For some reason I consistently forget how to do this… so I’m jotting it down. You can manage all your machines with an X11 gui from one machine via ssh forwarding.

First, jump into a terminal using ctrl+alt+Fx (where x= 1-6 on ubuntu).
Start a new X client session using xinit — : x vtX (where x = a number > 0 that is not already in use for an x display, and X equals 11 or 12… this allows you to switch to the new gui using ctr+alt+X)
Next, you’ll be on a blank screen with a terminal in the upper left. ssh while forwarding the remote x via ssh -X user@host
you’re set! you can start your window manager or individual programs now.

Now… there… I’ll remember.

You know, the operator of a website has a great deal of information about the people that visit his site. How long they hang around, how they get there, what operating system they use, what city they are visiting from – what they are looking for when they land on his site. It’s nifty really – and sometimes disheartening. This little blog of mine only gets about 20 visitors a day, not too bad – certainly not enough to feed myself on (thank goodness that was never its intention). What’s a bit disappointing is this website’s “bounce rate” – the number of visitors that visit just long enough to  click their browsers’ back buttons. The bounce rate here is high, really high.

So, I took a look at a few other personal blogs for comparison. I’ve certainly found a few differences. My posts are relatively long, my content rarely (if ever) mentions pop-culture, and it is almost completely text.

I’ve decided to make a few decisions based on my findings, and I’m basically noting them here so that I remember them.

• No more ads. No sense is bothering the twenty-one of us that look at this website every day.
• I’m going to make an effort to include a bit more media. Pictures, short videos, online books – they are sometimes helpful for illustrating an idea or sharing a view of the world.
• I completely and utterly refuse to include any more pop culture than I already do.

Aside from these things… I’ve received plenty of complaints about the lack of personal information on this (personal) blog. Looking for Andrew D. Anderson, how can you be sure you’ve got the right one – I’ve no picture! Want to know more about my family background or socio-economic history – there’s not much information here. Where do I travel, and how often? What do I do with my free time, and how much do I have? Yeah, I know, I don’t really talk about it. And, yes, sometimes this leads to false assumptions or misreadings.

However, I don’t really intend on addressing that “issue” – mainly because it’s not really an issue for me at all. It’s by design. I try to think outside these personal limitations… and truly believe that ideas are the only interesting things we humans have to share. I don’t really care about your trip to visit your Aunt Ethel – outside of your motivations and interpretations of the event, your physical experience is unimportant to me. As a result, I strive to distill my own experiences into bundles of thoughts, and spare you the boredom of particulars. If you like to get all wrapped up in trivialities… well, this isn’t ever going to be the blog to read. If you think that ideas are actually the boring part of life… well… in a different context, I agree. Believe me, I’m not a fan of idle theory… but we can not actually experience things for our fellow humans. No sense in trying. I do what I can.

That’s the end of the administrative memos. I think.

First quarter, third year, gone. Very glad.

I had my schedule for next quarter all planned out, then I ended up getting only one out of my four classes. So, how can you get the classes you want with a computerized system? That was my question, and the answer, at least here, is pretty simple.

Class registrations are updated in real time, so for me to fit into a class I didn’t get, I just need someone to drop. Sniffing passwords over wifi would not be impossible, but the odds that I’d grab a useful password are nearly nothing. There are only about one hundred students that I could log in as to drop the classes I need. There are over 5k undergraduates alone. It just did not pencil out, and besides that – it is illegal.

So, plan B – let them drop of their own accord – just be there the instant they do to take the spot. Easy. Any campus course request system I have ever seen works just like a regular form. POST or GET data. You need to know where and what data is being sent for your course request. Then resubmit it constantly.

In my case, this was easy. JavaScript is used to post data to a single processing page that either works or notifies you of an error. If the class is full, you cannot just click the “add” link. You have to type the JavaScript in the action bar. Luckily, the script is on every page, whether click-able/visible or not, so copying and pasting the script from one page and typing it in on the address bar of the closed course works just fine. IMO this should probably be fixed to make things a little harder.

After you do that, because success and failure share a  common page – you are never forwarded anywhere – you can simple refresh the page to re-post your request. Download a nifty little program to reload your page at set intervals, and you can request all your courses (simultaneously even, at least here) as often as you like.

I now have 3 out of the 4 courses I wanted. With the 4th being requested every thirty seconds. Its a tiny class of ten people, but if one of them decides to move around – I’ll be in.

This is why they invented captchas.