Tim Sullivan's The Teacher has left me wanting more

 One of my favorite authors, Tim Sullivan, mentioned in his latest newsletter, that fans could sign up to read an advance excerpt from his upcoming book, "The Teacher".  I couldn't resist the offer because I'm addicted to his excellent mystery novels which focus on Detective Sergeant George Cross.  Plus the opportunity to get a headstart on the next installment was too much to resist.  

DS Cross differs from most of his colleagues by being on the autism spectrum which gives him an incredibly focused approach to investigating crimes as well as a unique way of interacting with other people.  Sullivan's writing skill makes Cross a compelling and sympathetic figure.  The mysteries are well plotted and peopled with a believable cast of characters.

So how did I enjoy this latest book in the adventures of DS Cross?  I loved it!  I can't wait for the book to be released so I read the rest of it and find out what happens next.

Scalzi's latest book, Starter Villain, is great fun

I finished John Scalzi's latest book, Starter Villain, yesterday.  After careful thought, I rated this book highly both because of the eagerness with which I anticipated it and the sheer joy it brought me while reading it. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Wil Wheaton who invitably enhances SciFi or books aimed at those of us with geeky interests. Starter Villain is filled with Scalzi's characteristic humor, entertaining plotting, and a fair amount of topics to contemplate once the book is finished. In the end, I rated it this way because I'm still smiling having finished it meanwhile anticipating his next book.

Cory Doctorow's new book is really good

I shouldn't be surprised about how good Cory Doctorow's new book, Red Team Blues, is.  I've been a fan of his books for about 20 years.  His books invariably involve new trends in technology and their possible consequences.  Cory definitely has the technical chops to write convincingly about emerging technologies.  He's an activist and has been involved with the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) for many years.  Cory also has a frequently updated blog called Pluralistic which features an interesting article and lots of links, which often involve technology and its unintended consequences or occasional intentional misuses.

Red Team Blues follows the adventures of a forensic accountant (which apparently can be a much more interesting profession than the position title would imply) named Marty Hench.  Hench specializes in the cybersecurity and accounting involved with digitally accessed assets such as cryptocurrencies.  In Doctorow's capable hands this premise becomes a gripping detective novel and a cutting edge one at that.

I backed the audiobook version on Kickstarter.  Cory resorted to using this method of funding because Audible won't carry books without DRM and he insists on allowing readers to own the books they purchase.  As an added bonus, Cory got Wil Wheaton to narrate the book.  I always enjoy Wil's narration and I think he does an especially good job on books with a technology or a SciFi focus.

I strongly suggest you check this book out.  It's very compelling and made me wish I needed to commute to the office more often so I could have finished it quicker.

An easier way to edit remote files

 

My main development machine at work is an Ubuntu desktop machine which I've got set up with cross compilers and a number of other development tools.  It's reasonably fast but because it runs Linux, it can only be connected to our lab network at work.  This used to mean having to ssh into the machine to edit files which on a fast network with X11 forwarding means I can use a GUI editor.  However I've been noticing a maddening amount of network lag between our lab network and the corporate network which means I end up waiting several seconds for things like cursor movement to take place.  That can break my train of thought.

Fortunately I discovered that WinScp has the ability to not only transfer files between systems but it can also allow me to edit files on those systems.  I launch WinScp, tell it to connect to my development machines, navigate the the appropriate directory, right click on the file I want to edit, and select launch external editor.  It can be configured to use your choice of editors on the Windows machine where WinScp is running.

Once you make the request, WinScp transfers the file to your local machine and launches your editor of choice.  Once you're done editing, it transfers the updated file back to the remote system.  The actual editing all takes place on your local Windows machine so it prevents network lag from causing a painfully slow editing session.

Showing differences between binary files

At work I'm having to port some firmware changes to a new board.  This requires I understand the boot process in excruciating detail.  The old board boots with 3 different files stored in flash memory (bootloader, bootloader environment, and Linux file system).  I have the files as well as several raw dumps of various areas in the flash memory chip made with the "dd" command and needed to know whether there was any magic done to identify the different partitions of the flash device.

So I needed to show differences between binary files.  I normally use meld for file comparisons but it doesn't handle binary files.  It's easy to write a simple program in C to show simple byte differences but I wanted something able to display context for any differences.

It turns out that this is very easy to do in bash thanks to the ability to easily combine tools.  This is made possible by the Unix Philosophy.  The following command does exactly what I was looking for.

meld <(xxd file1.bin) <(xxd file2.bin)

So I whipped up a small shell script to make this easier and I've got a new tool for future use.  As you can see from the image, the display would be helpful in figuring out the differences between files.






Saying goodbye to a special dog

 

We lost our very special dog to an osteosarcoma a few days ago.  He started limping a little over 4 months ago and it took a while to diagnose what was causing the problem which kept getting progressively worse.  We were so focused on figuring out what was wrong that it dominated our recent conversations about him.  I wanted to make sure it didn't overpower people's memory of the most affectionate dog I've ever met.

Bandit entered our lives a little unexpectedly about 10 years ago.  He was the third dog we've had during the 30+ years we've been married.  For some strange reason, each of them was roughly double the weight of their predecessor, progressing from 16 to 42 to Bandit's whopping 84 pounds.

Bandit had a rough start in life.  We adopted him from Rappahannock Animal Welfare League (RAWL), the same shelter where we had adopted our previous dog, Sandy, who was very sweet but much less outgoing than Bandit.  They do a wonderful job of socializing their dogs.  Apparently Bandit had been chained outside for much of his early life.  The shelter got him due to an altercation he'd had with a feral cat coupled with the fact that his first family had not seen fit to get him vaccinated against rabies.  He needed to be quarantined for 6 months for the possible rabies exposure.  They're a "no-kill" shelter but apparently that doesn't automatically apply in quarantine cases.  After seeing what a sweet dog Bandit was, they opted to keep him for the 8 months it took to get him through the quarantine period plus his recovery from being neutered because they were sure he'd be adopted.  How he stayed so friendly and loving given that rocky beginning amazes me.

My wife fell in love with the personality he displayed in the shelter's pictures of him playing with 5 beagle puppies.  His face managed to exude good-natured playfulness and joy in a way that we both found irresistible.  She also chose a smaller dog to look at in case the fact that Bandit was part pit bull (he was a lab-shepherd-husky-pit mix) made me nervous.  Any chance of me being worried about him being aggressive disappeared when they let him out of his kennel for us to meet him.  He was so affectionate that both of us ended up sitting on the floor petting him for quite a while until we were finally able to sign the adoption papers.

Since he had been chained up for much of his life, he didn't have much experience with cars.  I had to lift him into the truck where he sat nervously and stiff-legged in my wife's lap for the entire 90 minute drive home.  The only difficulty he gave us was with his initial nervousness about car rides.  He discovered that collapsing as low as possible could delay his ride for a while because it's so hard to lift an 84 pound dog who has cemented himself to the ground.  His nervousness about cars persisted for about a month until we took him to a place where we could bathe him.  He was so relieved to be done with the bath that he leapt into the back of the truck to go home.  After that, going for rides was one of his favorite activities.

 

When we adopted Bandit we lived in a suburb of DC which had lots of walking paths and he was happy to hike as far as we wanted.  Bandit usually preferred people to other dogs.  One notable exception was a dog half his size which lived near the walking path we took on a daily basis.  They loved to wrestle and often looked like tiny dinosaurs as they chest-butted each other while smiling the entire time.  It was like our own version of a Godzilla movie where the monsters are furry and friendly.  They would get so tired having fun that they would eventually collapse on the ground.  Once they had recovered somewhat, they would drag themselves towards each other to start again.

A year after we brought him home, we moved to the more rural suburbs.  Out in the country we discovered Bandit was really more of a medium-sized dog.  While technicians who came to the old house to fix things were nervous around Bandit, those visiting the new house often had dogs larger than Bandit and were happy to pet him.  Bandit always loved finding a new person to give him attention.

It was shortly after we moved to the country that he met his favorite neighbors.  Their oldest daughter bonded with him almost instantly.  She seemed to have a sixth sense about when we'd be passing their house and frequently treated him with bacon and other snacks.  After a few times being spoiled this way, his tail would start wagging wildly whenever we approached their house.

He looked forward to spend time with us each evening.  He often positioned himself between us and nudged our arms to convince us to pet him until our arms were tired and sometimes sore.  There are few things which could relax me like spending time with that affectionate bundle of love.

If I happened to drive by my wife and Bandit walking on my way home from work, Bandit would drag my wife towards the house to see me.  Bandit was a force of nature.  If he saw deer, he could spin either of us by the leash in his struggle to give chase.  Sometimes my wife would let go of his leash once they were close enough to the house to see me.  I have happy memories of him running down the road towards me and the uber-affectionate greeting I would get when he finally reached me.  The stress of the commute and a long day at work melted away instantly under his enthusiastic greeting.

There were few things which Bandit enjoyed more than having his face pet by my wife.  He would get into the strangest positions to coax her into stroking his face.

In the last few years, he had been moving a little more hesitantly and was not quite so keen to go on long walks but his sweet nature was just as strong as ever.  Those signs of him slowing down triggered me to start paying more attention to the time we had left with him.  I knew dogs as special as him don't come along often and I wanted to enjoy every precious moment.

He was sweet to the end despite being needing to take 3 potent medications for the ever increasing pain he was in while his doctors tried to diagnose his problem.  They ultimately determined it was an osteosarcoma and that the cancer had spread to his lungs.  We held out hope until the diagnosis made it obvious that we needed to let him go.

Both of us loved every minute we had with Bandit.  It's hard realizing we'll never be greeted by this big lovable goofball again.

Exploding windows

I've encountered "exploding windows" on both Windows and Linux lately.  I try to resize a window and by clicking the window near the title bar, the window suddenly and unexpectedly expands to fill the entire vertical area of the monitor it inhabits.  Sometimes I'm able to do the simple resize operation which I wanted but randomly the operation results in an exploding window.  Perhaps the UI designer thought this was a neat feature but it causes me to curse each time I encounter it.  I'd love to figure out how to disable this behavior but each time I try to describe it in a Google search, I'm led down a rabbit hole of unrelated results.  It seems silly spending too much time researching something which while annoying only costs me annoyance and a few seconds to correct.