• An explanation of the classic UNIX hierarchy.  (via thesjg on EFNet #dragonflybsd)  I’m behind any explanation that uses the phrase “accretion disk” to describe an organization.
• Hipster BSD.  If this doesn’t make sense to you, it’s based on this.
• Would you like to have DNSSEC upgrading explained to you?
• Hooray for Unicode!  (via)
• What Commons Do We Wish For?  I was, briefly, technically, an AOL employee after the Time Warner merger in 2000.  I didn’t like the notion of working for a walled garden then, and I think that’s why Facebook and other companies irk me now.  Anyway, read that article for a good explanation of why that feeling is important.

Your unrelated link of the week: Top Shelf 2.0.  A small comics publisher that has put much of their comics online to read.  Their stuff on paper is worth buying too, as I have been doing for a while now.

• 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.

I read it despite my knee-jerk reaction, and I didn’t need to reject it so suddenly.  Almost all of the book will apply to any Unix-like system.

My first real experience with something that wasn’t Windows or a Mac was at a summer job during college, sitting in front of a SparcStation 5 editing files and processing data for real estate.  Much of my muscle memory about vi and file manipulation dates from then.  This book, even though it’s technically for a different operating system, would have been just what I needed.  There’s no system administration in the book, just making your way around a filesystem and the tools you need to get results.  It’s the kind of skills I think people lose out on when they boot to a graphical interface in Ubuntu, for example, and then never experience these tools.

Negatives: a few areas won’t be of use to most BSD users, like the section on packaging, or the bash-centric instructions in the shell programming area.  There’s the occasional off comment, like that OpenSSH originates from “the BSD project”.  There’s surprisingly little of this however, and I had to think a bit to write this negative paragraph.

Positives:  The book puts the proper focus on some complex but rewarding aspects of command line use, like using vi (alright, vim) and understanding regular expressions.  Much of what it covers is the same material I’ve learned to use over time, and explained to others.

There’s clearly two areas to the book; the first half is about using the command line to accomplish work, and the second is about shell programming.  Making it at least through the first half will result in being able to work at a prompt with little issue, with the shell programming a nice bonus.  It’s not the normal mix of admin tasks and introductory text; it’s about working at the command line.  I imagine giving it to new software testers in a lab, or to a Windows user that has to deal with the occasional unfamiliar environment.  There isn’t an equivalent BSD-centric book like this, so it wouldn’t hurt a BSD user, either.

It’s available now at the No Starch website.

• 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?

• “Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors” – a video description of the physical parts of the Internet.  Remember when MAE-East or MAE-West would have a bad day and half the Internet felt it?  Really, half.  I don’t think I’m exaggerating. (via)
• Google has a verbatim search mode now, for those of you who regret the loss of ‘+’ as a required search term designator.  (via and also sort of via)  There’s always alternatives.
• “The expr program is a real piece of crap.“  Laser-focused complaining about a small program that’s had 4 decades to improve, and hasn’t.
• “Mechanics for Pure Aesthetics”  The videos are interesting, and I’m linking to this because so much of what I post here and deal with is focused computer work.  Everything is a tool, with a purpose, and a result that you expect.  This idea of machinery or even software having a purpose other than result generation is underexplored.  There’s lots of tools to create art, but there’s little that is art itself.  Even with that general lack, we still get excited when the edge of some sort of aesthetic appeal nudges its way into the materials we use.  You could argue that Apple’s success (for instance) comes from being the one company that consistently thinks about what a product is, instead of what it does.
• If you use fastcgi, you may need the patch that this blog post talks about.  Also, apache-mpm-prefork is the better choice for Apache on DragonFly.
• “DragonFly mug shot“

Your random comic link of the day: Calamity of Challenge.  Also here.  And here.  If this artist’s way of drawing grabs you like it grabs me, he has pages and commissions for sale.

• NYCBUG posts audio of their regular presentations, and I’m linking to this one by James K. Lowden, titled “Free Database Systems: What They Should Be, And Why You Should Care“.  He was one of the more colorful speakers at NYCBSDCon 2010, so this should be good.
• It’s Slashdot, so whatever, but this “In Favor of FreeBSD On the Desktop” linked story had a few good comments – BSD hasn’t done enough to differentiate itself from Linux.  “BSD: In Need of a Narrative“.  Or perhaps, “Who cares if it’s clang or it’s gcc – what do you build with it?“
• I read this essay about social networks (via), and the last paragraph is an excellent summation.  Read it, then cancel your Facebook/Google Plus/whatever accounts.
• Xv6 is a modern version of Sixth Edition UNIX, used at MIT for teaching operating system design.  (via)   The source is available via git, and as a numbered PDF.   The book for the class should make interesting reading.  Oh, you can see the class details, too.
• FOSDEM 2012 in Brussels, February 5th, 09:00 – 17:00: “Open Source Game Dev”.   Get on the mailing list if this interests you.  Microsoft operating systems still rule the market for games, really, even indie work, so it’s neat to see something that is both open source and game oriented.  There will be BSD “devrooms” there, too.
• If you are looking for a particular Unicode character (and there’s lots to choose from), Shapecatcher lets you draw what you are looking for and looks for matches.  (via)  I’ve needed that here a few times for people’s names, and it’s fun just to see what comes up from a random scribble.

Your unrelated link of the week: The New Shelton Wet/Dry.  Titles, content, and images are all picked from unrelated sources, but it forms an oddly compelling digest of multiple topics.  Slightly NSFW, sometimes.

• Here’s part two of the excellently written story of @.  Again, interesting because it mentions ASCII, and its unlamented predecessor BCDIC, among other things.  Read part 1 if you missed it.
• Stephen Ramsay’s blog – the most recent items are about command line usage.  There’s some gems to glean from there, like Jekyll. (via)
• Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes.  The world needs more tutorials like this, or else this.)  (also via)
• Obsessive detail over emulation. (via)
• Hey, that’s a good idea for passwords.

Your unrelated link of the day: the comics of Lucy Knisley.  (follow the ‘Previous’ links for more)

• This NYT story about Dwarf Fortress has been linked lots of places, but I want to point out the one paragraph:
  

  Growing up, Tarn was enamored of Dungeons & Dragons and J.R.R. Tolkien, but he has never been a lockstep member of the geek culture so much as a wanderer on the fringes. He didn’t read superhero comics as a kid, and later, he never became obsessed with the “Game of Thrones” books, say, or with “Lost.”

  Are you over 35 or so?  Then maybe you remember a time when there wasn’t a designated ‘Geek Culture’.  It’s something specific to a period in time, like when pay phones were still common, or when people were on average still thin.  It strikes me that the interviewer assumes that a computer programmer should become consumed with a TV media event; that it’s part of what makes them what they are.   It’s as if all accountants need to have brown shoes, and all artists have to wear berets and ‘get’ abstract art.  Maybe I’m just hipster complaining.

• “...while Bell Labs’ parent company AT&T flatly refused to believe that packet switching would ever work” – Have I linked to Shady Characters before?  I think so.  Anyway, this is part 1 about the @ sign, and it’s of course talking about email and the early days of the Internet, back when it was the ARPANet.  Be sure to check the references at the end of the article; it contains gems like this ad for a 65-pound portable TTY.
• Tim Paterson has a blog.  DOS is his fault.  Worth reading, for the early hardware details.  (via ftigeot on #dragonflybsd)
• Removing the Internet’s relics. An article about how FTP should die.  It will…  once there’s no place where it’s needed.  Like gopher!
• Comparisons like this are usually cheesy, but this one made me laugh: Text editors as Lord of the Rings locations.

• Who doesn’t like the taste of BSD?  Mmm, delicious.
• “redundant array of inexpensive crap”
• The invention of email.  (via, via)  It predates Unix.
• The worst ‘hacking’ scenes ever.  (via)  Starts funny, then you get angry.
• A nice explanation of the Lorenz Attractor, which I had only ever experienced as a screen saver. (via)
• Possibly the smallest roguelike ever.

• An interview with Dennis Richie about inventing Unix.  (via)  I like that he sounds just absolutely tickled that there’s a version of ‘his’ operating system on his phone.
• A nice article describing Project Euler, for those who want to program; or program more.  (via several places)
• Michael Lucas points out something that isn’t new but still needs reinforcement: avoid SSH1.
• Anecdotal evidence that SSD drives fail a lot.  On the other hand, the bulk builds I’ve done of pkgsrc have worked the crap out of several SSDs and I haven’t killed a single one.
• Weird things in IPv6 routing.  (indirectly via this, via ftigeot on #dragonflybsd IRC)
• Aw, Google’s BSD-specific search page is gone.  Not that it was really needed at this point; I hadn’t seen a difference in the search results for some time.  There’s more pressing issues.
• The FreeBSD Foundation has a trip report from Sergio Ligregni and from Thomas Abthorpe, from sponsored trips to BSDCan 2011.  I’d encourage everyone to make it to a BSD convention – it’s energizing to see others working on BSD, in person.
• I don’t think you really need a guide for this.  (via)
• Emacs user at work.
• Totally unrelated: best dubstep video ever.

• Hey, can this work on BSD?  Cause this.  (yeah, I know, hype.)
• PC emulator in Javascript.  Here’s how.  From the same fellow who produced qemu.  Here’s another level on top of that.
• Michael Lucas has a summary of his experience at BSDCan 2011.  His third point – anyone can experiment and publish results – is something I’d like to see.  I love graphs, and I love being able to see quantifiable results.
• The many slides for ’10 years of pf’, also from BSDCan 2011, are online.  (via)   The background images are entertaining, though it’s using that font.  Slide 78 mentions that other BSDs have much older versions of pf.  I think DragonFly’s running the newest old version of any of them, actually, though the slide doesn’t mention it.
• There’s Gnome people saying “Ignore everything that isn’t Linux“.  No, wait, it’s not that bad!
• The history of the computer mouse.  Something I’d always heard about, but not with this detail.
• Git aliases.  I don’t think it’ll save you hours of your life as the author claims, but it may be handy.
• How to build your own gaming PC.  The author went for funny and true, rather than the multipage exposition of out-of-date numbers and graphs that usually make up these articles.
• Where the octothorpe came from.  It has to do with Unix and telephones, which are close to the same thing if you go back far enough.
• Speaking of Unix-ish stuff, here’s an interview with Ken Thompson, who recently won the Japan Prize for the creation of Unix, along with Dennis Richie.  (via)  Yes, it’s their fault!
• “First was viruses, second was malware, third is facebook.“

• Michael Lucas describes an extra layer of protection for when you can’t force public key usage on every SSH user.
• Cool, but obscure Unix tools (via)  The screenshots are all from a Mac… How many of the 24 tools listed are in pkgsrc/pkgsrc-wip?   Almost all of them.  (tpp sounds entertaining.)
• NYCBUG, in addition to having a really fun convention, has been regularly posting audio of the presentations they host.  The most recent is “William Baxter’s NYCBUG presentation on The Unix Method of Development Management”.   See the BSD Events tweet for the download.
• What Ubuntu means.  (via)
• Here’s a nice explanation of Intel’s new Tri-Gate design and with it, an incidental explanation of the processor market.
• This ycombinator post about Hammer2 work has an in-depth comment from Venkatesh Srinivas about DragonFly’s network setup, memory allocator, and token use.  (Ignore the trolling in other comments.)
• Michael Lucas’s next No Starch Press book is Absolute OpenBSD, second edition.
• Pictures and video are starting to show up from the just-passed BSDCan 2011. (via this and also thesjg on EFNet #dragonflybsd)
• My first experience of The Internet was very similar to this.  It should be bizarrely unfamiliar to anyone under 20 or so.  (via)  Get this: I typed ‘exit’ instead of just closing the browser window when I was done messing with it, because some habits cannot be broken.

• Neal Stephenson’s thoughts on UNIX.  (via)
• Also stolen from the same place: A comparison of text-based browsers.
• Have I mentioned clicky keyboards before?  (yes)  If you’re a fan of the IBM Model M-style buckling spring keyboard, this Apple keyboard review has links in the comments to clickykeyboards.com and pckeyboards.com, which both have options that may interest you.  I’ve only linked one of those before.
• Robot orders coffee.  (Youtube, via)  The interesting part is that it’s relatively humdrum.
• Modern Perl is now available (free) in ePub format, in addition to PDF.  I’ve been reading it; it’s a refreshingly straightforward book.
• It’s always nice to see DragonFly ideas spread.
• You may have heard of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, the incredibly-awkwardly-named Linux kernel with FreeBSD userland FreeBSD kernel and GNU userland.  (How did I manage to reverse that?)  Did you know there’s a blend of Linux and NetBSD called SSDLinux?  (via)  It’s sold on commercial products!  I know nothing of it past that link.  Come to think of BSD mixes, there’s also that XNU/FreeBSD/NetBSD mix…
• Your DragonFly Pro Tip for the day: always use serial numbers to ID your disks.  You’ll be glad you did.
• Git as a backup disk index mechanism.  Strange.  Git for mail storage, too.  (via)

(file is one year older than me!)

• A git cheatsheet, and another git cheatsheet.  I may have linked to the latter one before, as it looks vaguely familiar.  Anyway, bookmark.  (Thanks, luxh on EFNet #dragonflybsd)
• What should you do about bad blocks on a disk?  Get a new disk.
• If you ever wanted to port software, there’s a pkgsrc developer’s guide (thanks Francois Tigeot) that shows you how.
• It’s NOT LINUX, for the billionth time.  It’s BSD UNIX (certified, even) under there!
• “Children of the Cron“.  An entertaining pun.  (via)
• Nothing to do with BSD, or even computers, really: Gary Gorton, interviewed about the recent financial crisis, at a Fed bank website (!?).  Interesting because I like economic matters, and because it’s the first web page where I’ve ever seen pop-up links added usefully, as a sort of footnote that you don’t have to scroll.  (via)
• Michael Lucas recently had a machine broken into.  Since everything on the machine is suspect, he’s using Netflow data to figure out when it happened, and how, which is not surprising given his most recent book.  He has two posts describing how he backtracks his way to the probable source.