wiredfool

Monitor Menagerie.

2 from the Ballard Criterium. One of the faster criterium courses in the area. It’s mostly flat, 4 cornered, and pretty wide.

This race is the fast guys, Pro & Cat 1,2. Kenny Williams won this one by bridging up from the pack to the lead group with one other rider, then dropping the other 2 in the lead group with a few minutes to go.

Sometimes you just need a machine that you can throw email at and have it dissappear into the ether. Maybe you want a honeypot, or maybe you want to load test email lists without annoying people. My last email blackhole was on a linux box running qmail, but unfortunately that box was rooted and reformated. Now all of my systems are running postfix, so it was time for a little updating.

The first step is to get postfix installed. This will vary from system to system, but it’s known to work on most unixen, including OSX. You want to set it up as a normal internet mail host operation if given the choice.

Then you need the following things:

A shell script null.sh in an accessible directory with the contents:

#! /bin/bash
echo 0;

Edit /etc/postfix/transport to include the following line, which sends all domains to the null transport. This even redirects the local mailer to your null script, so nothing gets delivered.

*       null:

Run the following command to rebuild the transport map:

postmap /etc/postfix/transport

Add the following lines to /etc/postfix/master.cf. This is the definition of the null transport. Substitute your path to the null shell script for [[PATH]]

null      unix  -       n       n       -       -       pipe
  user=nobody argv=[[PATH]]/null.sh ${user}

And finally, you need the following line in /etc/postfix/main.cf, which gives the path to the transport map that we defined above.

transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport

You should now be able to restart postfix using:

 
sudo postfix reload

Test sending some mail while watching the mail log, and you should see lines like:

Jun 11 22:02:03 cabbage postfix/cleanup[5449]: 548BA27227:
    message-id=<20020612050203.548BA27227@cabbage>
Jun 11 22:02:03 cabbage postfix/qmgr[2799]: 548BA27227: 
   from=<foo@example.com>, size=1346, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Jun 11 22:02:03 cabbage postfix/pipe[5451]: 548BA27227: 
   to=<bar@example.com>, relay=null, delay=0, status=sent (*)

The last line shows that the message was sent to the null transport, and since the null transport has no way of going anywhere, that’s where it ends.

This is a basic blackhole for email. As with all things associated with email, it’s easy to embarass yourself if you make a mistake. Some other good things to do to an email black hole are block outgoing connections to port 25 with firewalling rules and removing the default route from the routing tables. You may even want to use an external firewall to prevent all outgoing connections.

***Update

For some unknown reason, the transport map isn’t picked up on OSX when postfix is built from source. (It works on Debian though). Setting default_transport = null in main.cf works in a similar manner, with the exception of local delivery.

The more I hear pundits talking and writing about the Music industry and the Book industry, the more I’m convinced that they’re in the same boat.

For the most part, the point of the big publishing houses is not to go about the business of getting books/music written/performed, It’s the promotion of the next hot title. The book industry has the high volume dreck, it has instant sellout potential when a book is mentioned on Oprah. It’s similar to the way that a hit single, if put in the right locations and helped with a little grease will become a runaway success.

And both the book industry and the music industry are scared stiff by the internet.

But that view is the high level view that covers the fraction of a percent of the product that gets national attention. There’s far more out there than you have heard of, and it’s just waiting to be discovered. University presses published 135,000 books last year (figure from NPR tonight). There are countless small bands that can produce independent albums without the intervention of the big labels. In the last month, I’ve picked up three cds from local artists, all of whom produced most if not all of their music, none of them with a recording deal.

The difference, perhaps, is that the barrier to duplication for bands is much smaller. Locally, you can start with cover art and a cd-r, and $1200-$1800 later you’ve got 1000 copies of your cd. You can’t quite get a book duplicated for that.

So what is the future of the Music/Book business? Both exist to generate demand for things that artists produce. I’m not sure, but I’d venture a big guess that the same restrictions on use that will be pushed by the big publishers will ‘accidentially’ make it much harder to self publish.

Sometimes I just want pub food. Beer, Fries and Garderburger. Sometimes served in the sun on a porch, sometimes in the dark.

But since I’ve driven around in circles trying to think of an appropriate place to go before, it’s time to collect and review the places so that I don’t have to drive in circles again.

So for a gardenburger and fries in the Wallingford/Ballard area of Seattle, Look here.

• The Park Pub
• The People’s Pub
• The Greenlake Bar and Grill
• The Bluestar Cafe
• Duke’s Greenlake
• The Belltown Pub and Grill

Duke’s has one garden burger on the menu. It is supposed to come with a salad, but they will replace with fries if you ask and remind them. The fries are farge home fries types, sort of like a large wedge of potato. They do have a good beer menu.

They have a nice location, a good porch for those sunny evenings, but the service is somewhat spotty. This seems to be a resturant that is more popular for its location than its qualities as an eatery. It’s also a little more expensive than the alternatives, with the garden burger coming in at around $9.

Greenlake, west end on Greenlake ave.

The People’s Pub has a good selection of German beers. A garden burger is on the menu, but I haven’t tried it just yet. Their fries are good. When served during trivia night, they are thin, hot, and crispy.

We need to visit for dinner time to really check them out.

Ballard, 1/2 block down Ballard Ave from Market.

The Greenlake Bar and grill does not have Garden burgers on the menu, but will make them if you ask. Comes with a good pile of 1/4″ thin fries. The beer menu is somewhat sparse, 5 taps including Guiness. There is a full bar as well.

I was impressed by the speed which we got our food here, roughly 5 minutes from the time we ordered, faster than I’m used to. The service, however, was somewhat odd. There was confusion between the bartender and the waitress over a blown keg, including getting served the “Ass end” (her words) of the keg, the having the beer taken away ane replaced. The oddness continued from there.

The location is good, and it does have a west facing sidewalk section for those times when you need to eat in the sun.

Greenlake, 1 corner up from Starbucks on the East side.

Gardenburgers aren’t on the menu, but they are availiable if you ask (and tell them how you want them done !?!). They charge $1 to sub in a garden burger, which makes the whole sandwich come to a pricey $9, including chips. Those would be round cold chips, as somewhow this pub doesn’t serve fries.

Beer selection is good, about what you’d expect from a pub in Seattle.

Belltown Pub, 1st & Wall ish.

Visited when the Park Pub was undergoing renovations.

There is one gardenburger on the menu, along with a portabello mushroom sandwich. Lots of good fries, hot and crispy 3/8″ or so thick. I wasn’t entirely sold on the garden burger, but the beer and fries make up for it.

Beers were served in proper imperial pint glasses, which is quite rare in this city.

Somewhat expensive (iirc) for the burger, Beer is reasonable.

Wallingford, 46th and Stone.

Now under new management. The previous management had 8 styles of burger, all of which could be replaced with a garden burger. Now there’s just a garden burger along with the other 2 burgers on the menu.

They have reasonably good fries, 3/8″ thick, a little greasy but nice and hot. Mustard, mayo and Vinegar are provided.

Beer selection is good but tends towards IPAs for some reason. There’s one rotating nitro tap.

$6 for Garden burger & fries, $3.50 for a beer.

Phinney Ridge, Greenwood & 63rd ish.