I upgraded my system to Ubuntu 10.10 today and was surprised to find out that bind refused to start.

After a bit of investigation (without internet access because I decided not to fall back on a temporary nameserver), I found out the correct form the configuration file had to take. I still  don’t understand why it worked in the previous version when it now looks like it was erroneous.

Anyway, the updated and functional file can be found at http://nucco.org/files/named.conf.options

On a side note, my system feels a whole lot snappier right now. Yeap, that’s puzzling as well.

I got tired of my ISP’s annoying DNS servers that redirect me to search results I don’t want, complete with advertising, every time I mistype a domain name in the browser. So I changed my nameservers to google’s public DNS. I even set up a simple caching nameserver on my system in a bid to improve performance.

This met my needs, because Google doesn’t re-direct non-existent domains. The only problem is that I think google knows quite enough about me already. I don’t need to feed them a list of all the sites I interact with.

So, in part inspired by my recent adventures with name servers, as well as a suggestion by someone in #dns on irc.freenode.net about it not being rocket science to run your own recursive nameserver, I (yea) searched google, and ended up with an interesting set of instructions, which I didn’t need to follow to the letter.

They are here: http://ftp.isc.org/isc/pubs/tn/isc-tn-2007-1.html

On my Ubuntu 10.04 system, all I needed to edit the configuration file, found at /etc/bind/named.conf.options . Remember to install the package ‘bind9′ first .

I added the following lines, which were of course, dubbed from the ISC site linked a few paragraphs earlier.

controls {     inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; }    keys { "rndc-key";} }; 

and in the "options {" block, I added the following:

allow-query {    localhost; localnets; };    listen-on { any; };  

Then I added a third block

view "default-recursive" {     match-clients { localhost; localnets; };     match-destinations { localhost; localnets; };      recursion yes; } 

Saved the configuration file, and then restarted bind ( sudo service bind9 restart )

Finally, I changed my network settings, putting in 127.0.0.1 as the nameserver/DNS server.

Tested, and everything fine.

For a slightly finer explanation of the configuration files, at least the parts that matter, and to the best of my understanding, "localnets" means you’re also allowing other computers on the same LAN as yourself to set their system to use your new nameserver.

127.0.0.1 of course, is the way that your system refers to itself. ‘localhost’ does a similar job, but of course, ‘localhost’ needs to be first resolved to an IP address

There, I now run my own recursive DNS server, and I feel pretty happy about it.

My entire config file (the one I edited) is here if you want it: http://nucco.org/files/named.conf.options

— Random Quote: Misfortune, n.: The kind of fortune that never misses. — Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil’s Dictionary"

In the beginning was the Internet, and then came the Web. The web said "Let there be Awesome", and there was awesome. But some phone makers were not pleased with this awesome.

They created apps to split the people amongst themselves:

"Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech." (Quoted from the Christian Holy Bible: Genesis 11:7)

All because the peoples of the world have become awed by eye-candy and sheer brute force specs. But the world has survived such manipulation before. The world has risen from the machinations of Internet Explorer 5 and 6 before, and may yet rise again from the feet of people implementing apps instead of implementing mobile friendly websites.

But I do believe this will pass someday. One fine day, the news of the day shall be

"The Economist.com is now optimised for mobile devices of all shapes and sizes!" and not that divisive "The Economist is now available for iOS!" (which admittedly hits me at a soft spot because I neither own, nor wish to own an iOS device).

Yes, the web browser shall someday evolve beyond "type an address in a boring text box, click a blue link, the back button, or type a new address in a boring box".

Do you read me, all ye browser makers. If you haven’t realised it yet, the dawn of the era of the app is a clarion call. Wake up, and push forth a more exciting way of navigating the world wide web. HTML5 is a step in the right direction, but one thing I the web needs, is to provide the web with a means of delivering a website as a recursively finite package, that can be (if needed) downloaded in one fell swoop, so that browsers can do fancy things without being crippled by network latency.

The open Internet needs you!

At the time of writing this note, the song that was playing on my computer was "Nothing in my way" by "Keane", from the album "Under the Iron Sea". "Feels So Good" by "Sonique" from the album "Hear My Cry" followed immediately afterwards. Even my computer understands how I am feeling

* Spread butter on the slice of bread.
* Click reply on a twitter message, type your reply.
* Reach for your teacup and grab the open jar of butter instead.
* Take a sip.
* Invent new swear words.

— Fanen Ahua Random Quote: "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum." — Arthur C. Clarke

This is the sequel to "My Bank May Have Smoked Crack"
http://traversingmind.blogspot.com/2010/09/my-bank-may-have-smoked-crack.html

In an interesting turn of events, I find my self in the United Kingdom. Before travelling, I made sure I applied for Internet Banking, and got a hardware password generator as well, which was supposed to make it possible for me to transfer money from my account to virtually any other bank. Nice.

Foolishly however, I didn’t test to make sure everything was in order before travelling. I just assumed it had to be ok.

I was partly right. Everything worked fine, up to the point where I needed to transfer money to an account other than mine. This is the part where I need to use the hardware password generator. Shouldn’t be any trouble there. I select transfer to third-party. Fill in the account number details, and then I notice an odd looking field. "Answer your secret question" It says. Since when did I have a secret question?

I log out, go back to login, tell them I forgot my password, it asks me for my secret question so that it can allow me to reset my password. I don’t know what the secret question is, so I can’t answer it. Helpfully, there is a button which says "send me a reminder about my secret question". I push that button. Moments later, I get an email.

Your secret question is: "Two hours, Two days after Christmas". Ah! I remember, I was a teenager when I set that as my secret question. But this is supposed to be a new set of login details! What is that super old secret question still doing in my account?

Up to this point, my bank has done nothing wrong. Why then do I think they smoked even more crack? The answer can be found in subtle cues hidden in the following sentences and paragraphs.

I have sent up to 4 emails to different addresses in the bank, and about 4 days later, I have got a reply to none.

Normally password-related things shouldn’t be done via email. You are right. I have called their customer care centre, which works quite nicely, but due to no fault of theirs (conspiracy theory here) my calls get terminated whenever I mention something from the set "password, internet, bank, detail" while calling a Nigerian number. I think these guys now have computers listening to telephone calls looking for signs of fraud, and I suppose my peculiar case would sound like fraud to an idiotic robot. No, this is not a crack smoking bank… maybe a robot that needs to be taught some manners, or shut down entirely. Or maybe I need to wake up and stop dreaming up conspiracy theories.

Being sand-boxed in this land as it seems, I decide that the next logical thing to do is to call the UK Branch of my bank. One google search later, I have a phone number for GTBank UK. Nice. At least they have a contact point for me somewhere around here.

One minute later, I am talking to an Internet Banking agent. Neat. In a few moments, I will discover that GTBank UK is not a "branch" of GTBank Nigeria, but an entirely Independent bank. Hmmm. They don’t deal with any issues regarding their Nigerian cousin, and No, I cannot access my Nigerian account from there.

Sensors detect some dangerous levels of baloney here.

Why on earth is it called GTBank UK if it is not an extension of the Nigerian operation meant to bring relief to the Nigerian sojourner in the UK? Maybe I was over-assuming yet again.

The final quip, which may be obvious to you if you are an IT person is this: If you know your password, you are supposed to be able to change everything, INCLUDING your secret question and answer. Who on this amazing planet got paid millions (possibly in hard currency) to design and implement this system who thought it wise to not allow an innocent user like me to change his secret question and answer online? He’s probably chilling in some Carribean island. Thanks to you, I’ve got my password, yet I am still locked out of some parts of my account.

Let me stop there. Enough frustration vented. I wonder if this will influence anyone remotely involved to seek for improvement…

— Fanen Ahua Random Quote: Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man. And nothing can replace it or him. — Spock, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4

I’ve been meaning to get this one out of my system since July 2010. No use complaining about lack of time, so here it  goes:

I’ve been a happy Guaranty Trust Bank customer for close to 5 years now. I am usually so quick to praise and recommend them that I often come across as someone who has a vested interest in this bank.

That’s how much confidence I have in their sensibility.

Recently though, they woke up from a deep sleep and decided to change their ATM cards. They claim that the switch was necessary in order to move to a more secure type of card. The over-marketed "chip & pin" type card. Great People!

Correct me if you think I am wrong. Practically all the ATMs in this country are magnetic-stripe based. Which means we are being sold a whole lot of canned air whenever they say the new card is more secure.

All the information contained on the "chip & pin" still has to be stored on the magnetic stripe, so that you can still use it with the millions of (magnetic stripe) ATMs all over the country, and the few POS outlets in the country. Where’s the security now? This feels like Y2K all over again. Great Nation!

You see, Interswitch was one of the first electronic payment platforms in Nigeria to gain mainstream popularity. All Nigerian banks jumped on the bandwagon, and despite all its availability and reliability problems, its popularity saved many a Nigerian the trouble of queuing up for 3 hours at UBA in order to withdraw ₦5,000 for the weekend. When it worked, it worked beautifully, and was deeply appreciated. Life was like a dream.

So the days went by, and we arrived in 2010, revelling in the electronic cash dream. Everyone was quiet. ATMs were commonplace, they were now part of the average man’s subconscious. Yea, there were new kinds of frauds, but surely, the benefits of having one ubiquitous payment platform were greater than the risks.

Then it happened. One sunny day, I got an unexpected email from GTB informing me that my "new GTB chip & pin naira mastercard" was ready for pickup. Wow, where did that come from?

It may not be so bad, i thought. Does this mean I can use the new mastercard on Amazon.com? This would save me from having to go and get US dollars from the parallel market, in order to deposit into my dollar-denominated Visa account before I can buy a 10 dollar book off amazon. NO.

Well, what then is the point? This one is chip & pin, it is more secure (duh!), and it is the first Naira Mastercard ever. He he.

But there is still a magnetic stripe on the new card. (Pretend you didn’t hear that).

Oh well, it has been forced on me anyway, so I pick it up from my branch. It doesn’t take long to realise that not all banks are able to process Mastercards! AWESOME. My card has suddenly lost its limbs. Now I have to be careful when I run out of cash, because I may not have a nearby Mastercard understanding machine to save me.

This won’t be too bad, if all the banks are switching to Mastercard, then it would only be a while before everyone supports mastercard too! Dead Wrong. Others are switching to Visa. Others to Interswitch’s matching "chip & pin" offering, the Verve card!

To sum up this potentially long narrative, my dear pot smoking bank:

• Has decided to cripple my debit card by limiting the places where I can use it (mastercard is not univerally supported in Nigeria).
• Has poisoned the notion I had of Mastercard and Visa (a mastercard is a mastercard. Not any more!). There are some Mastercards which will work everywhere a Mastercard logo is displayed, and there are some that won’t work everywhere (the one my bank gave me). Nice.
• Billed me ₦1,000 for the generous favour. Thank you very much.

Here’s one for those who may find use for this: (hint, its techie).

The Naira sign is the character used to denote currency in Nigeria (Nigeria’s official currency symbol). Use it the same way you use $, for instance.

There are not many keyboards out there that have this character on them, so…

Here is one you can copy, if the device through which you are viewing this page can actually display the character:
₦
Its on the line above this. If you saw it, perfect. copy and paste wherever you want to use it. If you didn’t, you may find use for:

The XML Decimal entity is ₦
In UTF-8, it is represented as 0xE2 0×82 0xA6
In the C (or other) Programming language (when working with UTF-8 encoded text files), you can use \342\202\246 to get this character.

It is worth emphasising if you are using this character, your document should be encoded in UTF-8 or some other format that has support for this character. If you are merely typing in microsoft word or openoffice writer, you don’t need to worry about UTF-8.

Finally, support for actually displaying this character is not widespread as at the time of writing this post, so your mileage may vary, but I do believe that recent versions of popular desktop operating systems can display the character in their core fonts (Linux, Windows 7).

— Fanen Ahua Random Quote: Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. — H. H. Williams

For the EpiValley modem, with Starcomms, and probably any other network. The title says Starcomms simply because Starcomms seems to be most fond of the device.

And yes, this should apply to any recent Linux distribution even. I use ubuntu, so here goes.

All you need to do is install usb-modeswitch (it’s in the ubuntu repositories), then remove the device if it was already plugged in, and plug it back in. Network manager will show it as an available mobile internet device.

It’s as easy as that.

If you ever find yourself in need of the Cakephp 1.2 Manual for offline reading, here goes:

• http://bit.ly/9s248m
• http://nucco.org/files/CakePHP.pdf

One of the two should work.

Enjoy.

— Fanen Ahua Random Quote: Make it idiot-proof, and someone will breed a better idiot. — Oliver Elphick

You are abusing your position by repeatedly sending me these annoying SMSes about your "get rich quick" promotions. I don’t want any text messages from you unless they are pertinent to my contract with you. Period.

Marketing-related SMSes should be Opt-in, or I should at least have the option of opting out.

When and where is the next NCC Consumer Parliament holding? Does anyone know?

— Fanen Ahua Random Quote: All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power. — Ashleigh Brilliant