David and Katherine Goodwin

Having heard much about SELinux over the last few years, I thought I'd finally make an effort to use it on two servers I've been setting up for a customer. My main desire to use it is because the customer has a fairly large code base, which is programmed in a number of different styles over a number of years by different developers. I'm sure there are vulnerabilities in the code.

On one server, once I got over general teething problems (e.g. if I mount a disk to /var/spool, I'll need to get it relabelled) it seemed to work fine - so I've left it to do it's thing.

Some time ago, Packt publishing sent me this book to review. Here it is, being somewhat overdue!

ISBN: 978-2-847190-88-8
Author: Shu-Wai Chow
Title: PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects
Publisher: PacktPub.com
Number of pages: 278

My initial interest in this book was due to a requirement to "do" SOAP/XMLRPC etc. The book concentrates on creating a number of "mashups" (joining together remote web based services in one interface) which includes using :

Aside from Rowan getting bigger and noisier over time (and he slept for a record 8 hours last night in one "sitting"), my last week has almost returned to normality with the arrival of Bonzo (my sister's dog) to our household. He's visiting in order to get trained and neutered. Unfortunately for him, he's not fit enough to run my normal running route around Bromsgrove (but I'm sure this will change with time).

This morning while on my normal morning run, Bob (who was on his elasticated lead) ran out into the road. Unfortunately a car hit him and his back legs were paralysed. Thanks to the kind builders working nearby, I was able to get him to the vets, and after an emergency call out, X-rays and so forth it was determined that his spine was broken. At around 8:30am he was put to sleep, and we took him to my mother's farm to be buried alongside Cassie.

Rest In Peace Mr Jangles, you'll be missed by us all. We had some excellent memories together.

It seems Linux User and Developer will have another issue out soon; which, if things go to plan will have a column written by me on whether being free (as in beer) is a good thing or not for open source adoption. I suspect after the magazine has been published, I'll publish the article on here too.

Here's a great (relatively short) podcast on the power of marketing and branding.

"How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps" - Steve Yegge, Google.

http://mc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3375.html

Today was day 1 of LugRadio Live 2008 (UK edition).

Headline news - There will be more LugRadio Live conferences, and the implication of more LugRadio episodes.

As per normal, we met all the usual suspects, and had a good time. I only attended two talks - one on Women in Open Source, and the other was about bzr. Perhaps the schedule wasn't worded too well, but it was hard to get excited by any of the descriptions given - I needed more info goddamit!.

The following is effectively an online version of a talk I gave to phpwm in July 2008.

Disclaimer!

I'm no great expert on the inner workings of these protocols....there are probably secret manuals on SOAP/XmlRpc etc I/we failed to read somewhere

This is just a documentation of what I/we as “newbies” found ...

A week or so ago, there was some thunder and lightening (just to make our generally wet summer a bit more interesting). In the course of this "storm" lightening struck somewhere nearby, and killed our home ADSL router. (Perhaps my religious alter-ego should blame God?).

I've finally uploaded a few pictures to our website.

See :

• Rowan on his tummy
• Our new office
• Rachel's birthday cake (cake-pod anyone?)
• Emily's photos of us camping near Bromyard