Today, after roaming the earth for 21 years depending on someone else to cook my food for me, I made a giant leap: I cooked my own meal. Right from buying groceries to cleaning up the dishes afterward

Here’s a picture of the modest beginning:

It looks a lot more delicious than it really was: just boiled vegetables with garlic bread – dressed with salt, pepper and a dollop of butter – rather bland for an Indian tongue. But, oh well, it’s a start

One of my friends wanted to run a HTTP server on his office machine, but the network it is connected to blocks all ports except 22 (SSH). Sure, he could run Apache on port 22 but that would mean he could no longer login remotely.

I wrote a quick hack in python: muxer.py, that will multiplex incoming connections between an SSH and HTTP server. It is slow, and makes all incoming SSH connections wait for 5 seconds before responding, but it works! The 5 second timeout is required because the SSH protocol specifies that the server should be the first one to send the client it’s version string, and only then will the client respond.

I should probably rewrite it in C at some point. Anyway, here’s your hack for today. Maybe someone will find use for it, or even better, come up with a better solution (this one is certainly the worst!)

I was going through Last.FM’s Best Music of 2008 charts when I came across Nine Inch Nails’ album Ghosts I-IV. What really caught my eye was not that it was 4th in the top albums chart, but that the music was licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commerical-Share Alike license!

In addition to the slew of albums available under similar licenses on Jamendo, it is heartening to see more mainstream music opting for this method of distribution – even Radiohead experimented with it not long ago.

The best way for us to fight the RIAA is by encouraging this type of music distribution, which directly pays the artist. Let’s not forget that associations like the RIAA are chiefly responsible for several draconian laws that plague our society today, and are also the primary driving force behind DRM technologies. Gone are the days where you need large amounts of money to produce and distribute your work of art. As I said earlier, the whole point of technology is to make things cheaper, faster and better for everyone involved, cutting out the middle-man wherever possible.

This holiday season, play your part by going and buying DRM-free music directly from the artist. It’s the least we can do to show that this open form of distribution actually works. My recommendations: Ghosts I-IV and The Raghu Dixit Project. Or sample music from Magnatune and then buy tracks that you like! Alternatively, pick out music from Jamendo and then donate to artists of your liking. A meal at your favorite fast-food restaraunt is all you have to sacrifice for the act