Powershell script to enable windows to capture localhost traffic in wireshark

If you want to understand why the following scripts work read this post. Otherwise just paste the following into an elevated powershell window: Setup windows networking to allow localhost capturing in wireshark: # Find the network configuration that has the default gateway.$defaultAdapter = Get-WMIObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration | ? {$_.DefaultIPGateway}if (@($defaultAdapter).Length -ne 1) {throw "You don't have 1 default gateway, your network configuration is not supported" } # Route local IP address via the default gatewayroute add $defaultAdapter.IPAddress[0] $defaultAdapter.DefaultIPGatewayWrite-Host...

Read More

How did we get a 53 byte packet size in ATM?

I'll be honest, I don't know squat about ATM, but I was having lunch with this fellow, and he told me the story of the 53 byte ATM packet.  You can find more details on Wikipedia, but here’s the synopsis: (Disclaimer: I’m not an expert in ATM; nor am I trying to teach you technical details about ATM networks; so I’ll hand wave and trade off accuracy for simplicity. For example, ATM does have variable sized packets which it divides into cells, and it is the cells which are 53 bytes long. However, since the closest thing to a cell in common networks is an Ethernet packet, I’ll simply refer...

Read More

The cloud lets you evaluate the cost of performance optimizations

One of the things I love about cloud computing is you can put an honest price on computing time.  You can than balance the human engineering time required to optimize code (and often have more complex code) vs just paying for the cloud to do it.  The Zillow rent estimate post speaks to this brilliantly: We implemented the Rent Zestimation process as a software application taking input from Zillow databases and producing an output table with about 100 million rows. We deploy this software application into a production environment using Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.  The total...

Read More

Using LINQ to XML from F# (and a bit of duck typing for fun)

So you want to use XML from F#? here are the tips and tricks I discovered today to clear my roadblocks. Tip 1: Reference the System.XML assembly from FSI so you play with the REPL. To do this I add the #r in block comments at the top of the file  like so: (* Press Alt-' to send the below to the interpreter.#r @"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\System.Xml.Linq.dll"*)open System.Xml.LinqTip 2: F# doesn’t perform implicit conversions. Lets assume you’re translating the following C# code: var xelements = XElement.Parse("<myXML/>");var interestingElements = xelements.Descendants("myXML");The...

Read More

Supply, demand and the trackball market.

The author of this blog is a devout trackball man, and as any devout trackball man can tell you, it has been trying times for trackball users in the last few years. You see trackballs were never really in style, and no one has made a new trackball for a while.  It's so bad out there that one of my favorite trackballs now sells used for over 200$ and new for 500$.Crazier than that you can send away to get your trackball reconditioned on ebay, for a whopping 100$, where they'll clean it and put on a new cord.  Thankfully, there has been movement in the trackball market. Logitech released...

Read More

Decoding Ubuntu Version Numbers

I've always been fond of the Ubuntu code names, "breezy badger" and  "warty warthog" are some of my favorites. I know the code names are in alphabetical order, but I never understood how the Ubuntu folks got the version numbers. Why does 10.10 come after 10.04? Today I realized it's because the version numbers are release dates,  and releases are every April and October. So, this April's release "Natty Narwhal" will be 11.04.  Learn something new every day.  Oh and if you don't know what a  narwhal is,  it's  worth checking o...

Read More