Danté's Inferno

Here’s today’s travel adventure.

It actually started last night, stopped and got dinner, turned in the
rental car and checked into the Tampa Airport Marriott for a few hours
of sleep.

Woke up at 04:00, took a quick shower then went downstairs to check-in
at Delta and that’s where the adventure started

For some reason, still under investigation, my reservation couldn’t be
found at the check-in kiosk. So, I broke out my laptop and checked to
make sure that I listed OK and it looked good to me. A ticket agent
asked me what was wrong, so I told her what was going on and she said
she’d take a look. Well, simultaneously, some a-hole next to me started
screaming at the ticket agent that was helping me because 4 people went
ahead of him and he had been waiting 7 minutes! Oh, the horror He was
screaming in my ear, wanted everyone’s names, requested red coats and
managers and kept screaming at the girl helping me out! So, they pretty
much ignored him, which made him even madder. What a great experience to
have at 04:30 in the morning!

So, she found me in one of their other reservation systems and took my
bag, handed me back my cell phone and ID. I didn’t realize it but she
went ahead and checked me in but somehow missed that I wanted to be on a
higher priority ticket but couldn’t hear me over the the a-hole that had
to wait 7 minutes!!!

So, 2 families that listed at this higher priority got on the 06:00 to
ATL, but I didn’t! Mind you, I didn’t know that I was at the wrong
priority since I didn’t see how she checked me in!!!

However, I did get on the 7:15 flight to ATL, which was stuck on a
ground hold, so we arrived to ATL late. Since I was in the back of the
bus (757) it took forever to deplane, so I got the the gate for CLE at
9:20, but that flight was delayed (it was supposed to leave at 9:20 but
was delayed until 9:35) but there were no gate agents to be found! I
couldn’t find anyone with Delta to let me on the plane even though
their automated system said I was cleared!

So, having missed that flight, I called into Delta Res and that’s when I
found out that I wasn’t on the higher priority, but no explanation of
why I couldn’t get on the CLE flight. I got listed on the 12:50 flight
to CLE and got on that flight. In the meantime, Joanie was calling their
help line to see why they couldn’t find me (this happened on the way
down, too, but we thought it was a one-time glitch. She was on hold for
3 hours and basically they told her they didn’t know why I wasn’t
showing up and they would open a ticket!!!!

Hope your day was less adventuresome
Danté

After upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, myself and many others found that the Lightning Calendar extension for Thunderbird was no longer in the Ubuntu Repositories.

I found this link that has the matrix of support versions. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ThunderbirdLightning

For me, I ended up at this link: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/releases/1.0b2/contrib/linux-x86_64/

And followed the instructions.

So now I can see my Google Calendar,

Google Calendar

And within Thunderbird you can now see my calendar:

Calendar - Mozilla Thunderbird

Have fun with it!

Learn To Light!

The weekend of October 23 and 24 I had the pleasure of attending a “Learn to Light workshop with Don Giannatti as instructor. As some of you that read my blog may remember, I have a passion for photography that I gave up on for about 20 years. I have been poking around the web for awhile looking for courses and instructors that I thought I would be able to learn from. This is definitely not a knock on the courses and instructors out there that didn’t interest me at this time, it’s just that this type of workshop meets my goals. Since I’m approaching this as a business, it’s very important to state your goals for any endeavor you undertake. A cost-benefit analysis is also appropriate, but not as mandatory in this case. Later in this post I’ll give you a CBA that I’ve used for other professional training and see how that compares to this course. If you would like to jump there, hit this link

First some housekeeping! Special thanks to our hosts studio, Brian Mullins Photography in Apex, NC. Here’s a nice picture of Brian and our hostess, Jenn Our Hosts. Also, if you want to skip my text and look at the pictures (plus some more) head to my Workshop Gallery

Also, check out the Lighting Essentials site for some pictures from my classmates at this seminar: http://www.lighting-essentials.com/dispatch-from-raleigh-nc-notes-on-the-lighting-essentials-workshop-2010/

You may be wondering why I would be taking a course in Apex, NC? Well, it turns out that I’m working for a customer in Raleigh and I had the weekend free, so it worked out well!.

My Goals

• Find an instructor with many years of practical experience with

• Commercial
• Product
• Fashion
• Product
• Portaits

The important thing here is to define a set of goals. In reality you may not find that you’ve met your goals, but in the case of this course I believe that I have met my goals!

One thing to mention is that I didn’t approach this course as one where I would end up with 200 portpholio grade shots! I’d be happy with one shot that came out decently:)

Katya by Train

Katya on Train

This shot is a demonstration of working in bright sunlight. A single strobe was used, about eye level with Katia. In fact, I way underexposed this shot as I was just getting used to my rental camera and had to do some work in Bibble 5 to salvage it! BTW, I’m using Bibble 5 instead of Lightroom because in my IT business I’m an open source advocate so I’ve been searching and trying different software that runs on open source platforms, like Ubuntu Linux and other *nix systems

Katya with Guitar

Katya Rocking Out

This shot demonstrates using multiple strobes on the shady side of a building. There is an umbrella off to camera right, another to camera left and a bare strobe lighting the background. The bike was loaned to the class by the Apex Bike shop right across the street. One thing I really wanted to get out of this class was an understanding of the modern way of working with models. Back when I did photography, it was very hands-off. Art directors or directors from the customer did all the interfacing and I was there just to click the shutter! Thank god that has changed!!!

Ella in Natural Light

Ella in Pink

If my notes are correct, this is a shot of Ella using natural light with a strobe on minimum power shot through an umbrella! Emphasis is because this was one of my goals, working with Natural Light as well as strobes, studio lights, scrims, etc! It is a total and complete bonus when one of your goals actually results in a decent shot

Yuliya In Beach Lights

Beach Light

This shot was to demonstrate some studio lighting techniques. Don calls this “Beach Lighting”. I added a twist by having Yuliya hold up her ring, so it could like like a product shot. Not bad considering I’ve never done this before Oh, and the modeling and the lighting really helped out!

Katya on Stairs

Katya on Stairs

This was an interesting shot and many thanks to Jen for giving me a new perspective. I had taken some shots at “normal” height and you can see lighting out the doors at the bottom of the stairs that just didn’t look right. Jen told me to lay on the ground and try a shot or two. Well, Thanks Jen! It worked. And thanks to Katya who was a real trouper, holding this pose for-ever!

Brian and Jen on Street

Brian & Jen on Street

I got somewhat separated from our models and was working on a lighting setup in the street with my classmates. When it came time to take some shots, all the models were taken! In stepped Brian and Jen! Lighting setup is a single strobe, camera left and about 2 feet higher than me, so it was about eye level with Brian! (He’s very tall)!

Emily on Street

Emily On Street

This shot, Don helped us to properly use a scrim with natural light on the street! I won’t reveal the secret, but it’s not how I learned to use scrims way back in college days! What a difference it makes. When used in this manner, the scrim really brought out Emily’s beautiful eyes and I tried to capture that beauty as best I could!

Lena Under Fall Foliage

Lena by Tree

This is one of the first setups on day 2 of the workshop. I was getting more familiar with the rental gear and the shots really showed it. Fewer were screwed up, like out of focus, really wacky exposures, etc. This shot of Lena was taken under a tree in downtown Apex. We had 2 strobes in front and one behind for a hair light. Lena’s clothing was very earth tone and looked perfect for a fall portrait. That made things very easy! BTW, I’m loving those 2.8 lenses for Portraits!!!

Lena in Natural Light

Lena by Tree II

Here’s another, somewhat unorthodox pose, fall portrait of Lena. This shot is in natural light and was taken during setup of one of the classmates shots. You always read in every single photo book, to keep your camera ready because you never know when you’ll see the shot. I’m glad I did for this one of Lena

Assignment: Double Truck with Text Left

Emilie in Park I

Now, I know I’ve got that title incorrect The assignment is to have a 2 page shot, with text on the left hand page. I hated shooting these when I was young as these are some of the most challenging to have the model look good, the product look good, but flow backwards as far as English text is concerned. I try to have the model flowing from right to left for shots like this. That doesn’t necessarily mean this particular pose, you use the models best assets if you know what I mean. She or he can have their body facing left, their face to the camera/reader and their leg kicked up in the back, pointing to the left page. Use your imagination! There was a police car that I wanted to use, but we would have needed studio lights and permission from the Apex PD!

Emily Close Up double truck!

Emilie in Park II - Closeup

A close up from the above shoot. We had a hair light that I messed up the power on and had it on FULL POWER which looked totally fake, but in this shot, it really lit up her hair and looked OK since the sun actually poked through the tree making it look more natural. Oh, sometimes luck is very important in photography

Emily with Jenn’s Doggy

Fun Shot with Doggy

Not even anywhere near perfect (I know, you’re not supposed to publish anything that’s imperfect), but I like this shot. Nothing technical about it, just fun.

This reminds me of why I gave up photography many years ago. The shoots we did back in the day, you couldn’t have any fun. They were dead serious. How the f are you supposed to do anything creative when you can’t have fun??? Everyone was always uptight, screaming, yelling, crying. Man it got old fast. I hope things have changed and if I’m doing this for myself and don’t get so critical like I had to be back then, well, maybe I’ll just enjoy it now!

Emily in Power Pose

Emily Rock Star Attitude Shot

This was a bit if a different pose than we had been doing. The motivation was Emily is now a Rock Star and is back in her home town, flaunting her success! My job, as photographer, is to catch her eyes properly and let the lighting do the work. We had a bare strobe lighting the leaves in the foreground and in the background to give the shot some pop!

Emily Close Up – Eyes!

Emily Close Up

Same lighting setup as above, but shot from a different angle. I know some folks will have some issues with her eyes picking up the specular of the strobes below the horizon, but who cares when someone’s eyes photograph so beautifully!

Don!

Don, Yuliya and Ella hamming it up

[Read more →]

Here’s a script I wrote to convert ALL instances of IPMP on a server that are configured in active-active to active-standby. The reason for doing this is that we have some servers connected to F-5 Big IP firewalls and load balancers and those guys don’t like having packets sent out ALL NICs on the source side. So we had to convert every server’s IPMP that is active-active to active-standby. All fail-over capabilities if IPMP are intact.

This script builds scripts that are named for each IPMP group on your server, one script per group. That way if you still want some groups to be active-active, you just don’t run that script!

#!/usr/bin/bash
# change IPMP from active-active to active-standby
#
# first edit failover /etc/hostname.* file to put standby flag in it
# in working directory
WORKDIR="/var/tmp/dante/ipmp-mop"

if [ -d $WORKDIR ]; then
        rm $WORKDIR/*
else
        mkdir -p $WORKDIR
fi
#
# cleanup workdir
#
cd $WORKDIR

for F in `ls -1 /etc/hostname.* | egrep -v '2010|bak|back'`
do
        grep -l ^group $F >> $WORKDIR/failover-nic-files
done
# now edit the fileover nic files to add standby flag
# into new.hostname.*

cat /dev/null > $WORKDIR/failover-nic-filenames
sed -e 's/.etc.//' $WORKDIR/failover-nic-files | tee -a $WORKDIR/failover-nic-filenames

for F in `cat $WORKDIR/failover-nic-filenames`
do
        cp /etc/$F $WORKDIR
        cat /dev/null>$WORKDIR/new.$F

        # check if standby flag already exists if not add it
        grep -i standby $WORKDIR/$F
        if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
                sed -e 's/\ up/standby\ up/' $WORKDIR/$F | tee -a $WORKDIR/new.$F
        else
                rm $WORKDIR/$F
#               rm $WORKDIR/$F.new
        fi
done

# for each interface in the group create a command file to down it, unplumb, plumb an up it

cat /dev/null > $WORKDIR/interfaces
sed -e 's/.etc.hostname.//' $WORKDIR/failover-nic-files | tee -a $WORKDIR/interfaces

for I in `cat $WORKDIR/interfaces`
do
        cat /dev/null > $WORKDIR/$I.group-nics
        cat /dev/null > $WORKDIR/$I.group-nics-files

        #get other nic in group

        GROUP=`awk < new.hostname.$I '{ print $2 }'`

#       egrep -l '(^| +)$GROUP( +|$)' `ls -1 /etc/hostname.*|egrep -v '2010|bak'` | tee -a $WORKDIR/$I.group-nics-files
#       /usr/xpg4/bin/egrep -l -e '(^| +)$GROUP( +|$)' `ls -1 /etc/hostname.*| egrep -v '2010|bak'`  | tee -a $WORKDIR/$I.group-nics-files

        parameter=`awk < new.hostname.$I '{ print $2 }'`

        for hostfile in `ls /etc/hostname.* | egrep -v '2010|back|bak'`
        do
                /usr/xpg4/bin/egrep -l -e "(^| +)$parameter( +|$)" $hostfile | tee -a $WORKDIR/$I.group-nics-files
        done

        sed -e 's/.etc.hostname.//' $WORKDIR/$I.group-nics-files | tee -a $WORKDIR/$I.group-nics

        cat /dev/null > $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash
        echo "#!/usr/bin/ksh" >> $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash
        for N in `cat $I.group-nics`
        do
                echo "cp /etc/hostname.$N /etc/_hostname.$N.orig.`date +%Y%m%d`" >> $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash
        done
        echo "cp $WORKDIR/new.hostname.$I /etc/hostname.$I" >> $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash

        for N in `cat $I.group-nics`
        do
                echo "ifconfig $N down" >> $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash
                echo "ifconfig $N unplumb" >> $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash
        done

        for N in `cat $I.group-nics`
        do
                echo "ifconfig $N plumb" >> $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash
                echo "ifconfig $N \`cat /etc/hostname.$N\`" >> $WORKDIR/$GROUP.commands.bash
        done
done
exit 0

Notice that this script actually creates the scripts to run to do the actual modifications. That allows you to review them for accuracy and to stage them so that when you obtain an outage window, all you need to do is execute the scripts and then do all your testing!

openssl req -new -outform PEM -out smtpd.cert -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout smtpd.key -keyform PEM -days 3650 -x509
Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key
.....+++
....................................+++
writing new private key to 'smtpd.key'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Ohio
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Lakewood
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:www.cocoanet.us
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:www.cocoanet.us
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:www.cocoanet.us
Email Address []:webadmin@cocoanet.us