Michael Lucas’s “BSD Needs Books” talk from NYCBSDCon 2010, on Youtube.  I’ve talked about it before because I saw it in person; it’s a good talk.  Ironically, he talks about getting a publisher interested in your book, and he just self-published.

Hubert Feyrer linked to the slides of two pkgsrc talks at FOSDEM; one about bringing pkgsrc to MirBSD, and one about pkgin, which is included in DragonFly.

It’s a very straightforward book.  The introduction opens with a promise not to waste space showing how to compile OpenSSH in text.  Chapter 2 ends with the sentence, “Now that you understand how SSH encryption works, leave the encryption settings alone.”  This stripping-down of the usual tech-book explanations gives it the immediacy of extended documentation on the Internet.  Not the multipage how-to articles used as vehicles for advertising, but an in-depth presentation from someone who used OpenSSH to do a number of things, and paid attention while doing it.

It’s a fun read, and there’s a good chance it covers an aspect of SSH that you didn’t know.  In my case, it’s the ability to attach a command to a public key used for login.  It even covers complex-but-oh-so-useful VPN setups via SSH.

If you’re looking for philosophical reasons to buy it, how about the lack of DRM?

The physical version is not available yet, but the electronic version is available at Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), or from Smashwords (every other format ever, including .txt).  The Smashwords variety of formats means that you’ll be able to read it on your phone, one way or another; I’d like to see more books that way in the future.

• I’ve linked to this site before, but not this specific feature: History of UNIX manpages.   Part of the formatting that makes up man pages dates back to 1964!  ‘roff’ comes from RUNOFF, the original markup!  This is the perfect mix of history, nerditry, and language for me.
• Hubert Feyrer says there should be BSD Certification training material.  I agree.
• That’s the spiffiest TWM I’ve ever seen, and it’s on DragonFly.  Found at the same place: Bash.
• Hey, Michael Lucas is planning for his next book!
• Developer error HTTP status codes.  (via)  What’s the geekiest joke I can still find funny?
• I like it when computers look like serious computers.  (via luxh on #dragonflybsd)

Your totally unrelated video link of the week: The Necronomicon.  Pitch perfect.

• Here’s some interesting ideas on improving the standard terminal window.  (via)
• Hey, a Windows Phone application that aggregates BSD news!  Including this one, I think.  No way to test it because Windows Phones are rarer than hen’s teeth.
• This article about Bruce Perens has some good quotes in it – especially the Mark Shuttleworth one.  (via)
• I think these computers all predate the integrated circuit.  (via)
• How Google Code Search Worked.  (via)
• The Rise and Fall of Personal Computing.  (via)  I don’t think the numbers used are accurate, but the trend is correct: a lot more people are computing through devices that are “walled gardens”, where they can’t install what they want.
• The App Store Guide – Take Two.  It boils down to: Curated information on what programs to run is very useful.  Someone could do this with pkgsrc or ports, easily.  pkgsrc.se is sorta there, but not really with any sort of authorial voice.
• Variable typing can be surprisingly funny.  (via)  The final punchline is great but may not make sense unless you’ve seen where it comes from.
• Network jokes are the bestest jokes.  (via)

Your unrelated comics link for the week: Tom Neely‘s Doppelganger.  Page 11 is my favoritest.

Another unrelated thing: David Shao, are you out there?  Can you get on IRC (EFNet #dragonflybsd) and help some people out with GEM/KMS questions?  Nobody’s been able to find you.

• Jeff Vogel, who is a funny and smart guy, wrote this article, essentially about crowdsourcing.  It’s another way of saying “bikeshed“.  Plus: D&D!
• Michael Lucas, sometimes BSD author, has a new fiction collection out.  He’s working on a SSH book too.
• Hey, AsiaBSDCon is coming up in March, BSDCan in May.  I don’t know about EuroBSDCon or NYCBSDCon, though.  Plan ahead!
• Did you know there’s a bsd.org?  Very old-school: here’s a list of commands, get going.
• GNU Tar doesn’t have a man page.  (via)  Weird.  I didn’t verify that, but I’m not sure how to.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: there’s a Freddy, and a dragonfly, but it’s not DragonFly BSD.  It’s still fun though.

(I’m way behind on posting news; I apologize.  I’m working my way through several crises.  Crisises?  Not sure of the plural form of crisis.)

• I like the line, “Please note that BSD manpages are usually better as compare to Linux” [sic] found on this odd page of where to find documentation.
• Hey, this encryption of DNS requests is a good idea.  Then again, so is DNSSEC.  I’ve done neither.
• Stop using GoDaddy, if you can.  There’s plenty of reasons, other than support for SOPA.
• There’s got to be at least one reader who gets this joke.
• If you don’t mind digging through all the comments in this Slashdot article about building a desktop environment, there’s some neat descriptions of different window managers and so on.
• A mild brain teaser to start the year: a regular expression to find prime numbers.
• This is a nice description of just what the Archive Team does.  (via)
• The Coming War on General Purpose Computing.  Sometimes the stuff on BoingBoing gives me the same irritated feeling as sensationalistic Wired articles, but this one is good to read if you happen to be working on your own operating system.  Also, the similar thing with APIs.
• This “best tech writing of 2011” summary on Verge (via) led me to this excellent article: “The Web Is a Customer Service Medium“.  There’s lots more reading in that summary.
• I’ve seen this mentioned before, but now it’s with a graph so it’s better!  On the continuing decline of the GPL.
• OK, I admit graphs are not always a good idea.  (via)
• Trivium, from which I yoinked that last link, also has an blog from its author, Chris Neukirchen.  It’s not updated often but there’s some entertaining sysadmin tidbits on there, such as going all-ed, or zsh tips, or Why I use the MIT license.

Your completely unrelated link of the day: Tiny Legs of Fire.  (video) Worth it for the origin of Beardslap.

 (Sorry about the giant text block.  This isn’t as readable as I’d like.)

• I greatly enjoyed this history of personal computer mishaps and blunders.  Of course, nothing like any of that has ever happened to me.  Ever.  Ever ever ever.
• Nintendo Entertainment System stories.  (a comic)  Also familiar to anyone of a particular age.
• This is good advice about env(1) – use it.
• “Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos“, a video via matthiasr on EFNet #dragonflybsd.
• “What’s the strangest language feature you’ve ever encountered?“  (via)  Some of these are mind-boggling.  I’ve also never seen APL before, yeesh.
• My Year in Roguelikes.  I think a few of the games mentioned are in pkgsrc.

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Basic Instructions.  Well, not totally unrelated, since BSD author Michael Lucas’s tweet about it reminded me.  I’ve got the first book; I need to get the second and third.

• This article “The Strange Birth and Long Life of UNIX” has a picture of a PDP-11.  I don’t know if I ever actually saw one and knew it before.  (via)
• Also from the same place: Window Managers Bloodlines.
• Anecdotal, but probably true. (via luxh on EFNet #dragonfly)
• nginx is the new cool and unpronounceable web server these days, apparently.  Michael Lucas covers how to transition static Apache sites over to it.
• This PDF showing slides from the recent NYCBUG presentation by Ike Levy, titled “Inappropriate Cloud Use”, is entertaining, and makes a good point.  Cloud computing is cheap on a per month basis, but since it’s a reoccurring cost, it can cost a surprisingly large amount in the long run.  (via)
• Hey, a patch for DragonFly (and other BSD) support in Google’s leveldb.
• “Don’t Be a Free User” (via)  The last paragraph is the best.
• An expanded grep and diff.  ‘grep’ and ‘diff’ have been present for so long, and people understand what they do, generally, that new tools get named after them just because the concept is ingrained in people’s minds.  Note that I said “generally”, as regular expressions can be difficult.  (via)
• A lot of people don’t realize how they infringe on copyright.  This writeup describes something I’ve seen for years: people think a disclaimer that effectively says “I’m infringing but I’m doing it with the best of intentions” makes a difference.  It doesn’t.
• So this is what that Xerox Star GUI interface looked like.  You know, the ‘first’ desktop GUI.   (via) Also, there was some advanced stuff in 1968.
• I like this indicator light setup.  (also via luxh on EFNet #dragonflybsd)  There’s some other interesting old computer stuff at that site too.  I wish there still were computers like these.
• While we’re talking about old things with a certain feel to them, why not Battersea Power Station?  Here’s some pictures.  (via)

Your unrelated link of the day: Since we’re talking about old things and environments, why not look at some pictures of my workplace?

• Here’s some old software.  I’ve got something older sitting on my shelf here, though.
• A patch to DragonFly, taken from OpenBSD, submitted by Loganaden Velvindron and committed by Venkatesh Srinivas.  The patch isn’t that exciting, but it makes me feel cool to namedrop non-Americanized names.  If only I could pronounce them!
• Speaking of which, there isn’t always a lot of comments on this Digest (which is good; a long series of comments on the Internet tend to be the result of trolling or inanity.), but the recent strlen() story led to some juicy details.
• Man, I wish this NoteSlate device existed.  There’s the BoogieBoard, but it’s not quite the same.

I’ll make up for my relatively low number of links by asking a question:   Where do you go for your end of year gift giving?  Where do you wish people would go to buy you gifts?  I’m looking for suggestions for a gift guide.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Gun Show.  This one and that one are my favorites.