…and I still failing to understand why it’s 2010 and Cisco VPN client connection profiles and certificates are stored anywhere but the current user homedir.

For future reference:

OS X:

/private/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Certificates

/etc/CiscoSystemsVPNClient/Certificates

Linux:

/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Certificates

Windows:

C:\Program Files\Cisco VPN Client\Certificates

“Profiles” and “Certificates” folders can be copied/moved between different systems to replicate configuration when there are CA limitations or restrictive policies on certificate export/imports.

(hey, it’s a container for some cygwin hacks I stumble upon)

Intro:

Yes, I’m a sucker for Cygwin. Being “forced” to live inside a few windows boxes on the corporate world made me embrace this tool to escape from a few nazi-ish policies and improve my efficiency when faced with common (and then again, maybe not) tasks.

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

• A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.

• A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.

The Cygwin DLL currently works with all recent, commercially released x86 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows, with the exception of Windows CE.

Think of it as an advanced Command Prompt for Windows boxes. Developing, debugging,scripting, testing, hacking. All of this can be done inside a Cygwin window  – just be aware that the standard Cygwin shortcut will just launch a cmd.exe window with a bash shell on it – for added usefulness, it’s much more efficient to launch it using the following shortcut:

C:\cygwin\bin\rxvt.exe -fn "Lucida Console-11" -bg black
-fg white -ls -st -sr -sl 1500 -C  -e /usr/bin/bash --login

Cygwin packages, the debian way:

Getting a new Cygwin installation running is usually a painful experience for several reasons:

1. As far as I know there is no way to script a complete installation using the setup utility.

2. Selecting packages for installation is a pain in the ass since the setup utility looks like it’s been designed by a monkey.

3. When an error occurs on installation, chances are your package selection is probably gone.

Truth be told, major revamping on the setup utility has been done on the past few months. It is now possible to search for an individual package by name. Searching for a package that provides a given binary/file/whatever is still very hard to accomplish and/or quite unclear.

However, I’ve come across an interesting project (one year old, as we speak) that brings the familiar Debian apt-get family commands to install packages. I’d think about this as a way to jumpstart a Cygwin installation, but it requires bash, wget, tar, gawk and bzip2 to be installed beforehand (and these should be installed on a zero configuration setup run)

Its name is apt-cyg. “a command-line installer for Cygwin which cooperates with Cygwin Setup and uses the same repository. The syntax is based on apt-get but simplified.”

With it, installing a full fledged and customized Cygwin setup is just a matter of running setup.exe once, installing the script using the suggested invocation and launching a preexisting shell script which all it does is installing the remaining packages (and dependencies) in one step.

I’m not going to talk about the way social networks (Twitter, mostly) have gradually killed blogs as personal publishing platforms. Simplicity. Flexibility. Ease of use. Limited formatting. Networking.

I’m not going to talk about the fact that it’s by now proven that social networks (Twitter, mostly) often become the first source of breaking news (lacking accuracy and reliability – but hey, we like it short and direct).

I’m also not going to talk about Twitter’s lack of scalability and stability. It’s often usual to see the smiling fail whale whenever the two facts I mentioned before combine together.

Today, Twitter was down for one hour or so.  My first thought was “what in the world is happening capable of bringing twitter down to its knees?”. But the stupid whale wouldn’t say a thing.

I’d later find out it was some “sudden failure”. But I bet it was the combination of two episodes. A new earthquake on Haiti and @billgates (what took him so long?) joining Twitter. These were the trending topics the minute Twitter came back up and they stayed like that for some time.

(edit: the first episode would lead to a quite quick humorous response by @workforfood: an appropriate blue whale of death)

So, Twitter, here’s an idea. Next time you fail whale on me and something is happening in the world, get a static page with the top trending topics so we get a general idea of what’s happening. Either it’s #billgates, #earthquake, #haiti or #obama, we’d like to know. Kthxbye.

(spotted on a HP/Compaq 440716-001 WXGA Laptop LCD Screen)

My first contact with Codebits was on its second edition, when most of the portuguese technology related folks I followed on Twitter were attending it and filling up my timeline with insights, private jokes and reports on the event. I remember watching a few interesting sessions online and missing a few I’d like to see because they were not being broadcasted live. That’s when I made the promise I would try and attend this year.

Given the hectic state of things at work lately, I made sure I had the days off when I signed in, mostly because I wanted to pay attention to things and attend as much sessions as possible. When the first session plans showed up, I already had a pretty tight schedule and almost no free slots, but I think this might have happened to too many people and these “popular” sessions would soon be moved to other stages and timeframes. Which is nice.

I came to Codebits with zero ideas about projects and the whole spirit of the thing. If last year the focus had been on RFID and location based apps, this year would surely be the social networking year, something which the Pond launch kinda confirmed (and later the project “score” would, too).

One of the things I liked most about the 2008 edition was the quiz, a series of small web based puzzles and riddles which would, properly evaluated and scored, rank a number of users giving them access to the “real” quiz show during the main event.

Coincidentally, when the first quiz came out, I was with a couple of friends on a bar musing about improbable things, drinking caipirinhas and toying around with Google Wave. In an adrenaline rush I hadn’t felt for a while, we cracked the thing in less than an hour and had quite a few laughs based on the subject. Whenever a new quiz was out, we’d join forces on Skype, Google Wave, email and IM solving the riddles.  That’s how most of us got on stage. That’s how some of these folks ended up in the same large team to develop our “project”.

Of course, when things got hardcore (javascript golf? brainfuck?), we fled. We have a life too. Some of us. Sometimes.

(more…)