Well, so I ordered a coffee before my meal, and a few minutes after it had arrived, the waitress came up to me and offered, with an extra apologetic tone, the option of moving to a regular table (though I was alone), if I was finding it uncomfortable to sit at the counter (which, I only then realised, I indeed was). Having long legs can be troublesome, though having gotten used to it I hardly notice it myself.

But it's a great example of really good service when someone else takes note of your discomfort, however trifling it may be, and offers to help before you can even say to yourself "damn these long legs!"

I'm allowing myself that smug feeling of reassured satisfaction. Looks like the Screen scraping idea paid off. These are relatively good seats (they had better be; they cost 13,000 yen each), and might I add that though I managed to get them relatively early, the previous day's show (February 13th) was already sold out.

I could see this when I ran who:

faiz     pts/3        Nov 19 13:56 (p02a702.tokynt01.ap.so-net.ne.jp)
vasanth  pts/2        Nov 18 23:37 (86.123.17.188:S.0)

Looks like it never got beyond that, though I saw some hundreds of './ssh' processes running, which, after summarily killing off, I found and archived the offending scripts: These were stored and running off of the directory /var/tmp/vi.recover/irc/ as the user 'vasanth'. I suspect a weak password lead to a brute-force SSH break-in. Not at all a bother, but nothing that can't be fixed by an iptables '-m recent' filter.

var/
`-- tmp
    `-- vi.recover
        `-- irc
            |-- 1
            |-- 10
            |-- 11
            |-- 12
            |-- 13
            |-- 14
            |-- 15
            |-- 16
            |-- 17
            |-- 18
            |-- 19
            |-- 2
            |-- 20
            |-- 209.85.ps.22
            |-- 21
            |-- 22
            |-- 23
            |-- 24
            |-- 25
            |-- 26
            |-- 27
            |-- 28
            |-- 29
            |-- 3
            |-- 30
            |-- 31
            |-- 32
            |-- 33
            |-- 34
            |-- 35
            |-- 36
            |-- 37
            |-- 38
            |-- 39
            |-- 4
            |-- 40
            |-- 41
            |-- 42
            |-- 43
            |-- 44
            |-- 45
            |-- 46
            |-- 47
            |-- 48
            |-- 49
            |-- 5
            |-- 50
            |-- 51
            |-- 52
            |-- 53
            |-- 54
            |-- 55
            |-- 56
            |-- 57
            |-- 58
            |-- 59
            |-- 6
            |-- 60
            |-- 61
            |-- 62
            |-- 63
            |-- 64
            |-- 7
            |-- 8
            |-- 9
            |-- all
            |-- common
            |-- full
            |-- go.sh
            |-- mfu.txt
            |-- pass_file
            |-- ps
            |-- r00t
            |-- skan
            |-- ss
            |-- ssh
            `-- x

Some samples from the scripts: Note: though no harm can come if you try running these binaries as a non-root user (if you are running Linux, that is), it's probably a good idea not to run the scripts in this archive - there's no easy way to be sure what they actually do.

$ cat /var/tmp/vi.recover/irc/go.sh 
./ss 22 -b $1 -i eth0 -s 6
cat bios.txt |sort | uniq > mfu.txt
./ssh-scan
rm -f bios.txt

#!/bin/bash

clear

rm -rf $1.ps.$2

echo "#=====#==================================#=====#"
echo "#= R =# SSH AUTO SCANNER BY REGELE & CO  #= R =#"
echo "#= E =#-------   #BlackCat TEAM   -------#= E =#"
echo "#= G =#----------------------------------#= G =#"
echo "#= E =# � ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO Regele �#= E =#"
echo "#= L =#   Now Just Sit Back End Relax    #= L =#"
echo "#= E =#   IPs founder... ACTIVATING!!!   #= E =#"
echo "#Range from -> $1.0.0"
echo "#Range   to -> $1.255.255"
echo "#Looking on -> PORT $2"

./ps $1 $2

sleep 5

cat $1.ps.$2 |sort |uniq > mfu.txt

oopsnr2=`grep -c . mfu.txt`

sleep 5
echo "#---Relax ... Take it Easy---#"

cat 1 > pass_file
sleep 3
./ssh 150

cat 2 > pass_file
sleep 3
./ssh 150

#... and so on

echo "# It's over, you cand go outside and play now #"

use LWP::Simple 'get';
use HTML::TableExtract;
use Data::Dumper;

sub STATUS { 5 }  # The 5th column of table happens to be 'ticket status'

my $te = new HTML::TableExtract;
# slurp!
$te->parse(get 'https://tickets.thepolice.com/');

my ($table) = $te->tables;             # The first and only table in the 
                                       # page is a list of all gigs by city,
                                       # date, and ticket availability
my @tokyo_gigs = grep {                
                    grep /Tokyo/, @$_  # Rows with dates in Tokyo
                 } $table->rows;

# Look out for any changes; at this time, there are only 2 shows in Tokyo
die "Whoa! no gigs in Tokyo??"    unless @tokyo_gigs;
die "Whoa! *more* gigs in Tokyo??"    if @tokyo_gigs > 2;
die "Whoa! only *one* gig in Tokyo??" if @tokyo_gigs == 1;

# ... and if their status is anything other than 'Coming Soon',
# then either tickets sales have begun, or... are already sold out!
print "Whoa! somethings up!\n", Dumper @tokyo_gigs 
    if grep { ! /coming soon/i  }
       map { $_->[STATUS] } @tokyo_gigs;

This is just so I don't miss The Police live at the Tokyo Dome, scheduled in February, 2008.

• Reggatta de Blanc
• Ghost in the Machine
• Zenyatta Mondatta
• Synchronicity

And, what timing: 2007 sees Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland not only reuniting as the original 3-piece band, but with any luck, I get to see them live in Tokyo in February. If I buy the tickets on time that is. I have a horrible track record of missing out any good live music in a city that's not exactly deprived of it.

I only hope they don't get completely bored of playing the sames songs over and over again, by the time they get here.

Actually touching the spokes

The frame was fixed, Uncle said the 6-7 degree bend was fixable, but apparently the hanger isn't 'right' - it's probably why the derailleur dived into the spokes last month, which was a spectacular event, still etched in my mind... the rear wheel came off, the chain broke and wedged between the largest rear gear and the wheel, and the derailleur flipped upwards, and the bike came, literally, to a grinding halt. Needless to say, the derailleur and chain, shown in these pictures are all new.

The risk of that happening again is only if I use the forward small gear, which is when the spoke-touching happens, as shown in the photos. And that, says Uncle, will be fixed once the drop-hanger arrives - and since Raleigh parts seem to be relatively scarce in Japan, that's been taking a long time...

In the same way that a friend (who is a researcher in Women's Studies) once explained how 'I Love Lucy' has been frequently suspected of being a 'propaganda' TV show, in how it promotes gender roles, is Sanchōme no Yūhi itself a nostalgia-packaged, public-influencing, collective viewpoint that Japanese society is better off emulating the Showa stereotypes depicted in the films?

Well, don't get me wrong, I'm a sort of Showa fan myself (package anything with a vaguely Showa feel to it, and I'll probably bite) - and despite the melodrama (Think Bollywood sans song and dance), it was fun to watch. Not the first Japanese movie I've watched fully without subtitles, but certainly the first on a big screen for me.

I happened upon it while browsing CPAN, and found a module called Acme::Beatnik. ]]> /programming Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:45 GMT bicycle/new_bike http://parsedparticiple.org/blog/bicycle/new_bike.html

Mark Arahna actually lugged this all the way from New York.

Bela Fleck (Banjo) with Chick Corea; Note their rather casual attire!

1. Brazil
2. Children's Song #6
3. A Strange Romance
4. The Enchantment
5. Joban Dna Nopia
6. Mountain
7. (Encore)Spain / Waltz For Abby