Checksum Arcanius

“What we really need� is a perfect CEO.” –Me

Three and a half years ago, with guidance from Larry Barello, I founded the Titan Robotics Club at my high school. That first year, the fledgling club raked in more than $22,500 in donations, entered two robotics competition events and sent 19 students to the Silicon Valley Regional of the FIRST Robotics Competition for $50 a piece. The fundraising of the first year has not yet again been matched — but of course we got a $10,000 head start that first year due to a grant from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers. The next two years NASA treated us to $5000 — enough to cover entry to one regional. Each of those years, the TRC entered two regional competitions — one in Washington and one in California. This year, the NASA grant ran out, and so far the TRC has entered only one FIRST Robotics event � the closest one, in Portland, Oregon. What this translates into is that the TRC has pretty much had a flat level of income from the community, when KPCB and NASA are taken out of the equation. The first year, the extra money from KPCB let the TRC enter a second competition and subsidize travel costs. The next two years, the NASA money allowed the TRC to enter a second competition. This year, nothing — no extra money, just the basics: Students pay for their own travel, we enter one regional competition (even though the club got invited to the National Championships this year), and� well, who knows. It feels to me like things are winding down. But that is exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I want the TRC to take off. So, looking into the future, I have to figure out what it will take to get more students energized about the TRC. This is the great mystery�

For more on the TRC, visit titanrobotics.net

As mentioned above, the TRC participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC – http://www.usfirst.org). The FRC is a national competition of high school robotics groups teamed up with mentors of professional engineers and college students. Over 800 teams are at it this year. Every year, a new game is introduced, and a new Kit of Parts is released � and with the materials in the kits, each team tries to build a robot that will win the game. The compressed schedule simulates real-world engineering problems and forces students and mentors alike to balance the design, build, and test phases that every engineering project goes through. However, the six weeks of robot building are only the beginning. Every team enters one or more regional competitions. Throughout March and early April, weekends are turned into robotics extravaganzas, with thirty to sixty teams squaring off. These regional events are the real magic of the FIRST Robotics Competition. Sure, there may be better ways to teach the specific skills of welding, C programming, computer-aided design, turning drawings into pieces and pieces into robots, but there is no better way to get people who don�t give a hang interested in learning these skills in the first place. A FIRST Regional Event is part rock concert, part sports event, part nerd convention, and completely energetic fun. The FIRST Regional celebrates science and technology � flying in the face of our society that idolizes entertainment over all and pays more attention to the lives of sex symbols than to the amazing feats of science and technology (ie, Britney vs. Mars Rover). FIRST � For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology � is what we need more of.
And now, for a shameless plug: if you know of an individual or a company (including you and yours) that would be interested in supporting the worthy effort of a FIRST Robotics team� send them to this informational page

Updated Photos! Updated Photos!
I�m sorry that they will take a little while to load; I am currently serving from my house and thus am limited to cable modem upload speeds. On the other hand, the computer is now much faster, so resizing to a size that isn�t cached should actually go faster. Now it is time to explain the last three photos�

Years ago my dad gave me a strobe light kit. A few days ago, I finally decided to put it together. I blame this decision on my choice to avoid counterstrike until I do well on a Math test. I have a lot of time to do good things that I should have been doing for a long time now. So, I started soldering the parts to the board. I am not an expert at soldering, but I did quite well. But then I got overconfident, and didn�t read all of the instructions, and ended up soldering one part of the wrong side of the board. So I unsoldered it – a tedious task – and ended up breaking one of the leads to the transformer I had misplaced. Well, I jammed the pin back in, but once the entire thing was soldered together, I got sporadic flashes at best, and no flashes at worst. It turns out that the particular component I had screwed up was the transformer that initiated the ionization of the Xenon gas in the flash tube. I explained the situation to my dad, and he thought of an old, broken Vivatar camera flash he had lying around. He found the flash and dissected it, then I removed the corresponding part from the flash and soldered it into the kit. I turned it on and � voila! The strobe light kit came alive. The final picture has the transformer from the flash circled. The strobe light isn’t actually all that impressive, because the rate of strobe is only several times per second at best, and the flash is never particularly bright. But the point of the project really was to practice to the mini-sumo kit I have had sitting around for about two and a half years. Maybe this year I will actually compete in an individual robotics competition� I’ll explain some day, but for now, I will move on.

As mentioned above, I have vowed not to play Counterstrike until I do well on a Math test. I still long to play – I�ll look at server stats and wish I were playing and load up HLSW to see which members of my clan are showing others what’s up– and almost click to join. But so far, I have been truthful to my vow. I hope I do well on the next test, though � I want to play again! But not playing has given me some time to study math. I actually did some problems out of the packet today; this is a first for me in this class. I plan at doubling up sections until I am up to date, hopefully with enough time to study as well before the test. So, strangely, avoiding counterstrike has helped me gain some work ethic and more life structure. Well, maybe that’s not so strange.

In order to compile modern versions of PHP for silverfir.net, I have to have the GCC compiler version three or above. However, Debian’s “Stable” distribution includes gcc-2.95 � and adding on 3.0 isn�t fun. So I tend up upgrade to the “unstable” version which isn’t really that unstable, just the packages don’t always work perfectly. So while I am generally very happy with Debian, and I understand it well enough to work with it well, I think things can get better. Some day, I hope I will find the OS that clicks with me. Until then, I will keep trying Gentoo, FreeBSD, and whatever else gets suggested until one of them starts to make sense to me.

Well, tomorrow is an early class and a long day — so that’s all for now.

Scott: hey
Me: hi there
Scott: ever thought about BASE jumping?
Me: no, nore have I heard of it, nor do I know what it is
Me: once you tell me
Me: I will have thoguht about it
Scott: gah! never heard of it!
Scott: wow
Scott: BASE = building, antenna, span, earth
Me: I think I’m a dysfucntional nerd around you
Me: haha
Scott: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASE_jumping
Me: it seems like a worthwhile endeavor to me
Scott: heh
Scott: good

Linux kernels before version 2.4.23 had a security hole that would allow a non-privileged user to gain administrative privileges on any Linux system. Version 2.4.23 was released on November 28, 2003. Silverfir.net had been running with no significant changes to its setup since May, 2003. The kernel hole, along with a security hole in the gallery software I use on this site, PHPix, allowed attackers to gain privileged access to the silverfir.net machine. Apparently, one succeeded. But whoever it was, the attacker must have been disappointed at the level of machine he or she gained access to. A Pentium Pro 180 with a nice but unremarkable Internet uplink isn’t exactly a conquest worth bragging about. Furthermore, nothing even remotely commercial happens on the machine, and all of my email is boring. Besides, something seems to have gone wrong: with the privileged status, the attacker seems to have replaced my INIT — the program that starts up before all other programs and guides the system though its startup routine — a common first step once a root kit (the tools used to crack open a system once administrator privileges have been gained) has been installed. However, this seems to have made my system quite unstable, and with several convenient power outages (thanks Amy, and Puget Power), the problem soon manifest itself with silverfir.net becoming unstable and generating all sorts of errors. In due time, after I got around to reading the logs, and reading security news bulletins, I was able to piece the story together. Of course, I am dumb, and I haven’t updated my (extremely changed by me) version of PHPix yet, but I figure as long as users can’t gain root with a kernel exploit, I�ll let them run strange commands on my system until I get around to getting the real replacement server working (probally FreeBSD or OpenBSD on the dual Pentium II). But at this point, that is a ways off.

After watching the movie last night, I stayed up even later to, among other things, update this site. The result is that I slept in until 1:00pm today, just long enough to completely miss church. That wasn’t planned, mind you. I had breakfast, read some, and then watched the New England Patriots narrowly defeat the Carolina Panthers in Superbowl XXXVIII. I was cheering for the Panthers simply because they were the underdogs; things looked grim in the first quarter for them, but both teams picked up the offensive pace towards halftime…

Another aside: At BYU, I took an introduction to economics course that covered basic micro- and macroeconomic theory. One of the books I read for the class was called “Hard Heads, Soft Hearts.” Written by Alan Blinder, a liberal economist from the Clinton administration, the book is about how liberal fiscal policies could also be economically grounded. I hope that all politicians in this country, both “conservative” and “liberal” (although the differences these days are slight) would read the book and follow the advice. The reason I think of this now is that in the introduction to the book, Blinder declares that you can tell if someone is liberal if they root for the underdog team in a sports contest when they have no personal loyalties to either team. But he is wrong. I am one of the least liberal people I know (not necessarily to be confused with classic conservatism), and I enthusiastically root for the underdogs, as long as the one projected to win is not the UW, BYU, or a Seattle team. Take that, Mr. Blinder! But seriously, especially if you are liberal, read the book, then we can have a decent conversation about our politics.

And back to the main story: despite the slow start, the game turned out to be quite good, except for the fact that we had the same ending that we had two years ago (although I did not watch that game, to be honest) and the fact that the Panther’s should have tried something really wild on that last play. Getting tackled should�ve been the last thing they let happened � I mean, seriously, who cares if you let the Patriots score again, you still loose, but try some laterals and pull your entire team back for some voodoo magic and at least make the final moments an exciting bang instead of a lackluster whimper. Oh well, I guess that’s what we have college football for.

Check out the page of Bernie Zimmermann at http://www.pleasureunit.com/bernie/. He is the writer of the only comment (so far at least) on my last post. Seeing websites that are pretty like his gets me to thinking about making my website pretty. In fact, it reminds me of a story about my early days with the Internet. And since I am in the mood, I will share the story with you�

My first website ever was titled “The Realm of Arcanius.” The name remains to this day — check out the title of this page. My brother was becoming interested in graphic design at the time (he was doing his senior project on computer aided graphic design, in fact) and he made me the logo, which really was the prettiest part of the site. And prettiness mattered, since I was locked in a battle for votes with my friend Dan�s “Lagomorph’s Lair” and he always seemed to be winning. I had decidedly more content in the form of stories, poetry, pictures, photos, and jokes, for what that was worth. But he had style. I have similar problems today. I am able to update this site fairly regularly (although I admit the pictures are getting stale), but I still have trouble making my sites all that pretty. I can make what I think are good looking logos and designs using Photoshop and freehand, but putting them together to make a good website had never been my strong point. My most successful websites have always been very simple, come-for-the-content websites. Of course, Mr. Zimmermann is a professional web developer — so I shouldn’t feel too bad that my site isn;t as good-looking as his.

So the story part of that (I know it wasn’t too clear) was that I made a website when I was in the eighth grade and I lost a competition to my friend. And I;ve kept the name ever since. So now, I might as well talk about how I picked up the name “Arcanius” anyway. Actually, I think I already talked about this (if you go to the first posts in the archives). But here it is again for those of you too lazy to go back (I would be too, so don’t feel bad). There was a game I played back in sixth grade called “Master of Magic.” It was fun, and it had two worlds — one called “Arcanus” and the other called “Myrror.” I took the former name, added the ‘i’ (because I’m cool like that) and adopted it as my online name.

And I might as well keep on going; it is good to remember. Well, the Lagomorph who always beat me in website design now attends the University of Washington — where I will probally be going by the end of the year. It is somewhat sad that we have drifted apart. We still get along, but we really don�t see each other much anymore — no real reason to, I guess. The same thing happened to Alex, another friend from high school, and countless others as well. But some people I have continued to hang out with regularly — Scott, Maneesh, Amy. The difference is that the ones I have drifted away from don’t tend to find the time to do things with me, while the ones still in my life seem to always be willing to do things still. So it leads to a very simply but very important conclusion: continued close friendship takes continued inputs of time. There is simply no way around it. I will always be cordial with Alex and Dan, but already, I have nothing to talk to them about — they come online and I don’t message them, because I don’t have anything to say.

Now for an update on more current history: today. First, I did the Robotics thing, picking up a breakfast burrito as Casa D’s Tacqueria on Bellevue Way on the way to Larry�s house. Once there, Bobby and I worked on the design of the arm (we think it is pretty much finished now), participated somewhat in the betterment of the ball scooper-upper, and generally had ourselves a good time, before returning to 8, the eight-restaurant cafeteria in the basement of McMahon Hall. We seem to be eating there a lot, but Bobby does have 900-some dollars he needs to burn through before the end of the term, and I’m willing to help him as long as its not taking anything away from him. While eating and finalizing details on the arm, we watched the UW men’s basketball team put the spank on the Arizona State Sun Devils. Then we watched the Montlake parking area’s black of asphalt turn into glowing red of brake lights as thousands of fans exited the arena only to sit in their cars waiting to get out. Once the traffic had subsided, I returned home before running out to apply for employment at the low-risk, low-stress local Blockbuster, and to grab a movie and some groceries. I highly recommend the movie “Antwone Fisher.” I can’t say I cried, but my eyes did get damp. Of course, I’m pretty emotionally detached, so that’s a pretty good effect.

I’ll work on new pictures, and probably fix the error in PHPix which has hackers still attempting to compromise my system. Of course, I’m not sure if the hackers were directly related to Wadi’s crash, or if both events just happened to occur at the same time. In the meantime, I’ve thought of many ways that OS’s could be made more secure by default: some of these ideas are already implemented by Immunix, Inc. (www.immunix.com / www.immunix.org), although they use older technology. I’m too cutting edge (not quite beta, but everything up until thing pretty much) to deal with gcc < 3.0 or Apache < 2.0. so while maybe its flawed in security, I get to learn and it�ll make me a better sysadmin in the meantime.