until a couple of days ago, opensim would only run in console mode: whenever you started OpenSim you would end up at a prompt inside OpenSim’s very own console — which is very convenient if you want to manage it that way. it is rather inconvenient if you want to start OpenSim as a daemon in the background (and control it via the RemoteAdminPlugin, for example).

as of OpenSim’s subversion release r4390 the basic support for running OpenSim without such a console is in the code base and all you need to do is invoke OpenSim with the -background True commandline parameter:

% mono --debug OpenSim.exe -background True

note: that’s just a single dash for -background True!

another patch is on its way that not only adds code to properly shutdown OpenSim when the admin_shutdown XmlRpc method is invoked but it also adds the shutdown.py script:¹

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

import ConfigParser
import xmlrpclib
import optparse
import os.path

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = optparse.OptionParser()
    parser.add_option('-c', '--config', dest = 'config', help = 'config file', metavar = 'CONFIG')
    parser.add_option('-s', '--server', dest = 'server', help = 'URI for the grid server', metavar = 'SERVER')
    parser.add_option('-p', '--password', dest = 'password', help = 'password for the grid server', metavar = 'PASSWD')
    (options, args) = parser.parse_args()

    configFile = options.config
    if not configFile:
        if os.path.isfile(os.path.expanduser('~/.opensim-console.rc')):
            configFile = os.path.expanduser('~/.opensim-console.rc')
    if not configFile:
        parser.error('missing option config')
        sys.exit(1)

    config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
    config.readfp(open(configFile))

    server = config.get('opensim', 'server')
    password = config.get('opensim', 'password')

    if options.server: server = options.server
    if options.password: password = options.password

    gridServer = xmlrpclib.Server(server)
    res = gridServer.admin_shutdown({'password': password})

    if res['success'] == 'true':
        print 'shutdown of %s initiated' % server
    else:
        print 'shutdown of %s failed' % server

you can either pass in the server URI and password to use via commandline parameters, or you can create .opensim-console.rc in your home directory and set default values:

[opensim]
server = http://127.0.0.1:9000/
password = secret

then all you need to do to shutdown your OpenSim server is: invoke shutdown.py

while working on a lengthy LaTeX text in my favourite editor, emacs, i noticed that once i turn on flyspell-mode (spell check as you type), that transient-mark-mode (highlight marked regions) would become borked not good.

investigating the issue, it transpired that the flyspell.el and ispell.el files installed as part of the ubuntu 7.10 dictionaries-common package are a bit out of date: that problem has been fixed back in 2005. funnily enough the emacs-snapshot package brings along its own ispell and flyspell emacs lisp files that are more recent — and don’t have the problem fixed.

so, to sort this out i diverted the dictionaries-common versions like so:

% dpkg-divert --rename --local \
        --divert /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell.el-borked \
        --add /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell.el
Adding `local diversion of /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell.el to /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell.el-borked'
% dpkg-divert --rename --local \
        --divert /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell.el-borked \
        --add /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell.el
Adding `local diversion of /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell.el to /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell.el-borked'

this not only renames flyspell.el to flyspell.el-borked (and ispell.el to ispell.el-borked) but also does this in case there’s an update of the dictionaries-common package.

as you hopefully have not noticed (well, there was some downtime, but not more than usually afflicted by cablecom) i switched xyzzyxyzzy.net from gentoo to running ubuntu server 7.10 on monday.¹ along with that came a reorganization of the web server directory layout — and i took the chance to clean up. pretty much everything is running again (and thx to having that complete backup of the mysql databases all blogs and photo blogs are back as well — with the exception of the QR code stuff, which was not really generating QR codes for new posts anymore.

this had me baffled as all the path names and what have you were looking ok, permission were fine, the works. still no QR codes and the test image wouldn’t work either…i did manage to get it working, here’s a brief overview² of what i did:

# install command line php5 so that we can poke at the php code manually, so to speak
% sudo apt-get install php5-cli

# qrcode lib lives in /usr/local/share/qrcode/qrcode_php0.50beta10
% cd /usr/local/share/qrcode/qrcode_php0.50beta10

# let's try invoking the sample.php via php5
% php5 sample.php
[...lots of error messages...]

those error messages revealed that i had forgotten to adjust QRCODE_DATA_PATH — for some strange reason, wp-qrcode doesn’t get that across from the wordpress configuration — fixing that path fixed the problem. sweat

define ("QRCODE_DATA_PATH","/usr/local/share/qrcode/qrcode_php0.50beta10/qrcode_data");

while looking at the 24C3 hack list of the currently ongoing 24C3 hack conf, i found this howto detailing the procedure to create fake fingerprints — all you need are:

• glass with fingerprint of the person you want to impersonate
• screw-top of a bottle (like the one from a coke bottle)
• super-glue
• wood glue (PVA)
• skin friendly glue (theatrical glue)
• digital camera
• PC
• laser printer
• foil

the process itself is rather easy — and, together with german TV station WDR, they demonstrated that you can use that method to fool the fingerprint recognition system used by the European super-market chain EDEKA…

EDEKA seemed non-fazed:

Edeka Südwest teilt uns auf Anfrage schriftlich mit, man sehe „keinen Handlungsbedarf“. Die bestehenden Sicherheitsvorkehrungen seien, „wie unsere Erfahrungen gezeigt haben, vollkommen ausreichend“.¹

…and they went on to state that the system they used was being used by the US government and other governments worldwide.

wow. good security relies either on something only i know, or something only i have, or something only i am. the emphasis is on only, your fingerprints? they are all over the place…and that place…and that place over there as well, yep.

the scary thing is, fingerprints are being used (as secondary biometrics) for the new biometric EU passports!

while reading through the newsletter from ship of fools this morning — current chance of rapture is at 70.7% you’ll be, no doubt, interested to learn — i had to take a look at the 12 days of kitschmas section and came not only across the thongs of praise (available at cafepress.com in case you are really really interested) but also across the intriguing jerusalem compass:

An amazing, attractive, compass that appears to defy nature as it spins… and stops in the direction of our prayers and dreams… Jerusalem! No computer chips, no circuitry, this non-electric, patent-pending device, appears to defy the laws of nature to point directly toward Jerusalem from any place you are in the world. [jewishsoftware.com]

interesting…fraud or real? the review at jewishsoftware.com mentions the term magnetic polarity recalibrator, googling for that really doesn’t turn up any further information — but, a search for MPR yields among other results a link to the failedmessiah blog containing the name of the inventor, moshe ashin. using the family name as search input on the google patent search page brings back a link to US patent 7134213:¹

A magic compass that gives the illusion it defies the laws of nature, providing usage as an aid for locating the direction of prayer as well as a novel promotional device for companies, [...]

taking a closer look at US patent 7134213, it quickly transpires that this is after all just a normal compass needle to which a fake compass needle has been attached and a fake compass disc is hiding the real compass needle from the fake one. the fake needle can be rotated relative to the real one, giving the illusion that this compass is not pointing north–south but instead to jerusalem. and, yes,

…when travelling from one country to another, the compass needs to be re-set or re-calibrated…

which will only work “kind of” if you are sufficiently far away from jerusalem, get too close and the margin of error becomes too large and you end up facing away from jerusalem — but, as observed on the failedmessiah blog, that’s also not a problem, as

the earth is round (I think most charedim accept it) so in any direction it will point to Jerusalem as well as to Mecca and the Church of Nativity

lol. interesting what you can patent these days

xyzzyxyzzy.net is running the latest wordpress release (2.3) which has a completely revamped tag system — breaking, unfortunately christine davis’s ultimate tag warrior plugin that i had been using on my wordpress blog(s) so far. while checking her blog for updates i noticed a trackback to the gormful — if you can’t fix it, don’t break it blog, mentioning that gormful had created a technorati tag display plugin to re-create the ultimate tag warrior behavior.

so, download, install, activate…and xyzzyxyzzy.net has technorati tag display again