Writings

Of varying quality. Sometimes it's copy for work, sometimes it's a cathartic exorcism of inner demons, sometimes it's retaliation for the rubbish that's fed to the people, and occasionally it's lighthearted fluff: here below are some of the words that live in my head.

Computers & networking: seminars, papers, articles and notes

• On April 14th 1999 I gave a presentation called Legal Aspects of Computer System Security at a HEAnet seminar (Security - Protecting our Resources). The presentation slides and notes are available.
• I gave a short talk about the IE top-level domain to the CENTR DNR Forum session at RIPE 37. Here are the talk slides (PDF).
• I'm a DNS geek. I wrote an article for the Irish Linux Users Group on getting to grips with DNS transaction signatures (TSIG) using BIND. TSIG offers cryptographic authentication of DNS conversations between hosts.
• Don't play with your $TERM -- advice from RedBrick's BBS days.
• Building a custom, patched FreeBSD ISO install image.

Lighthearted nonsense

• The guys are right and the girls are wrong: Men and Primary Colours. There are eleven primary colours because that's how many there needs to be.
• Saddam Hussein is a villainous menace, but perhaps he's not all bad.
• The dosser's dictionary; my personal lexicon of madeupisms.
• Respect and tolerance for all traditions might have odd consequences.

Politics, world affairs: things that make me angry

• I try to rationalise my decision to approve the Nice Treaty second time around. I voted YES, though I'm not sure why anymore.
• A longish piece on my day at the anti-war protest in Shannon Airport on October 12 2002.
• In a spectacular display of tabloidism, The New York Post tells us that France has forgotten World War Two. I disagree.

Works either in progress or destined never to be finished

• RedBrick, whether you know it or not, is the best society in DCU. It's entertaining, different and intense fun. I used to be a SysAdmin and would like to wish the current committee the very best. You'll need it. If you can survive the back-stabbing and petty infighting you'll be laughing. But every year some of the new intake ineviteably make dicks of themselves. Take my advice and save yourself the wrath of RedBrick's more exprienced users.
• Scribbled notes on getting to Vienna.
• The US moral compass is not as steady as its government would like you to believe. There is abundant precedent of the US making its choices for all the wrong reasons, and lying about it. All one must do is look at history. That done, how can we accept US reasons for an Iraqi war at face value?
• The Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) was developed to eliminate single points of failure in statically routed, default gateway environments. In this paper I make use of VRRP to provide redundant access to network services rather than routing paths. I use a VRRP ``virtual router'' as a method of providing cheap, reliable and standards based redundancy for a group of hosts serving common internet network services. I provide configuration hints and highlight problems that may be encountered.