Tag: code

Posted on

#define geek – what qualifies a person to be a geek?

I notice the term GEEK is used a lot these days, every man and his dogs flea refers to themselves as a geek. I’m talking computer geek here today, no other kind 🙂

15 years ago  it was a different story completely. In my book and having talked to several other people online, a geek is somebody who is into technology and understands it and is doing stuff beyond the average user.

But to clarify, can you please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments. What is a GEEK and what is not a GEEK?

My thoughts are that you need at least one or two of the following criteria (not all!)

  • You can program in more at least one language, probably 2 or 3 (html/css NOT included)
  • You can use a command line easily without having to google commands in at least one of the following Windows, Linux, or OS X
  • You know the difference between a Domain Registrar, Domain Name Server, and types of DNS records.
  • You know what Linux is, have installed it, and used it regularly (using a friends/boyfriends/family PC not counted, and done without help)
  • You can name all the following parts of a PC, AND what they do. CPU, RAM, HDD, BUS, PSU.
  • You can create a full network, including DHCP, DNS, Gateway/firewall and know what IP ranges are reserved for private networks
  • Do all of the above WITHOUT having to google!

You are NOT a geek if you ONLY do

  • You are on Helpdesk
  • you helped somebody fix their email
  • You use IRC, Twitter, Forums, Other chat forums
  • You Game lots (Some gamers are geek, but most are not)

Note: if you do the “you are not a geek if” and still qualify the above ones you are still a geek.

Posted on

hacking tweetwall voting with wget and shell scripting

#!/bin/bash
# copious amount of useless comments 3 pages longer than the code should always be at the top of any shell script
# This is so you can run screen and vote for some person lots without looking like some automated voting system
# Feel free to use this, but please keep my name/website etc on it (need the fame ya know)
# I'm not gonna walk you through it, if you dont understand it then dont use it
# Yes im sure you could do better!
# Don't forget to edit it
# Written by Liz Quilty http://velofille.com

RAND=`dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 2> /dev/null | cksum | cut -f1 -d" " |cut -c1-4`
if [ $RAND -lt 1200 ]; then RAND_SLEEP=$(($RAND+200)) ; else RAND_SLEEP=$RAND;fi

while [ 1 ] ; do
# the below line wgets the link the 12345 is the users number and the 45 is country number (view web page for these) - Edit this line to reflect user/url
wget --referer=http://tweeterwall.mallplace.com/tw/new-zealand/top-something-url -U Mozilla http://tweeterwall.mallplace.com/tw/vote/12345/45
sleep $RAND_SLEEP # sleep for random time before voting again
done

Posted on

Interesting ipv6 combinations

Apon talking about about IPV6 addresses on IRC with some friends, I made the comment that the addresses are hard to remember. So conversation went along the lines of using phone numbers, or making ipv4 go above 255, and pretty much every other stupid idea we could think of.
But then we realized, IPV6 is actually not to bad to remember, you just have to make sure you have some great groupings!

feed:cafe
beef:babe
dd::b00b:135

About this time i googled and found the following page

We thought it was time for some fun of the geekier kind. If you know what IPv6 is, this should be something for you.

You may have seen IPv6 addresses that contain a couple of actual words. Here is a made-up example: babe:f432:42aa:8271:eee6:1076:dead:beef

Now what if we take this one step further, and construct entire sentences inside IPv6 addresses instead of just a few words? We decided to do just that, and here is how we did it.

Constructing words inside IPv6 addresses

When showing an IPv6 address a hexadecimal notation is used. The hexadecimal digits are 0-9 and A-F (the latter corresponding to the values 10-15).

A 128-bit IPv6 address is written as 8 sets of 4 hexadecimal digits. Since initial zeroes can be skipped in each set, we can include words that are 4, 3, 2 or 1 characters long.

When constructing words, we can use the letters A-F, of course, since they are already letters. Then, to give us a few more letters to play with, we decided to include some leet-style interpretations of the numbers 0-9. (As you’re probably starting to notice, we’re a pretty geeky crowd here at Pingdom. ;) )

We went with: 0 = o or . , 1 = i or l, 2 = R, 5 = S, 6 = b, 7 = T, 9 = g.

So in the end we have the following letters to construct words with: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, i, l, o, r, s, t

Now on to constructing some actual sentences!

IPv6 addresses that make sense (sort of)

The “IPv6 sentences” below are not existing addresses we’ve found. We made them up. But although they’re just made up they are nevertheless correct and could be used in the real world.

Unfortunately we didn’t have the necessary letters to include words like “ping”, “tcp”, “http”, “down” and many others we would have liked to have in our word arsenal, but we had a lot of fun putting various sentences together over a couple of after-work beers.

Here are some of the better ones we came up with:

Happy sysadmin
2007:15:900d:0:2007:15:90d:0

(root is good. root is god.)

Fearful sysadmin
dea2:g0d:0:1a57:b007:1057:a11:da7a

(dear god. last boot lost all data)

da7a:1055:0:900d:90d::1:dead

(data loss. good god. i dead)

700:1a7e:70:face:b055::f1ee:f1ee

(too late to face boss. flee flee)

(Almost a bit of storytelling there… )

The Digg (Slashdot) effect
1f:d199:517e:02:b109:15:fa57:dead

(if digg site or blog is fast dead)

Ideal IP address for Icanhascheezburger.com
1075:0f:101:ca75:f111:a11:b109:da7a

(lots of lol cats fill all blog data)

or just:

101:ca75:101:ca75:101:ca75:101:ca75

(lol cats lol cats lol cats lol cats)

A perspective on web robots and crawlers
9e7:1057:02:d1e:b075:0:0:0

(get lost or die bots . . .)

Can’t leave them cats alone
1f:ca7:5ee5:b12d::ca7:eat5:b12d

(if cat sees bird, cat eats bird)

The truth about beer
1ce:c01d:bee2:15:a5:900d:a5:11fe

(ice cold beer is as good as life)

For ad-crazy sites
517e:ad5:f02:5a1e:0:f111:ca27:0