Jabber

AOL, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo! all have instant messaging networks. About 6 years ago, a superior alternative known as Jabber (or XMPP) was developed. It is now a published standard. Jabber is superficially very similar to other instant messaging systems. Each user has a Jabber ID and a roster of some other Jabber users. The online presence of those on the list can be seen, and they can be messaged. But Jabber is different:

• Anyone can run a Jabber server. Users are not reliant upon the continuing beneficence of a large corporate entity. Users with accounts on different servers can communicate, just as with e-mail. My Jabber ID is jeff@jgarrett.org and my home server is jgarrett.org, but any Jabber user can message me, and vice versa.


• There is not a privileged (often buggy, bloated, and poorly integrated) "official" client. All have access to the standards defining Jabber, so -- in theory -- all clients are created equal. Those who aren't on the most popular platform have access to a first-class client with the same features. Even those on the most popular platform have a choice of client.


• Authorization is required to view a Jabber user's online presence. This authorization is neither permanent (it may be revoked) nor reciprocal. In fact, more fine-grained control is possible. A user -- though online and available -- can choose to be "invisible" to some or all.


• Users may be signed into their accounts multiple times. Inbound messages go through the connection with the highest priority. This is especially useful for nomadic computer users. Forgetting to close a connection will not affect the ability to use Jabber as usual on another machine.


• A user's roster is stored on the server. It's therefore protected from data loss, and in a single central location.


• Users may opt to have their basic information listed in the Jabber user directory. Other users can then find them more easily.


• Gateways to other instant messaging networks exist. Not everyone uses Jabber instant messaging yet. :-)


• Security was a priority from the start. The whole interaction with the server can be encrypted. Even more, using the magic of public key encryption, individual messages can be signed or encrypted.


• The basic Jabber protocol was developed 6 years ago and has (almost) completed the Internet standards process. It has been widely used during this time, and is both stable and mature. Google is deploying its Google Talk based on the same technology. (Note however that not all of the features I mention are available on Google Talk. For example, Google Talk users cannot talk to most Jabber users not themselves using Google Talk.)


• Despite the rigidity of the basic protocol, its structure allows for easy extensibility. Features not yet imagined or codified in the standard can be developed relatively quickly and share many of the advantages of the "standard" features. There is a body who oversees this process, and publishes these enhancements.

Convinced? The first step is to find a client here and a server here or use jgarrett.org. In the latter case, be sure to read this. Your Jabber ID will be of the form username@servername. Once you've chosen a server, you are free to choose the username portion. Then you use your client register the new account. (The server will tell you if the username conflicts with another preexisting one, or is otherwise disallowed.) Now you can sign into your Jabber account and start talking. If your browser is configured properly, you can even follow this link to message me.

For more information on Jabber, check out the Jabber user guide.

Identity

The top Google hit for "Jeff Garrett" used to be one of my pages. A very old and tendentious one, if i recall, but still mine. I have had an Internet presence for 10 years or more, after all. Now you can't even find me! :-)

I've not had a blog for as long -- only about 3 years. The top Google hit for "Jeff Garrett blog" is unsurprisingly not mine. But still, check it out. At least people can tell us apart. :-)

Go Sox!

A sweep! The first World Series appearance since 1959! The first World Series win since 1917!

Hmm

I couldn't stop sneezing today. I thought it was allergies. But it's been unusually cold in the apartment all day, and now it's so warm. I know there's a problem when my apartment feels warm in autumn...

O Fortuna

O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis,
semper crescis aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis et inanis,
rota tu volubilis, status malus,
vana salus semper dissolubilis,
obumbrata et velata mihi quoque niteris;
nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris.

Sors salutis et virtutis mihi nunc contraria,
est affectus et defectus semper in angaria.
Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite;
quod per sortem sternit fortem,
mecum omnes plangite!

Hmm

Not that the United States is particularly keen on protecting civil liberties or not arresting people willy-nilly, it does happen elsewhere. At least it beats being shot to death by the same scared, incompetent police department.

New horizons...

I can now attest to the fact that a ride home in a Chicago police car is much faster than taking the route 55 bus.

Mike Broshi owns a business?

You decide:



(Found on flickr via a blog. Click on the image to go to flickr.)

Yea though I walk through the valley

I had a weird dream the other night. The whole dream was unusually vivid. The dream started at a store, very much like a bookstore, with lots of shelves, everything a light brown color. The place reminded me of Barnes & Noble or Borders. It was generic. It could've been a Hallmark store just as easily. I was there to get a greeting card, so I used a computer display in the store to make a personalized card. I don't remember why I wanted a greeting card, but it seemed an important enough reason at the time.

Once I secured the card, I had to go upstairs to buy stamps. This store was on the 28th floor so I got into the elevator to go up one floor. Unfortunately when I got in the elevator, it was but a shell of a car. Its walls were the plain metal exterior of the car. Its wiring was exposed. Its lights didn't seem to work. I began to worry. As it turns out, it was not a working elevator, and I plunged all 28 stories down to my death.

Now, although odd, at this point the dream's not entirely shocking. I've had my share of dreams where I die, or come close to dying, both at the hands of others and of purely natural causes. I've been shot at by a sniper, I've been chased down by anthropomorphic lightning... But I usually wake up--breathing heavily. It's supposed to be a nightmare. Not this time!

Although dead in the elevator, I did not wake up. The dream calmly continued. I--now dead--was suddenly back in the store. My sister was there and I was attempting to say goodbye, although she was rather bored with me and walked away. My mom was also there. Then quite suddenly I was no longer in the store. I was walking out of a house, through a patio. The patio had a covering with wooden supports, painted white, and thin wooden lattice work between the supports. I was walking with other people in a single-file line. The only recognizable person in the group was Jesus! Although he was not what you may imagine of Jesus. He was white, middle-aged, with short brownish-grey hair, wearing glasses, sandals, and a robe--a bath robe. He had a small face with tight muscles. I could see the veins near his temples and the wrinkles near his eyes.

I said to him that I couldn't recall if I had repented before death and apologized if I had. He said I had. We continued walking in silence. Then I woke up.

My favorite quote

Although overly idealistic, I've long liked this quote:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence--even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "you are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

Examining my system

Ok, so this linode setup is pretty neat. The whole thing is based on UML, so several "hosts" run on one box. You essentially get your own computer coexisting with others on the same hardware. They have multiple distributions to install, etc. Installing and formatting the disk are done with their web interface. Once installed though, you have your own box esssentially. You can even ssh into the box your host is running on, and get console access!

So far a great experience...

Control freak

Ok, so modified it a bit. Dates appear below posts, with categories. This bugs me less. :-)

Playing with the blog

I like this theme.

Meanwhile, this is getting to be a very small Debian installation. 134 packages installed, 197 MiB used. And still it could get better.

Another day

Ok, so a little backstory... My friend WS has an excellent job as network architect/engineer for some web hosting company. He set himself up a little private box on their network, and that was hosting jgarrett.org. The purpose of my little vanity address itself is questionable, but I'd like to think of it at least as giving itself to a stable e-mail and web server. Turns out that the e-mail went down on that machine about a month ago, and I was completely unaware. I'm not so fond of e-mail. :-)

The reason for the failure was a rather questionable apt-get upgrade, shortly after Debian 3.1 was released. Anyways, this gave me the incentive to relocate. This way, (a) I'm not mooching off of WS' bandwidth, (b) he was going to need to move that machine sometime anyways, leading to trouble, and (c) I can task the machine exactly right. :-)

Linode.com was what I settled on. Seems like a great little UML based virtual hosting place. Anyways, right now I'm in the process of getting everything set up the way I like, and batting down the hatches as it were.

In more personal news, you may or may not know that my brother intends to become a fireman. He is taking some classes to this effect. Anyways a week ago, his equipment worth nearly $1500 was stolen out of his truck. The real downside more than anything else it seemed, was that this would put him very far behind in his class. See, he originally ordered the coat specially, to get the sleeve length right, and it took 2 weeks to get the coat in. Fortunately though, this time he had no problems at all. He has already got his equipment replaced and only had to make up about 30 minutes worth of instruction.

Yay for that!

The Phoenix Moves

I have acquired for my own nefarious purposes the domain jgarrett.org.

My blog is therefore moving to http://jgarrett.org/blog.