Apolitically Incorrect http://www.oak-tree.us/blog The Rants and Raves of an Unsettled Mind Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:56:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Capturing and Analyzing FTP Traffic FTP is one of the oldest network protocols still in use. In its first iteration, it was created in 1971 as a way to quickly move files between computers and has been in continuous use ever since. It’s particularly common on the web, where it is responsible for moving files and data. Unfortunately, while common, [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Capturing and Analyzing FTP Traffic

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2011/10/31/ftp-security Securing a Network: Part 1 As difficult as it can be to secure individual computers, making sure that a network is secure is even more challenging. This because, instead of working with a single machine, you have an entire network of devices to worry about. It’s a classic case of, “if the security of one is threatened, we’re all threatened.” [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Securing a Network: Part 1

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2011/10/26/security1 Installing and Configuring DHCP on Windows Server Core Note: This is a cross post from Apolitically Incorrect. If you would like to comment or remark, please consider stopping by. Windows Server Core is a relatively new version of Windows Server. Like it’s slightly more mature sibling, the “full” version, it is tremendously powerful. Server Core allows you to set up Active Directory domains, [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Installing and Configuring DHCP on Windows Server Core

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2011/10/26/core-dhcp “Creativity is Just Connecting Things” Note: This is a cross post from Apolitically Incorrect. If you would like to comment or remark, please consider stopping by. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it. They just saw something. It seemed obvious to them [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

“Creativity is Just Connecting Things”

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2011/10/25/connecting-things Moving to blog.oak-tree.us When I first started this blog, I thought it would be an experiment.  I was exploring WordPress as a platform and wanted to know how customizable it was.  I wanted to know if it could grow and expand with my interests.  I wanted it to be a place where I could post pictures and maybe [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Moving to blog.oak-tree.us

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2010/04/15/moving-hosts Temples and Timelines Newsweek has a fascinating article about an archaeological site at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey that is well worth a look. The site is the oldest religious temple ever discovered.  Preliminary carbon dating has determined that some of the artifacts date from 9,400 BC, which makes the place about 11,500 years old. (Which, just to be [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Temples and Timelines

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2010/02/25/temples-timelines Hannibal, Napoleon, and Joseph Charles Minard No study of the history of scientific communication can be complete without mention of Joseph Charles Minard, a 19th Century French civil engineer and cartographer. At the end of his life, Minard created two very famous examples of statistical charts, called flow maps, that every scientist, engineer and student should be familair with.  The first [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Hannibal, Napoleon, and Joseph Charles Minard

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2010/02/22/minard-maps Working With Words, Numbers and Images: A Reading List There are three tools that a professional, scientific or technical writer needs to make use of: words, numbers and images.  In many cases, such as an effective illustration or chart, all three will be used. The following books introduce principles and examples of how to use these tools to their fullest extent.  Some of the [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Working With Words, Numbers and Images: A Reading List

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2010/02/14/analytic-design-reading Image Gallery: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci When I graduated from college and had to choose between a career in industry or academics, I found it to be an easy decision: I stayed in academics.  I like to have my head in the clouds and enjoy the intellectual lifestyle.  (I actually consider the label of “absentminded” to be a compliment.) It should come as [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Image Gallery: The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2010/02/05/davinci-notebooks About This Book Thing In the past few weeks, I’ve had several observant readers ask about one of my “secret” projects.  They’ve wondered what I’m up to and why it’s detracting from other endeavors.  After answering another query this morning, I decided that it’s probably time to speak openly about it.  So, here’s my public confession: I’m writing a [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

About This Book Thing

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2010/01/28/book-thing Typeset Your Curriculum Vitae – Part 3: Automatically Generate a List of Publications Publications are the currency of ideas.  Through them the experts, thinkers and dreamers of this world can share their thoughts and insights.  A good publication is not only influential, but it’s even capable of shifting the course of a whole society, as Martin Luther King demonstrated with his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. Since publications [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Typeset Your Curriculum Vitae – Part 3: Automatically Generate a List of Publications

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/12/02/latex-cv-part3 Typeset Your Curriculum Vitae – Part 2: Extending and Customizing an Existing Document Class Many first-time users of LaTeX often mistakenly look at the language as a a type of glorified word processing software – albeit a particularly complicated one.  While such an analogy may be apt in helping new users become acclimatized to the language, it suffers from a rather nasty problem: LaTeX isn’t a word processor. If [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Typeset Your Curriculum Vitae – Part 2: Extending and Customizing an Existing Document Class

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/11/30/latex-cv-part2 Typeset Your Curriculum Vitae – Part 1: The xetexCV Document Class Very few documents are more personal than a curriculum vitae (CV).  A CV lists a person’s educational history, who they’ve worked for and what they’ve accomplished.  Moreover, a CV is frequently used to judge a person’s inherent worth and value (or at least exploitability).  A quality curiculum vitae matters, a lot. For that reason, a [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Typeset Your Curriculum Vitae – Part 1: The xetexCV Document Class

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/11/25/latex-cv-part1 Customizing LyX: Character Styles and the LyX Local Layout Imagine for a minute that you’re writing a book or technical manual.  Let’s say it’s a book on technology, maybe the open source tools used for scientific writing (to randomly pick an example).  As you write this book, you realize that you need some way to cue the reader into different parts of the text. [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Customizing LyX: Character Styles and the LyX Local Layout

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/11/14/customize-lyx-character-styles Patronage in the Digital Age As wonderful as the internet may be, it causes a lot of problems.  For starters, it is putting newspapers out of business.  It’s also radically changing how artists, writers and musicians make their living.  And in case you weren’t paying attention, it’s starting to look like a crisis. Different groups have responded to the impending [...]

Copywrite 2009: Rob Oakes. Apolitically Incorrect

Patronage in the Digital Age

]]> http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/11/10/digital-patronage