It’s all just 1’s and 0’s…

So the video iPod is out there now finally. People have been rumoring about one appearing for quite some time now.

I can’t see what all the fuss is about, it really is just a small feature. If you think about it, it pretty much sucks to watch video on your ipod:

• If you do it in a public place everyone will know you have one and thieves will line up to get it off you.
• The screen is a bit bigger, but still pretty tiny, I wouldn’t want to watch such a screen for more than a couple of minutes.
• The battery life when watching video is about 1,5 - 2 hours, so if you really wanted to watch a full movie on it, you’d have to start with a full battery. Otherwise, you run the risk of running out of battery and you can’t continue watching while it’s recharching.

Here is a quote I ran into a couple of days ago:

Tell me and I'll forget;
Show me and I may remember;
Involve me and I'll understand.

I like it and it pretty much stands for how I learn new things.

As to the attribution of this profound proverb: I did some googling and the top 10 of the hits all attribute it to a different source! The results I have seen contain all the classic wise sources: from Confucius to Plato to Native Americans. So I have no idea who to attribute it to.

The picture above shows my current backpack. (I seem to have a limited edition, because mine’s blue.)

During my years at the university I’ve had numerous Samsonite bags and they have always served me well. But this bag (Samsonite Ripple Backpack) is some seriously good stuff. Some nice features:

• Laptop pocket, protects your laptop when you put down the bag and it also makes it easy to remove it and put it back in when going through customs.
• Next to the laptop pocket is a large area to store papers, etc. But there’s also a seperate storage area about the same size to store other stuff.
• Extra pocket to store cables and a music player.
• Large area with small pockets to store pens, business cards, agenda, etc. etc.
• Small pocket on the front for things you need directly on the road.
• Breathing foam padding on the back that really keeps you cool.

And it’s not even very expensive, I got one for about €40. If you’re in the market for a new bag, I can really recommend this one.

(Update: Samsonite doesn’t seem to understand the “Cool URIs don’t change” motto…, I’ve updated the link and added the type name in case it doesn’t work anymore.)

I let the issue with the Apache v2.0 SSL server rest for a couple of days and today I went at it again.

After some more Googling (and leaving out the nonsensical `theoretically not possible’ bit) I finally found a link to the solution (which I’ve lost again now, but here’s a German version of the solution):

The cause of the problem is that if you just add a Listen 443, then Apache2 will just listen on both those ports, with two instances. And if you then add SSLEngine On, it will turn those on for both those instances, resulting in a re-initialization of SSL for the server. This is of course exactly what is said in the error message, but you have to bend your mind to understand how Apache works, before you can even grasp what it might mean. So it really is a badly written error message. I’ll send some feedback to Apache about this, because it’s ridiculous. (Update: bug #37031 on httpd bugzilla)

Anyway, below is a solution to the problem:

1. Copy sites-available/default to sites-available/ssl
2. Edit the resulting file, change * in NameVirtualHost * and <VirtualHost *>to *:443.

3. Add the following lines below that line:

   SSLEngine On SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/server.crt

4. Add Listen 443 to the ports.conf file.

5. Finally make a sym-link in the sites-enabled directory, pointing to sites-available/ssl

And then issue apache2ctl restart to get it all going.

You might want to add some more configuration tweaks to SSL, but you can do that in the ssl.conf file.

Update: I’ve found a solution for the problem below.

Today I tried to get an Apache2 installation to also speak https. So I created a self-signed certificate and everything else that was needed.

Next step was to change the Apache configuration so that mod_ssl was enabled. So I created conf.d/ssl.conf with some relevant entries for configure mod_ssl. Among which is of course SSLEngine on. However, this results in the following error message:

Illegal attempt to re-initialise SSL for server (theoretically shouldn't happen!)

Now I thoroughly enjoy doing something that is theoretically not possible. And it is even better if get a computer to tell me that I it is indeed impossible. But this error message is just plain ridiculous. The person who wrote it should be fired, shot and then hanged.

For the following reasons (in that order):

1. He is wasting time. He is writing an error message for something that he believes is not possible to happen, ever.
2. He may have been on the cautious side and still write an error message, but adds that it is impossible to happen.
3. He is making the user who runs into the error look very stupid. He must have did something blindingly stupid to get the error to occur.
4. The addition of that it should never happen draws the attention away from the actual error message. That error message is still somewhat informative, but I wouldn’t have a clue why or how this happens.

Oh wait, that’s four reasons. Well you decide what happens to him then.