Loopback Filter with Truman Boyes

I am very happy that I signed up for this run and dedicated some time to preparing for it; this is my second 5k race and I feel pretty good about my performance. I pushed myself hard and there were more hills and changes of terrain than a prior run that I had in New Jersey. The Run Melbourne 5k was organized well, there were some good warm-ups in Federation Square – doing aerobics to Grease Lightening – “go grease lightening your burning up your motor now .. “ – and I was pumped to start in the “under 30 mins” section; the second wave just behind the under 25mins section. It was a chilly morning, wearing shorts and a new Adidas Techfit top, my Vibram Five Fingers, and the morning wind cut between the buildings and channeled a cool spell across the runners in Fed Square. In any case I was ready for the run and when the second wave started I started moving pretty quickly to work myself up through the crowd, breaking through a few sections and uphill through the Botanical Gardens. It started off uphill and since this was the first 2km’s I found myself cruising pretty decently. There were plenty of motivators on the sidelines, a band playing some rock about 1km in to the run, some african drummers along the path, and some ladies holding up signs that read, “men in tights are hot!”. Funny.

I kept moving at about the 5min/1km pace, and when I had a downhill section I really picked it up and started taking large leaps to keep my speed up. At about the 4km mark I started to slow a bit on the uphill of the bridge near Rod Laver Arena. I felt winded from exerting myself downhill but once I took enough calming breaths I was ready to pick up the pace – plus the terrain had leveled off. The final 5k was over the bridge and down into the Birrarung Marr (city side of the Yarra near Fed Square). I am still waiting for the results which will be published in The Age on Tuesday, but I expect it to be around 26 minutes. The clock said 28, but we were the second wave that started about 2 minutes after the 1st wave. In any case, I am feeling pretty pleased with my results.

My next big run is coming up in November  (likely were will be another one I can fit it in Sept). November’s run will be a 12km relay triathlon in Phuket, Thailand with some friends from work. Team Suspicious if you are interested. How fitting.

In Melbourne International Airport about to fly to Wellington; I brought my USB 3G adapter (from three.com.au), which is handy especially in the airport where wifi services are at a premium.

My trip to Wellington is just for the weekend. Going to get the apartment over there ready for some new tenants, and I will pack a bunch of our belongings and send them up to Hong Kong.

My travel this year has been considerable, but somehow I have yet to requalify for AAdvantage Gold. I am about 5k miles away; even though I had so many flights, a large percentage of them were so discounted that they had no mileage accrual.

I had an interesting conversation with a mate recently about Skype supernodes. The question that came up is certainly not new, but it does resurface from time to time: can supernodes in Skype p2p networks create some type of man-in-the-middle attack which may include eavesdropping on transit sessions. This brought me to look at the Skype protocol analysis which was performed by some folks at Colombia University in Sept, 2004. The full paper is here. Now, I am not sure if the protocol has evolved considerably from the time of the paper, or if supernodes are now a commonality in Skype p2p networks. From what I understand, and what the paper describes, if a node is behind NAT or a FW it will not become a supernode. However, there are plenty of network connection methods that will provide a public IP address to a computer. Take some mobile networks for example that do assign from a public pool to nodes. It seems that nodes that have been available for a long period of time, and are therefore deemed as being reliable would be candidates to become a supernode. This is interesting in the mobile Internet model; think about a 1xRTT/2.5G/3G bridge inside a taxi/truck/etc. It could be a mobile supernode that routes calls and messages.

It would be interesting to see a more recent protocol analysis of Skype to see if there are areas that have been further engineered. Since the service now sells commercial calling capabilities, I would imagine that quality of service functions (even if rudimentary) would be developed.

Updating my Juniper SSL VPN (IVE OS) to version 7.0 beta. This should support some cool new features, but most importantly it will keep my network connect (NC) build in sync with the versions used at Juniper. The benefit: I don’t need to upgrade and downgrade when switching between corporate and personal SSL connections. Why use SSL VPNs instead of just secure protocols (ie. TLS wrapped mail, etc)? Well when I use VoIP applications from my laptop or iPhone, I really want to keep the connection secure until it hits the SIP proxy, which for me happens to be on the same LAN as my SSL VPN.

Looking for read “The Black Swan”. Been doing Lesson 1 of Rosetta Stone Mandarin Version 3. So far I love the lesson plan and the way the program teaches. So far I am learning Traditional Chinese characters and spoken Mandarin in small phrases. In any case, there are a lot of times that I start to realize the meaning of a sentence  after hearing a few similar sentences and the visual elements that go along with them. Rosetta will not really explain the reasons or the literal translation of the text, but with this approach I am able to understand the reason within the context.

The trip to China and Hong Kong was quick but a lot was accomplished. The trip to South Korea was canceled as the meetings were not finalized. In any case this worked out well, stayed an extra day in Beijing with a friend, and got to see a local perspective on eats and checked the local area. It was a good trip to China.

I presented some ideas on large DC designs, primarily discussing some ideas around linking large IDCs together. MPLS VPNs (L3VPNs and L2VPNS) are usually the most straight-forward. You get the things you want on costly transit links such as QoS, Traffic Engineering, Load Balancing (ECMP, etc), and you also have the ability to handle overlapping address spaces in the event that you want to use the same addresses on machines in the production and staging areas of the provider network. Now what if there is only Internet connectivity between the DCs in either a primary or backup sense, is there still a way to deploy MPLS to link the DCs? Yes, it is quite feasible to use MPLS over GRE, and if you really needed encryption, you could even have MPLS over GRE, over IPSEC. The overhead is not nice, but it works.

It is worth pointing out that QoS and Traffic Engineering are not really feasible in an end-to-end approach when the tunnel is over GRE tunnels since the traffic will pass over a pure IP network that works in a best-effort basis.

We also discussed the use of Hadoop as a means to perform distributed computing on a large scale. All the big boys use Hadoop including Baidu, AWS, Alibaba, AOL, etc. The ideas that Hadoop presents are quite impressive. Take for example that they wrote a filesystem (HDFS) that is fully distributed across hundreds or even thousands of nodes, and uses the stock standard disks inside each machine because the IOPS are much higher than using a SAN. The idea is that it is easier to move the computation than it is to move data. I couldn’t agree more.

Up in Shenzhen now. Headed up here via train from Hong Kong; showed my passport to depart Hong Kong, then walked across the long hallway to China, where I then present my passport to enter China. My hotel was within walking distance of the train station so I navigated my way over to the Sheraton Fourpoints. A nice hotel as you would expect from the Starwood group. Taking the train back to HKG today, then flying up to Beijing for a meeting.

Shenzhen is a major developing city, and the place is buzzing with excitement in various markets. I forgot to pack my Apple MBP DVI-to-VGA adaptor for this trip, so I visited a local electronics bazaar. It was truly amazing to see the types of electrical components that are sold wholesale and retail. LEDs in all possible colours, diodes, capacitors, chips, ethernet PHYs, you name it. I picked up the adaptor for 7RMB. I bought two.

Next week I will likely be in Seoul, S. Korea before heading back to NJ. Then a trip over to Australia, then back to NJ for August, and then back to Hong Kong after that. Time to rack up some miles in the sky. That will pay off when we want to take some trips next year, or to help the family get some tickets with points.

This morning my son decided that my iPhone should take a nice sub-orbital trip around the office and consequently the re-entry and landing was not as smooth as Houston would have wanted it; the phone landed on the office tile floor and the glass screen was smashed in about 20 places. Interestingly enough the phone still worked and the touchscreen managed to work while the glass was shattered.

I called around to various cell phone shops but most of them are simply dealers that push a particular carrier’s phones. One problem I found is that since AT&T is the only official carrier of the iPhone in the USA at this time, there really are not that many places that service iPhones. Most of the small shops that push T-Mobile phones (HTCs, etc) don’t officially have any iPhone repair capabilities.

I found a great shop in East Brunswick, New Jersey ( http://www.iphonebandaid.com/ ) that I really need to give a good plug for; these guys rock! It’s a small shop off Route 18 South that has some tech wizards that understand a lot about repairing the iPhone. My repair was performed in under an hour (I was told about 1 1/2 hrs, but they had it done sooner), and the price is perfect: screen repair is $50. You really can’t beat it. AT&T will have the phone repaired for about $200 and you need to mail it in to a service center. iphonebandaid.com will do the repair on the spot. I chatted with the owners and they really knew the details of their trade; I was amazed that they also service phones that have been soaked in water. One of the tricks to getting all moisture out of the phone is to open it up and put it in a bowl of dry rice. Seriously. They showed me how they open the phones, the parts inside, and I was really impressed with how genuinely interested the company was in their business. If you are in NJ or NY and you need an iPhone or HTC repair, I highly recommend these guys.

Tomorrow I catch a flight to Hong Kong.

Today I ran my first 5k race. I have been into running purely as a hobby now for a few years, but over the last year I have started to run more frequently and for longer runs. I firmly believe that the key is to enjoy yourself on the run, but also to track your runs in terms of distance and times even if you change the path each time. It helps to understand how you are doing, and it really helped me in preparing for my first 5k.

I use an application on my iPhone that provides GPS mapping, a stop watch, and the ability to keep history on each run and course. It was a cheap application that is actually getting a lot of use these days. One the week of the 5k I ran a quick 3km, then a nice paced 4.5km through some woods with various elevations, and on the day before the race I took a rest day. Food consumed: granola bar, fried egg on wheat bread, and a nice chug of water. That’s about it for the 5k, I really didn’t want to have anything liquid slushing around.

I finished the race at 26mins, which was pretty good for me and I felt like I could keep going for another few more k’s provided the elevation was moderate. I am pumped and ready for more runs soon.

I should mention that this was also my trial of the Vibram Five Finger running shoes for a race; (I have been running with them around the neighborhood for about a year now), and they were great. My legs are a little sore, but I really think the shoes were a help to my balance, posture, and they kept me going forward instead of running in more of an ‘up-and-down’ motion that would occur with a heavy running shoe.

On hold calling my travel agent in New Zealand over VoIP. Scratchy connection, but then I realized that the call is being transcoded on Asterisk. G.729 to Ulaw. There is plenty of bandwidth on FiOS so I should spend the time to tweak it back to using Ulaw on the local handset. Here I am burning up voice minutes to a 021 NZ mobile that has been call forwarded to a PBX.

Finally they pickup and the call seems like it is lost in the New Zealand rainforests, taking every turn around thousands of ferns while thousands of kiwi birds peck at my voip packets in the dark until there is barely an audible sound that echoes through our Internet connected telephone conversation. Alexander Bell would still have been proud; I imagine that our conversation from NJ to NZ sounded probably similar to some of the early transatlantic calls. Crackly, delayed, and some of the reasons that knowing the phonetic alphabet would be of use. We recited lots of Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot back and forth until somehow my last name was spelled out. This is when email is more powerful than spoken language; rarely would I say this,  but it truly is when language is delayed and full of errors.

Teliax is a good provider that I have had very little to complain about in the past. They are my SIP upstream peer and most of the time their network is solid, but that is when I call US destinations. When I ring New Zealand directly I am pretty sure they route my call through some very cheap gateways that basically make the call take some less than ideal paths over some less than ideal networks. Put it this way, I have another SIP peer in Australia that provides excellent quality calls even though they are about 250+ms away geographically from my PBX, but they have excellent calling services within Australia and New Zealand. I even have an 03 Melbourne DID number that rings right to my ATA in the house and it sounds excellent.

Today I took a drive into NYC with my son to visit the Chinese Consulate as I needed to obtain a Chinese visa for some upcoming travel. I paid for the rush service which provided turn around time roughly a day and a half; taking my son also helped to preempt a large portion of the line. I can’t complain there at all. It was a very hot day in the urban jungle, 94F. After getting a surprising multi-entry visa that is valid for a year we walked over to the piers on the westside highway right near the circle line ferry, ate lunch that we picked up from a deli on 10th ave, and then headed back through the Lincoln Tunnel. While driving back Alicia Keys came on with her “New York”. How fitting.

Building up iaxmodem on OpenBSD 4.7-current from ports. The plan is to use a Hylafax frontend or maybe some email method to send faxes through the PBX. If it sets up quickly it will beat spending the $10-$15/month for an eFax or similar service. I rarely send faxes but sometimes the need does arise.

Everything was working so well until I hit this snag:

# make install
Using $< in a non-suffix rule context is a GNUmake idiom (line 1540 of /usr/ports/infrastructure/mk/bsd.port.mk)

Now I need to look into what the issue is with make. Too bad it’s 1am, time to fix this later.

Had a fantastic day on Manhattan Island today cruising around with my family. Where else can you find pizza by the slice for $1 tax included, or two slices and a soda for $2.85. Nice. We rented bicycles over at Central Park Bike Rental (actually not in the park but close). Two bikes, one with a baby seat, for three hours of cruising around from 59th street up to Central Park North and back again. Today was absolutely amazing; the park was filled with New Yorkers, tourists, hawkers, and babies for Lincoln to play with.

The Whole Foods @ Columbus Circle was a great idea for a causal dinner on the run; we had been out the whole day and sitting in a restaurant was not something we wanted to sign up for, and Whole Foods has a huge selection of fresh meals, drinks, and desserts. The Indian food there is decent, Saag Paneer, Chicken Tika Masala, Naan, Vegetable Biryani, and some Tandoor Chicken. Don’t forget the Naan. Another cool thing about Whole Foods is they carry local foods and beverages. You can find some boutique sodas or teas that would likely be distributed only in the local 10 miles.

NYC is a city that I could live in again and really enjoy the buzz and lifestyle, and I think it would be a whole new experience being a Dad. It’s a very kid friendly city, parks everywhere (really),and there are so many places to visit. The culture is enveloping, and pretty soon I felt excited just knowing that there was so much that we *could do*.