With IPv6 on Linux, things aren’t so straightforward. Duplicate Address Detection (DAD), which basically does what it says on the tin, introduces a short delay before addresses are fully configured, the address has been added to the network interface, but not really.

I recently came across this whilst attempting to get BIND to listen on some secondary service addresses on a particular machine. BIND would not er, bind, to the IPv6 addresses at boot, failing with messages like this:

bind9 could not listen on UDP socket: address not available

Modifying /etc/init.d/bind9 to print the output of “ip addr show” to a file at the time BIND attempted to start up showed the tell-tale “tentative” flag on each IPv6 address being added to eth0. Since the addresses are in this state, BIND or other daemons will refuse to listen on them.

The problem has become very noticeable since parallel boot systems such as Upstart have become the default in quite a few Linux distros. Daemons will often fire up before the network is fully ready and in some extreme cases network filesystems that reference hostnames may fail to mount if you are using an IPv6 DNS resolver. Of course this isn’t the case across the board, some daemons and services appear to handle the unavailability of an IPv6 address somewhat gracefully, backing off and trying again a short time later rather than simply giving up on the first go.

Anyway, a simple “hairy hack” to get over this problem is to add something like the following to your startup script:

sleep 5

Yes, a one line sleep command to make the daemon wait a short while before actually starting. This seems to ensure that the IPv6 address has moved out of the tentative state, but it’s still somewhat silly..

At Eirtakon this year I presented a panel on a particular interest of mine, awful anime dubbing. It’s one of these things that always gets a good few laughs, especially when you present clips of some anime dubs that, whether through accident or design, are just hilariously inept, completely nonsensical, or downright offensive.

Quite a few people approached me after the panel and asked could they have copies of the clips I played. Since all of them are actually available on youtube, I thought I’d post some of the highlights here.

So we start off with some of the attempts that companies localising anime made to translate the opening for a particular show. Some of these were valiant attempts, others were just epically bad.

• Bow-chika-wow! This opening was recorded by Mark Mercury, a “space, electronic, electro-acoustic, ambient, cinematic” musician”. From the 70s (in case you hadn’t noticed).

  Captain Harlock – English Opening

• Soldiers of warlords from deep space! Before Robotech, Harmony Gold produced a “concept” english dub of Macross entitled Space Fortress Macross. You have to love the way this song describes the plot of the entire show. Which is a recurring theme…

  Space Fortress Macross – English Opening

• Seijushi Bismarck is a funky little show with robotic, rocket powered horses. It was brought over to the states and retitled Saber Rider and The Star Sheriffs:

  Seijushi Bismarck
  Saber Rider and The Star Sheriffs

• So here’s the original Japanese opening to a show called Ninja Senshi Tobikage, remember the tune because you’ll hear it again in a second.. NINJA ROBOTS! NINJA ROBOTS! This has it all. You have to hand it to them, they did a great job of summarising the entire show and re-using the melody of the original OP.

  Ninja Senshi Tobikage
  Ninja Robots

• Back in the 80s, the fantastic film Macross: Do You Remember Love was chopped to bits, given a comedy dub in Hong Kong and released as Clash Of The Bionoids. Check out these clips of “jet jockey in action”.

  Clash Of The Bionoids – Dating Advice
  Clash Of the Bionoids – Chauvenism
  Clash Of the Bionoids – Alcoholism

• Some brilliantly awful clips from the Ziv dub of Harlock.

  Harlock – I think it’s a woman!
  Harlock – Zetons

• I’m a sugar frosted donut…. with cream:

  20 short clips from Dangaioh

• The dub isn’t the only amazing thing about Black Lion, it was created by Go Nagai after all, but it does complete the experience:

  Why you should see Black Lion right now

• Wow, just wow. Tecno Police is the archetypal example of the early 80s Hong Kong chop job. Originally planned as a series but then abandoned, the remaining footage was cobbled together and released as a movie in the UK. Some interesting people who would go on to much greater things worked on it, including Toshimichi Suzuki (Bubblegum Crisis) Joe Hisaishi (composer for many Ghibli films) and Shoji Kawamori (Macross). Thankfully, it sank without a trace:

  Tecno Police – Best dub ever!

• Whilst Transformers finished its original run over here, in Japan it kept going with disastrous results. Yet another HK dub for the SE Asia and UK markets. There were also quite a few bizarre name changes – Metroplex is called “Phillip”, and Fortress Maximus is known as “Spaceship Bruce” :/

  Transformers Headmasters – Sappo the sap
  Transformers Headmasters – Sixshot, the ninja consultant!
  Transformers Headmasters – Everyone is stupid and useless

• It’s impossible to describe what happens in Garzey’s Wing, so I’m not going to try:

  Garzey’s Wing – Comedy gold

• Stopthenonsense! It’s Locke the Superman. This is yet *another* Hong Kong dub for the SE Asia and UK markets. A long-running manga given an even longer OVA treatment between 1984 and 2000, the first OVA was dubbed and released as Locke the Superpower:

  Locke the Superpower

• In the early 90s, many anime importers got into the habit of inserting copious amounts of swearing into their dubs in order to bump the rating up to 15 or 18. A cynical person would say it played up to the then prevalent tabloid image of anime as “violent japanese porno cartoons”, but that would be ridiculous! Here’s a selection of some of the more extreme examples:

  Violence Jack makes an entrance!
  Legend of the Overfiend
  Cyber City Oedo 808 condensed
  Mad Bull condensed

So that about sums it up… or does it? If you find this kind of thing hilarious, I recommend you check out Bad American Dubbing from the Corn Pone Flicks guys, or Mike Tool’s Dubs That Time Forgot panels. I stole some of my funnier content from these guys

DNSViz shows some nice graphs of the delegation chain.

It’s certainly not the most convenient method to make your cup of joe, best approached on a quiet Sunday afternoon, but it does produce an amazingly clean and balanced brew with little to no leftover grit.

Invented in Germany in the 1830s, the Coffee Syphon, also known as the vacuum pot, is one of the older methods of producing coffee. It was actually quite popular in most households up until the 1960s, when more convenient coffee machines and instant coffee appeared on the market. They normally consist of two parts made from heat-resistant glass – a lower flask and an upper chamber with a long glass tube and a rubber seal. When placed together, a seal is created allowing a vacuum to be formed. A filter made from metal or cloth is placed between the upper and lower chambers.

The principle of the device is pretty straightforward. Heat some water in the flask, the water expands up the glass tube into the upper chamber where the coffee grounds reside, allow the brew to steep for a minute or two and remove the heat. The liquid then contracts as it cools and moves back down to the lower chamber, getting filtered on the way.

The particular syphon that I have is a TCA-5 made by Hario of Japan, where these things still seem to be reasonably popular. There are many different possible heat sources, stove-top models also exist, but this particular syphon comes supplied with an alcohol burner that sits below the flask. It consist of a cotton wick and alcohol container, the wick is immersed in the alcohol a few minutes before use. Clean-burning alcohol such as methylated spirits should be used, which can be obtained from most chemists.

The TCA-5 comes with a cotton filter secured to a metal disk. The disk also has a spring-loaded chain that you attach to the bottom of the glass tube of the upper chamber. It’s important not to let the cotton filter dry out after use, otherwise stale coffee flavours will stick around, so I keep it stored in a small lunch box filled with water.

A small clip holds the spring loaded chain to the glass tube. I always try to center the filter in the upper chamber as much as possible, this ensures that no grinds can bypass the filter.

The best grind size for the syphon seems to be something between filter and espresso. Not too fine but not overly coarse either.

I always boil up some water beforehand, you can use the burner to do this but I’d imagine it would take a very long time. The burner is then lit and the upper chamber is placed onto the flask.

Once the flame looks clean (more blue than orange), it’s placed under the flask and the whole apparatus is sealed by pressing the upper chamber and the flask together.

Soon after, the water will quickly shoot up into the upper chamber, creating bubbles and a nice coffee aroma.

Once most of the water is gone from the flask, a very small amount will be left in the bottom, allow the coffee to steep in the upper chamber for a minute and stir it. Then the heat is removed and the vacuum takes over.

Going..

..going

..gone.

Pouring out the coffee.

There’s very little left in the bottom of the cup once the coffee is drunk, especially if you compare this to what’s left after a cup of french press coffee.

Over the past while, I’ve been watching (and re-reading) Phoenix, a sprawling epic by that towering figure of anime and manga, Osamu Tezuka.

I’d read most of the manga a while ago, but I’d not seen any of the anime based on it. Phoenix concerns itself with some pretty lofty themes; birth, death, the meaning of life, mankind’s place in the universe and the quest for immortality. That last one crops up quite a bit.

The titular Phoenix is the classic fire bird that is reborn from the ashes, common to many mythologies both western and eastern – it’s called Hi-no-Tori (bird of fire) in Japanese. Throughout the chronology of Phoenix, which spans eons, the bird appears many times. Oftentimes to advise people, influence the development of life, observe or comment on man’s folly. It is also an object of desire for people throughout time, as it is said that drinking it’s blood will give one immortality. As it turns out, those that do achieve this suffer the most of all.

It’s hard to pin down what the Phoenix represents, it refers to itself many times as a galactic spirit, other times as one aspect of the life force of the universe. In any case, it is instrumental at key points throughout history.

Tezuka began work on Phoenix in the mid 60s and continued to write it up until his death in 1989. He had intended to tie all aspects of the story, past, present and future, in the final chapter – unfortunately it remained unfinished. Phoenix contained a lot of experimental artwork and themes that were very advanced for the time, so it was initially published in Tezuka’s “out there” magazine, COM. The manga has been released in english by viz and is collected into 12 volumes. I’ve managed to get 11 of these, however volume 4 seems to have fallen off the face of the planet and is extremely difficult to find.

In terms of adaptations, the first was actually a live action version, from 1978, of the Dawn chapter (volume 1 in the viz release). This is a *really* odd film, it appears very much like it was made by students and was obviously done on the cheap – locations range from some kind of rural cottage, grass huts and what appears to be an abandoned gravel quarry. It also mixes live action with anime in parts – Astro Boy even makes an appearance at one point!. Despite it’s strangeness, it’s very faithful to the source material. As an aside, the subtitles on the copy that I have are hilariously bad in parts.

The first anime adaption came along in 1980, Phoenix 2772: Ai no CosmoZone, released in english as Space Firebird (very imaginative translation there guys). I’ve not seen this in it’s entirety, but from the few clips I have seen it looks extremely impressive, especially for the time.

The english dub is also amusing, it was one of those cheapo dubs that were oh so common in the 80s, done with British actors that didn’t bother to disguise their regional accents.

In the late 80s, 3 OVAs were produced, based on the Karma, Yamato and Space chapters. Directed by Rintarou, I think these convey very strongly the essence of Phoenix with high quality animation and an extremely atmospheric electronic score. If you only watched one Phoenix series, I would suggest this.

Finally, in 2004, a 13 episode series was released. This was directed by Ryousuke Takahashi (Votoms, Dagram, Gasaraki) and covers the Dawn, Resurrection, Strange Beings, Sun and Future chapters. Whilst this was a very impressive series for the most part, I felt that they took too many liberties with certain chapters – in some cases totally changing the setting and cutting out massive chunks of the story in order to fit things in. For this reason I was left with the impression that the latter half of the series was somewhat rushed, it would have worked better if they’d covered a smaller number of chapters in the same amount of episodes.

All in all, this is a monumental series from one of the greats of anime and manga – Tezuka called it his “life’s work”. If you are up for something that will fascinate, amuse, surprise, shock and promote some interesting debate on the nature of existence, Phoenix is really worth a look.

My previous attempts at signing spoofedpacket.net fell into disrepair and the zone expired soon afterwards, since I was doing everything manually. However, the whole lot is automatically managed by OpenDNSSEC now, apart from the KSK rollover of course. But there are some clever things you can do to fix that, with the DelegationSignerSubmitCommand.

So here’s the current trust anchor for spoofedpacket.net in DNSKEY format, and in
DS format.

Unfortunately, joker (my registrar) don’t appear to be accepting DS records at this point. So neither of the above are in the wider DNS even though .net is now signed. However, I did register mechazawa.net with godaddy, who are currently accepting DS records through their somewhat clunky interface.

This has worked fine, until I enabled the signed root in Unbound. Suddenly, the entire local zone was being treated as bogus, since, obviously, it appears nowhere in the root. This was manifested as SERVFAIL responses and general badness on the network – including my NAS losing it’s DHCP address whilst I was watching an episode of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood….not good.

After scanning down through the sample unbound.conf, a simple solution presented itself:

 domain-insecure: "localdomain"

This tells unbound to put up with the fact that a particular domain may be bogus/insecure, and life goes on. It could be argued that it’s not a good idea to let some domains be treated differently than others when it comes to DNSSEC, but I think it’s good that the developers of Unbound had the presence of mind to include a solution to this particular corner-case.

Debian and Ubuntu ship exim as their default MTA, so there could potentially be a lot of vulnerable machines out there.

The fixes are detailed here. Both Debian and Ubuntu have since released updated packages that fix (one part of) the vulnerability, so it would be a good idea to do a quick “aptitude dist-upgrade” if you run either of these OSes.

Apparently, this is the first Yamato movie in about 26 years and one of the last things made by the series’ co-creator Yoshinobu Nishizaki before he was killed in a boating accident a few weeks ago. Ironically, after falling overboard from a ship called “Yamato”.

For those who may not know, Nishizaki and Leiji Matsumoto created Space Battleship Yamato in the mid 70s. To say it was a hit would be a huge understatement. The show went on to spawn 2 sequels, 5 (?) feature-length films, a ton of merchandise and a huge cult following outside Japan in the form of Star Blazers, as it was called for the english-dubbed version. Crucially, it inspired a new generation of anime fans who went on to become creators themselves. For a better insight into the whole phenomenon, Corn Pone Flicks have recently produced a fantastic documentary.

But, back to the film at hand. After Yamato/Star Blazers’ phenomenal success throughout the 70s and into the 80s, at some point Nishizaki and Matsumoto had a falling out, the rights to the show became disputed and several court battles ensued. However, Nishizaki seemed to remain obsessed with the idea of re-making Yamato, for monetary or artistic reasons…or both, sometimes with horrifying results. Things finally came to fruition late last year.

The plot would be familiar to anyone who’s seen either the series or the films – a space-born menace threatens to destroy earth, in this case an oddly purposeful black hole. In the face of the approaching black hole that threatens to gobble up the entire solar system, the citizens of Earth are slowly being evacuated to a friendly planet in gigantic fleets of “emigration ships” that can carry 100s of millions of people. Unfortunately, an alliance of aliens (who look pretty much like humans) aren’t too happy with the prospect of new neighbours and have been ambushing the colony fleets. Which means that the World War II battleship Yamato needs to be pulled out of retirement to guard the emigration ships on their long journey, in order to save mankind. Honestly, you’d think the old crew would throw their hands in the air at this point – it’s about the fifth time this has happened.

Despite the oft-recycled plot, I was very impressed. It’s been in the works, in one form or another, since about 1994. The legal battles may have delayed its completion. But as is sometimes the case with troubled productions, a superior product has been delivered.

We’ve got gigantic fleets of emigration ships performing slingshot maneuvers around the edge of a black hole, battles with trans-dimensional beings, noble enemies, even nobler deaths and of course the Yamato back on the big screen – one of the most iconic symbols in anime. All this is done in CG that can be a little jarring at times, but certainly not as intrusive as it could have been.

It just goes to show you can’t keep a good series down, even if it takes 26 years.

However this also applies to the mouse pointer, it does not move across when you switch monitors. Of course you may not always want this, but it’s sometimes handy to have the option. I believe that the gottox branch of dwm had this pointer-switching functionality, but dwm-gtx doesn’t seem to be actively maintained these days.

Enter swarp, another tool from the suckless bag of tricks. It’s a simple utility that “warps” the mouse pointer to a given coordinate on your screen.

To get it working with dwm, simply download the tarball, uncompress, compile and install. Like everything else from suckless the dependencies are tiny. Test it out from the command line by specifying different coordinates. Once your happy with the locations that the pointer jumps to, you can add these commands to your dwm config.h to switch from screen to screen:

static const char *warpleft[]  = { "swarp", "100", "500" };
static const char *warpright[]  = { "swarp", "1500", "500" };

Now you need to bind the commands to a key, I use the Windows key as a modifier for a lot of things since it is generally unused:

    { WINKEY,                       XK_w,      spawn,          {.v = warpleft } },
    { WINKEY,                       XK_e,      spawn,          {.v = warpright } },

Because my monitors vaguely face west and east, I chose w & e as the switching keys

As usual, compiling, reinstalling and restarting dwm will apply the changes.