I also just thought of something. I thought that every day I could write a small little excerpt of my daily life telling a Moment of The Day for at least a half a year………….. so that is 182 days-ish. If they get good response I will write more, say for another 182-ish days. And guess what, that makes a year! Whether it be during school or on the weekends. (But please understand) I might not be able to write a MOTD because of homework, projects, studying, etc. If you understand what I mean, Thank You.

Day 1-

It was in a dark, boring classroom (I think you will be hearing about this classroom a lot). I was in biology, second period, and me and my friend had to make a poster comparing birds and reptiles and also stating their differences. I drew a very good picture of a bird, made of many different colors (green beak, orange head, red tail, blues body, & purple feathers). When it came to drawing the lizard, (These pictures were optional by the way), I started with a sort of spoon like head with a red little slithering tongue coming out of his head. Then it came to the difficulty of drawing the body, the slithery part, I awkwardly drew a round, bulgy, male organ type shape. OOPS! It was hilarious! We both started cracking up. Im glad it wasn’t TOO noticeable after I drew some legs on it and presented it to my whole class.

It was my friend Stuarts birthday last friday (30th Nov), a group of us went round his for drinks, conversations and games. As I result of this I end up crashing on his sofa the night, and after waking up and playing yet more Mario Kart Wii (best Wii game ever) we watched the lunch time kick off of the London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham.

Now if you’ve read my blog before you might know that I’m an Arsenal fan. I have been since I was 7, when one of my best friends in lower school suggested I support them. So I did. However even though I do support Arsenal I don’t watch that many of their matches, or many football matches for that matter. Not because I don’t want to, its because I don’t have sky. I don’t watch many matches in pubs either. Again not because I don’t want to, but because the majority of my ‘football’ friends have moved away to University.

So because of this I often have to depend on Match of the Day to show me footage of the matches. But Saturday I found myself watching the match live and it was great. Arsenal obviously won 3-0, the goals were mainly down to dreadful defending from Tottenham. But I’d still say a deserved victory for the Gunners, although…bias maybe? That evening I decided I’d like to watch the highlights again, so tuned into Match of the Day. Now Harry Redknapp (Tottenham manager) thinks there ‘wasn’t a good goal between them’ and up until their calamitous 43rd minute, in which Tottenham conceded twice, they had Arsenal ‘where they wanted them’. I don’t really agree with that, I’d personally say “Tottenham were quite lucky to have 11 players on the pitch at the time when they conceded”. I’m talking about David Bentley, who within the first 15 minutes had, a blatant handball let off (could easily be a yellow card) and then a couple of minutes later he went through Thomas Vermaelen like a hot knife through butter.

This was a big topic in discussion round Stuarts house for sometime in the first half. However, when I watched the highlights on MOTD it wasn’t shown or mentioned at all. In honesty this isn’t that big of a deal, we won and I’m happy about it. But it got me thinking, how many more moments in games that I would class as ‘big’ are edited out and how much of the football matches story am I missing watching highlights on Match of The Day?

Ein Terminal ist doch etwas schönes!

Man kommt auf jeden Fall in den Rausch der “schwarz-grünen” Vergangenheit.

Unter OS X sind diese Zeiten aber auch noch nicht ganz vorbei. Man hat die Möglichkeit von Haus aus schon viel zu personalisieren und zu ändern.

Transparenz, Farben, Schrift…

Reicht mir aber nicht!

Es gibt ein paar nette Tricks um sein Terminal zu individualisieren.

Nummer 1: Erstellen einer motd

Das Erstellen einer motd ( message of the day ) ermöglicht einem, individuell begrüßt zu werden, wenn man das Terminal öffnet. Zum Beispiel mit einem ASCII – Grafik oder Schriftzug.

Eigentlich eine ganz einfache Geschichte.

Im Terminal den Befehl : sudo pico /etc/motd

ausführen und den gewünschten Text einsetzte/hineinschreiben. Wer eine ASCII Grafik oder Schriftzug haben möchte, kann mit ASCII Art geholfen werden. Einzig die Benutzung von pico (Editor) könnte dem ein oder anderen Probleme bereiten. Um zu Speichern bzw. pico zu Beenden einfach <ctrl + x> drücken und den Anweisungen folgen.

VISOR

So jetzt sieht das schon mal nicht schlecht aus! Aber was mich nach wie vor etwas stört …gerade wenn man in einem Editor arbeitet und alle Nase lang auf die Console zurück greifen muss… der Fensterwechsel.

Expose biete eine gute Lösung um zwischen Fenstern hin und her zu wechseln, aber erfordert wieder die Nutzung einer Maus.

Cool wäre es doch,

wenn das Terminal von der Apfel Menüleiste herunter slidet, über die komplette Bildschirmbreite und auf Knopfdruck, versteht sich.

Hier hilft ein kleines Toll mit dem Namen Simbl.

Moto : Patch the application myself

Das Tool ermöglicht das einbinden gewisser Bundles um Applikationen zu modifizieren. Genau das machen wir jetzt mit dem Teminal.

Einfach SIMBL hier herunterladen und installieren. (Es gibt den Download für Verschiedene OS X Versionen also die richtige herunterladen)

Nun fehlt nur noch das entsprechende Bundle, das wir für das Terminal verwenden wollen…

Dazu einfach Visor herunterladen und die Datei in den Ordner

kopieren.

So einfach nur noch das Terminal neustarten und bewundern.

Das Terminal kann jetzt immer über die Tastenkombination  ctrl + < aufgerufen werden und slidet dann schön von dem Apfel Menü nach unten.

Nun hat man die Möglichkeit die Einstellungen bezüglich Visor einfach in den Einstellungen des Terminals zu ändern und farblich so anzupassen wie man es gerne hätte. Die Transparenz des Terminals kann man, durch das Wählen einer Farbe zu ändern.

Probiert es aus! Ihr könnt wenn es euch nicht gefällt jederzeit wieder löschen!