Author: Rowan Rodrik (Page 26 of 27)

Rowan is mainly a writer. This blog here is a dumping ground for miscellaneous stuff that he just needs to get out of his head. He is way more passionate about the subjects he writes about on Sapiens Habitat: the connections between humans, each other, and to nature, including their human nature.

If you are dreaming of a holiday in the forests of Drenthe (the Netherlands), look no further than “De Schuilplaats”: a beautiful vacation home, around which Rowan maintains a magnificent ecological garden and a private heather field, brimming with biological diversity.

FlashMQ is a business that offers managed MQTT hosting and other services that Rowan co-founded with Jeroen and Wiebe.

Using an outgoing SSH tunnel from behind a NAT for incoming VNC

February 17, 2007 / Rowan Rodrik

Laurelin is working as an Au Pair for a Greek family in—where else than Greece. Her hostess has arranged for an Internet connection through Vivodi Telecom to allow Laurelin to maintain some form of contact with her friends and family at home.

Once connected, Laurelin quickly installed the Azureus BitTorrent client to be able to download some things (only legal things licensed under a liberal license, of course). Correct usage of the BitTorrent protocol implies opening up a port or two for incoming connections. After all, BitTorrent is all about sharing.

So, she needed help configuring port forwarding on the ADSL modem / NAT router (a microcom AD 2636) in Greece. She asked for this help two days ago while Wiebe was looking at my screen, because we where doing an extreme programming session on a database schema using VNC and Skype. We interrupted our work hoping that we could easily solve her problem.

I had been looking at screenshots and manuals of her router and her modem’s administrative interface earlier when they couldn’t get the connection to work. After making sure that the problem was not a configuration or software problem and identifying that there was probably a problem between their modem and their telephone exchange, they later got their problem fixed. So, now I had to dig up the manual again. But, this time I could only find some screencaps which accompanied a useless tutorial in Greek. This exemplifies why I think it is useful to keep a blog.

So, Wiebe and I did our best to guide her through a GUI we couldn’t see and eventually she succeeded in defining a few forwards. However, they didn’t do their job. According to nmap they were still filtered. She then installed RealVNC server for us and added port 5900 to the list of forwarded ports. Wiebe tried to connect using the kvnc client, but no response. By that time, we had fooled around quite a bit and after mucking about a little more, we decided to postpone the rest and return to our database design. We decided for next time to let her use PuTTY to put a hole through the NAT router.

Today was the next time. She installed PuTTY. I gave her an account on the Debian server in our local LAN (I am behind a Windows terminal myself). Now she had to set up a tunnel and connect to that account:

Configuring a remote tunnel for VNC in PuTTY

At this point, I still couldn’t access the tunnel between her box and the Debian machine from my Windows terminal:

$ netstat -l -n|grep 5900
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:5900          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN

Since PuTTY was configured to let remote ports accept connections from other hosts, the problem had to be in the OpenSSH configuration on the Debian box. And indeed it was. I had to set the following option:

GatewayPorts yes

After a restart of the OpenSSH daemon, she opened a tunnel which I could access from my own machine:

$ netstat -l -n|grep 5900
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:5900            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN

I could now control her desktop through the RealVNC viewer. Next time, I’ll need to actually do something with this connection.

Using the standard HTML link colors

February 2, 2007 / Rowan Rodrik

Occasionally, I have to foray into web design. From the look of this blog you can deduce that I’m not really into the design part of web design. First and foremostly this is because I suck at graphics and colors. But another reason is that I assume that people visit my blog to read some text and not to look at the fancy graphical borders and background of that text.

Recently I’ve gotten into the habit of simply using the default HTML link colors instead of trying to come up with a comprehensible color scheme for each design. This means that my links are blue, my visited links are purple and my active links are red as in the example CSS snippet below.

a:link {
 :;     /* #00f */
}
a:visited {
 :;   /* #800080 */
}
a:active {
 :;      /* #f00 */
}

Unique constraints and indexes in PostgreSQL

February 2, 2007 / Rowan Rodrik

This afternoon, I had to add a unique index for some table in the Sicirec PostgreSQL database. I had already assumed that I needed to use CREATE UNIQUE INDEX to create my new unique index until I noticed, thanks to pgAdmin‘s clear GUI, that some tables clearly had unique constraints and unique indexes while one table lacked a unique constraint and only had an unique index defined.

This motivated me to take a closer look at PostgreSQL’s documentation on unique indexes:

Note: The preferred way to add a unique constraint to a table is ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT. The use of indexes to enforce unique constraints could be considered an implementation detail that should not be accessed directly. One should, however, be aware that there’s no need to manually create indexes on unique columns; doing so would just duplicate the automatically-created index.

Grepping for CREATE UNIQUE INDEX in our migration history quickly revealed that the index which lacked an accompanying constraint was indeed created by CREATE UNIQUE INDEX instead of by ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT. So, now I know that, indeed, I have to use ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT instead of CREATE UNIQUE INDEX to add unique constraints with accompanying indexes to existing tables.

Meditating with Iris for the first time

January 31, 2007 / Rowan Rodrik

Yesterday evening, I met with Iris for a Transcendental Meditation (TM) session at her mother’s. Today, this night, I’m still shaken up by the experience.

We started our mental journey in her bedroom, after she had created a little atmosphere by lighting a few candles and turning off the electrical lights. Soon after we started—I was sitting against the wall with my knees stretched while she was sitting in front of me, cross-legged on a small sitting bag—my mind started wandering. My thoughts moved uncontrollably while my body vibrated uneasily. My breathing was very convulsive and I found it hard to return to my mantra. (For the uninitiated, a mantra is the word or phrase which you repeat to yourself to quell away any thoughts that occur during meditation.)

Some time passed with my awareness moving around. It moved from the strangeness of this new environment to my unfamiliarity with this strange girl—a beautiful new friend whom I could hardly believe to be sitting there in front of me to share this bizarre, new sensation. I was still in a nervous mind. All the hopes and fears regarding myself and this person kept my mind away from the deep acceptance and love that where present in the moment.

After some time, my breathing did steady a bit and my mind did center a bit (and my legs and my butt started hurting a bit), but it wasn’t until the moment that my watch announced the end of the meditation that I started to realize how deep I had been affected by this session.

When, after 20 minutes, we both reopened our eyes, we started to exchange experiences. I noted that even my belly was wet with clammy sweat as were my palms, my armpits and my back. I noted that, to me, it felt as if this was the result of the enormous tension which I had released. While I said these things and as we spoke further, I experienced a novel feeling of acceptance and peace. I was awe-struck when she told me how her experience had also been so much more powerful than what she was used to. She described to me that, with her eyes closed, she had seen me as an energetic silhouette or shadow with my Chakras visible to her and connected to hers. We continued to talk for a very pleasant little while, in a still somewhat connected state, until we were called to dinner.

The moment, later that evening, that I finally had to let go of her company, I was filled with a lonely feeling of melancholy and sadness, even of despair.

For many months, something under the surface had been causing me a recurring need, but no actual cause, to cry or shout or do whatever else is needed to let go of whatever it was that often made me feel miserably melancholic. Now, that feeling was stronger than I ever remembered it to be. I wanted to cry to let it go but nothing happened. I tried to wallow in the feeling, but that only made it worse.

Two nights before yesterday night had been the first night that I reluctantly, but somewhat seriously, had told myself that I was o.k.. That was a first in my life. I even went as far as to tell myself that I was o.k. the way I was, which somehow, until yesterday evening, was a big thing. It was so big a thing, in fact, that there’s nothing in my life of which I’ve been more scared than simply admitting that there’s nothing I need to do before I am acceptable.

Yesterday evening I felt truly accepted, and it didn’t come from me. It came from Iris. Her accepting presence butchered the possibility of not accepting myself. Now, I’m clumsily crawling back to that haven of peace, because, after we had to disconnect, I was left to my own devices. She was no longer there to accept me for me. Now I have to accept me for myself, and I’m still feeling the healing of a painful wound. Not many days ago this wound was still almost invisible. I could only feel the hurting and not where it was from. Now I know where it’s from. After my experience with Iris, I also know how it feels without. Even though that difference makes the hurting so much worse, it makes the healing so much easier. I can hardly wait for the next session!

(A special thanks also goes to my mom, who, when I arrived at her house after this painful goodbye, patiently massaged the tense tissue of my back, my neck and my shoulders until I felt less lonely and more relaxed.)

First post!

January 28, 2007 / Rowan Rodrik

A blog, or weblog, is a website which is regularly updated with new entries. These entries usually appear in reverse chronological order. If they appear at all.

I’ve started a blog a few times before, and now I’ve succumbed to the urge to start yet another one, almost as if the world is waiting for yet another blog. Almost.

Have I any reason to believe that this blog won’t die of the same neglect that killed Greg’s blog and my own previous blogs? No. Honestly, I don’t see any reason why this blog would go anywhere beyond this first post, so we’ll just have to see if and how it will.

Rowan Rodrik van der Molen

December 23, 2006 / Rowan Rodrik

Beginning

Norg, on an April the 8th in 1982: It was around 18:45 when my mother’s physician arrived, leaving his dessert untouched at home, just in time to witness my birth. (I was my mother’s fourth already and she never took much time between anouncing a birth and giving birth.) Without much further ado, I was delivered into this world as a sacky, slow, little fellow. So slow, in fact, that it was wondered by some (not my mom) if I wasn’t suffering Down Sydrome or something similar.

Name

My father’s family name was van der Molen. This is what I inherited. To make me uniquely identifyable within our family, I was given a first name, Rowan. To also make things a little symmetrical, a middle name, Rodrik, was added some years later.

This is me, in 2004, copy-pasted between some rowan berries.

Geek Code

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/IT/LS/MC/SS/TW d-(+) s:++ a? C++$ UL+++$ P++$ L+++$ E--- W+++$ N++ o K-
w---$ O? M->+ V? PS+++ !PE Y+ PGP-(++) t 5 X R(-) !tv b++@ Dl D G !e- !h !r
y-(---)**
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Hacker Key

I like to call myself a

v2sw6+9$Phw5+7ln6pr7$Ock4+9ma2+9u8$LFw2+1$WTm5g/l7$Di2e0/2t2b7OHTen6+8g2HPaIs1SMr1p8  hackerkey.com

Wiebe Hedde Cazemier

September 18, 2006 / Rowan Rodrik

If you’re into Open Source software, 3D modeling or Do It Yourself audio, you may already know Wiebe under his on-line alias, Halfgaar. Personally, I’ve known him since I was 10 and he was 9. These days he’s still a very good friend, and even a colleague.

His Ferrari F50, not your usual lawn decoration.

Strongly straight-forward

As a very analytical, factual thinker, Wiebe is the kind of person who doesn’t run with the newest buzzwords. He simply says what he thinks and his thoughts usually follow from very sound and steady logic. As a programmer, this makes him invaluable. At times, as a human, this may make him hard to stomach if, as is usual, he is right and you are not. But, don’t worry: he will usually be kind enough to explain to you exactly—very exactly—why it is that you are wrong.

So, he may not be the type for marketing, but for anything that needs to be done robustly and thoroughly, he is irreplaceable.

Solid knowledge

System administration: As every Geek with family and friends, Wiebe has the obligatory knowledge of how to keep a network of Windows systems somewhat stable, but this knowledge is irrelevant compared to his experience and skill in Unix system administration. His favourite Linux distribution is Gentoo Linux and, as follows from his many posts to the Gentoo Forums, he is a Linux Guru indeed.
Backups: even to most system administrators, they’re just an afterthought, but he really knows his dar backups from your tar’s. And, he’s published about it too.
Audio-engineering requires an enormous level of insight in the complex dynamics of audio waves and electronics. To me, it’s mostly Chinese, but he has built his own amps, speakers and subwoofer. If he notices even the slightest artifact in the sound, he goes back to the drawing board and just redoes the circuits another time.

Learn more

Wiebe can be contacted at wiebe@halfgaar.net, unless if you’re a spammer, because he happens to be an expert-level SpamAssassin administrator.

Web presence

www.halfgaar.net – the official website.
His profile at the Gentoo Forums.
His profile at the Blender Artists Forum
His posts at the Dutch Gathering of Tweakers forum

Jorrit Jorik van der Molen

August 13, 2006 / Rowan Rodrik

Jorrit is a boy, the only other boy among my five siblings. He is the oldest son of our parents, and big brother to everyone except Arwen. Of the six of us, he’s easily the most intelligent.

Dreams

The greatest of all dreamers, Jorrit’s great dream is that all other people will realize theirs.

Once, alone à la Boucoule in France, I saw a rainbow nearby. It ended in the mountainside only meters away, but the meters multiplied as I came closer…

Jorrit has never physically chased a rainbow. Yet, he has had to take truckloads of muck from people (such as me (and me (and me))) because of his dreams. They call him a dreamer, which he acknowledges: Yes, I am a dreamer!

Simple start

Jorrit’s childhood dreams started as simple as many people’s dreams: after high-school, he wanted to travel, preferrably by motorcycle. Seeing different places and people, while roaming free was all I think he wanted. Such dreams, although considered by some to be frivolous, are still socially acceptable enough (as long as you grow out of it with time, of course).

Romantic love rules and complicates

Towards the end of high-school, some things happened: his deep dissatisfaction shifted from himself towards society and school. At seventeen he went on a spiritual retraite together with Popko, our father. There he met some changes of insight and also his first love. Eventually, he settled at his love Tineke’s place to live happily together.

There was one problem with his newly found happyness. Avatar, and later Landmark had greatly boosted his urge to change the world. He had left these courses with a feeling that with good-enough planning and persistence the world could be once again turned into a paradise. However, Tineke didn’t much like his more disruptive and revolutionary side. She preferred things to be relatively stable and secure. In the end, Jorrit required quite a bit of Cannabis to make his increasingly boring life and increasingly dull dead-end jobs more bearable.

Pain

But, drug usage and dead-endness notwithstanding, life was good with his lovely Lady. That is, untill she wanted to move on with an older man. To Jorrit, his and Tineke’s ±25 years of difference in age seemed less of a problem, but he obligued.

Then, back to our Dad Popko’s place, where he spend a year or two feeling quite depressed. During that time, he worked for Popko. Eventually, he and Popko clashed more often due to a lack of mutual respect and Jorrit moved to a place of his own in the city of Groningen.

Hope…

During that hopeful time

For a while, life seemed much greather there. He had his own little garden, could get up whenever he damn well pleased and could smoke all the weed he wanted without anyone commenting on these or other bad habits. This would be the environment from which he could start to organize things in order to change the world around him.

But, plans remained plans. No freedom was aquired and no freedom was spread. Society stayed as stubournly stupid as it has always been (for the last ten thousand years, that is).

Lies and truths

Often, I’ve told him: Open your eyes! Look around you! There are plenty of happy people! Sometimes, he vaguely acknowledged this, but only to stop me from acting smug, because the truth is simply too obvious: most people are not even satisfied with their lifes, let alone happy; the world population at large is doing misarable. We’re so dysfunctional that we can’t even preserve the very environment that sustains us.

But, few of us like to hear the truth, even if the bearer of truth caries the good news of liberation. To protect their cages, the people have done more than ignoring Jorrit. He has been ridiculed, laughed at and called a Satan.

Travel, after all

Luckily, in October 2005, Jorrit managed to escape the prison-like confines of his own life. He, his girlfriend and me left for France on our bicycles. I left them there a month later, and, as of August 2006, his prison cell still seems empty.

Contact

Hyves profile
Email him at jorritjorik AT gmail DOT com
(Replace AT with @ and DOT with .)

Laurelin Lucinda van der Molen

July 24, 2006 / Rowan Rodrik

Of my two younger sisters, Laurelin is the youngest. She disrupted the steady trend of the two years interval between all her five older siblings by being born three instead of two years after Myrna, in 1987.

Laurelin likes to look at faces, especially her own. To her credit, this is a pretty(,) good-looking face.

This is the face that captures so much of her own spurious attention.

Fitness

Age ...

Like me, she likes skating, but she likes it even more. She also dabbles in Wushu a bit, which she likes much less so. Dancing is one of her passions, but don’t disturb her dancing, especially if you’re a fugly retard! If you’re lucky you’ll get away with the crushed nuts threatment. If you’re lucky that is.

Want more?

If your mirror reflects a Greek demigod of sharp wit and features, you may contact her for romantic encounters. She won’t make do with anything less. These are her own decisive words. Anyway, if you’re curious you may want to learn more:

Myrna Marinda van der Molen

July 8, 2006 / Rowan Rodrik

I hope one day I get to see
The secret land of if
Where in between the maybe’s
The only lonely live

—Myrna

Myrna is one of my sweet little sisters.

See? Sweet as can be.

Two years after me, she was born into this world on May, the 6th. As with me, the place of birth was Norg, but on a different address.

She has long had a temper. This may or may not have something to do with years of torture by her bigger brother and sister (that being me, and Ynske). I’m not sure about her temper now, so just don’t tempt her, and remain on the safe side.

Sicco. He is now the only one who may tempt her.

Whaddashe do?

When she isn’t reading, she writes pretty poems, short stories or even books.

Feats

Despite being just as stubbornly lazy as her brother (this brother), in 2001, Myrna did manage to finish her high-school education.
She managed to be admitted to art school with her low-end MAVO diploma, while most of everyone was telling her this wasn’t even allowed. This was still in 2001.
Just before they would have had her starting to believe that making ugly, soulless crap is actually doing a service to society, she escaped art school with her good taste almost intact. Phew…
During the year 2004, she accomplished the amazing feat of losing 20 Kg in about two months time. She has since remained at a healthy weight.

Excited?

See her own website for more.

Some of the artwork on this page is copyrighted by Myrna. So, if you want to have permission to use anything, I refer you to herself.