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Irssi Handling JOINS/PARTS/QUITS

Irssi, as blogged extensively throughout this site, is one solid client. The flexibility never ceases to amaze me, and tonight was one of those times.
Hanging out in the amount of channels I do, I see a lot of activity in my statusbar for all of my joined channels. This can be overwhelming for some, but [...]

Installing Debian via USB

Last night, I wanted to see if I could get Debian Squeeze loaded on my HP Mini 110, so I set out to accomplish the task, and accomplish it I did. As with most netboks, this HP doesn’t ship with a CDROM. So, the only way to get an operating system on this guy is [...]

Facebook Chat In Bitlbee

It’s no surprise that Bitlbee is my chat client of choice. After all, I’ve blogged about it before. So, when I heard rumors that Facebook would be releasing their chat to outside clients over XMPP, I was excited to see the day when I could add it to my running Bitlbee instance. Lo and behold, [...]

Irssi’s /channel, /network, /server and /connect – What It Means

I have found, that since using Irssi, many people like to edit the config directly. This is a natural instinct that we have as hackers in general. Because configs are stored in plain text, such as our shell RC files, Apache configs and many more, we just intuitively reach for our editor, and start hacking [...]

The Number Eightyeight

For those who know me, know I use the nickname or alias “eightyeight”. I use it on IRC as my main nick I chat with, I use it on the microblogging service Identi.ca, and I use it elsewhere here and there. There are several reasons why I use this nickname, and I’ll cover those here, [...]

OFTC, SSL, NickServ and Irssi

I’m on a bit of an IRC kick with the blogging lately, mainly because it seems I’m usually fine tuning my settings, and I like to share what I find. Hopefully, someone finds these posts useful. For today’s post, I’ve picked setting up an SSL connection on OFTC and securely identifying to NickServ when connecting. [...]

Freenode, SSL and SASL Authentication with Irssi

Last night, Freenode made the migration from hyperion-ircd to a fork of charybdis-ircd they’re calling ircd-seven. There are a few notable changes in the new ircd code that are worth mentioning here that are of benefit to end users and clients. They are the ability to use OpenSSL encryption between client and server and the [...]

hilight_win.pl for Irssi and Other Script Goodies

So, I was browsing A Guide to Effectively Using Screen and Irssi, and I came across this little gem:
Hilight Window
See the irssi screenshot above. The section labeled “1″ is a split window called “hilight”. Anything that is hilighted (set using the /hilight command) will be logged to that window.
To do this, first load the script. [...]

More 88 Madcows

I made some updates to my 88_madcows.theme file for irssi. The biggest change is the theme working with 0.8.13 and greater. Further, I added the server tag to the statusbar when in the status window, so when I need to change servers for whatever reason, it’s obvious what server I’m on before cycling through. Screenshot [...]

QR Code with MECARD and hCard

It’s the digital age. Computers are getting cheaper and stronger. Mobile smart phones are becoming a household fixture. Networking is more readily available than ever before and increasing its speed. Yet, many of our daily products remain locked in the past, not taking advantage of what technology has to offer. So, personally, I decided to [...]

Does Debian Deviate From Standards Or Upstream?

Recently, I got into a discussion with a friend of mine that I have a great deal of respect for. After having our discussion, my respect for him has grown. The discussion was about whether or not Debian and Ubuntu have deviated from standard practice regarding Paul Vixie’s cron implementation.
The idea is simple. On Fedora [...]

How Travelers Can Protect Their Data

I used to travel quite extensively around the country, and even had the opportunity to leave the country and go abroad. My laptop was always with me. As a result, I was very concerned for the integrity and safety of my data. As such, I took the necessary precautions that travelers can take when their [...]

The Meaning of ’su’

When I taught for Guru Labs, part of the students training was covering different ways of becoming the root user, such as using “su”, “sudo” and taking advantage of the wheel group. Login shells versus non-login shells were also covered. The idea was to help the student understand the real nature of the shell and [...]

Keeping Time In Debian With Virtualbox

I’ve been encountering an interesting issue recently with Debian running as a guest in side of VirtualBox on Windows XP. When I initially installed Debian, I told it to adjust the hardware clock to UTC. Of course, this was the mistake I made. Windows operating systems want the hardware clock set to local time, then [...]

Add Colors To Your ZSH Scripts

I was writing some scripts this morning to help me keep the Unix and Linux server I administer at work up to date with their NTP time synchronization. As I was going along, I thought to myself, “I’d like to see some color in the output.” Thankfully, I already had the code in my ZSH [...]