Month: January 2008

Herman Brackbill, 1917-2008

Herman Brackbill

I got a call from my mother this morning informing me that my grandfather, Herman Brackbill, passed away earlier today at the age of 90. He would have been 91 next month.

As regular readers of my blog know, my grandfather’s health hasn’t been that great over the past few years, and it took a significant downturn a few months ago when he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. But when we saw him in December he was as alert, funny, and warm as ever. It hurts that he’s gone.

My fondest memories of my grandfather are from when I was a kid. We used to see him and my grandmother fairly often, and we had a little ritual going. In the days before my dad finished our basement, they would sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room, where the TV was, and we would come running down the hall early on Saturday morning and make Pop-pop watch cartoons with us. He would generally sit still with us for Looney Tunes, and he would invariably get caught up in the action with us and start laughing until he cried.

And I remember visiting him in Pennsylvania on Christmas Day and having his big voice boom out “Joy to the World” along with the radio—he inevitably sang the echoed “and heav’n and nature sing” like a true chorister. More recently, I had the privilege a few years back to sing next to him at a family gathering. His bass voice was less powerful but no less sure.

When my uncle Harold passed away recently, my grandfather missed him and the opportunity to spend time with him. They’re back together now, along with his other brothers and sisters that have gone before. It’ll be quite a family reunion tonight. I hope my great-grandfather has loosened up a little now and will allow some singing at the dinner table.

Hopfest

I’ve been drinking some pretty high hop content beers lately. A few days ago, I brought home (finally) the new Sam Adams Hallertau Imperial Pilsner, which bears approximately the same relation to regular Sam Adams as regular Sam bears to a Budweiser (American version). Floral, elegant, bright with hops (Hallertau, of course) without being overly bitter, and pleasantly complex. The beer raised Lisa’s eyebrows, and that’s hard to do.

Her eyebrows were raised a bit higher when she tasted tonight’s beer, the Unearthly Imperial India Pale Ale from Southern Tier Brewing Company. Imperial, connoting a higher-alcohol variety of a standard beer variety, is getting a workout here, taking a standard IPA to unheard of heights. 11% ABV and high but well-balanced IBUs are the start of the story, as is the unearthly orange glow and the aroma, reminiscent of standing over an opened bag of fresh hops. Little to no head, lacing the side of the glass very slightly. Initial sharpness from the hops gives way to a lightly malty back of the tongue with good strong floral character throughout. I wasn’t familiar with this brewery before tonight but I’ll be seeking it out in the future.

Update: Nice article from the NY Times Food section tasting a variety of “extreme” beers, in which the Unearthly is namechecked (though not actually tasted).

Security: mass SQL injection hack

I’m starting a couple new departments on the blog today. The first, the Security department, is going to be posts about computer security concepts and events as I attempt to educate myself about the field. I’m kicking off the department with this story about a mass SQL injection attack that recently hit more than 70,000 sites (via Slashdot That’s a lot of compromised sites, but the really astonishing thing is the vector that was used to do it.

SQL injection—putting database command language into a system as user input or command parameters so that it is executed in a remote system—isn’t a new attack vector. It’s been around since at least 2004, when it was used to deface the Dremel website. It’s also a fairly well understood attack—if you can explain a security vulnerability in a comic strip, you have something that developers should be able to figure out how to avoid.

So why are these vulnerabilities so widespread? One reason may be the ease of web development and its separation from more structured programming disciplines. It’s second nature to a well educated developer to sanitize inputs; self-taught scripters (PHP, ASP, whatever) may not have been exposed to the importance of this principle.

Virginiana, Wikipediana

I’ve been expanding my Wikipedia footprint over the past few months. Starting on the Virginia Glee Club page, my contributions now span articles on a few University presidents, the Raven Society, the Virginia Gentlemen, and even the Seven Society. Yes, editing articles on Wikipedia is a gateway drug.

So I made it formal the other day and joined the WikiProject University of Virginia. I don’t know exactly what that means but I suspect I’ll find out soon enough.

I’d welcome help from other University alumni or interested parties regarding any of these topics. For instance, there is damned little about the VGs online to use as reference material for discussion of this 50+ year old a cappella group, and I know they’re more notable than the Hullabahoos, who have a kick-ass article.

New mix: coverflow

coverflow.jpg

The only mix that I’ve ever done that started as a visual pun, coverflow contains a set of covers that hit some familiar ground and some unfamiliar items as well. It’s hard to do these right; my previous effort suffered from some lofi recordings and the same is true here. But there’s some fun stuff here. Particularly fun was sorting through the long hidden track at the end of Justin Rosolino’s first self published album to call out a few items that I feel are totally what covers are about.

Usual Suspects™: you’ll get this mix along with days that you choose to ignore.

Iowa ♥s Huckabee

According to the AP, Mike Huckabee, Baptist preacher cum politician, is in the lead in Iowa. And I’m pretty sure I won’t be the first to use that headline, but I might edge out the AP by a few hours with it.

Will Huckabee do well nationally, what with his “shut down the IRS, usage tax, theocracy” platform? I hope not, but then, I thought Bush Jr. would fail nationally too. I can’t see him doing especially well in New Hampshire, though. But I’m nothing but thrilled to see him bloodying Mitt Romney’s nose.

And how about Barack Obama? Rarely has a candidate done so well on a promise to do things differently.

Aw crap.

At the half, I said to my wife, “Well, we’re up, but we could always blow it in the second half like we always do.” I should have kept my mouth shut.

It was still a fun game to watch, at least until Jameel Sewell went out with an injury in the fourth quarter. Then it got sloppy fast. But still, I have to remind myself from the perspective of one glass of wine, at least we were in a bowl game, and not one of the low rent ones either. It was a nice end to a season that had its ups and downs.

Happy New Year

I have a bellyful of lentils and zampone, and I’m watching Virginia in the Gator Bowl. So far, a pretty good start to 2008. It’s snowing again, of course, but you can’t have everything.

I downloaded Dave Winer’s new FlickrFan yesterday, which is worth a look if you are a Mac user—a quick and easy way to put other people’s photos on your screensaver, and as Dave says particularly good for putting content on your HD TV. I don’t currently have a Mac hooked up to our 32″ LCD, so right now it’s driving my screensaver. I think the biggest stroke of genius in the thing is the default inclusion of the AP Photos RSS feed—absolutely brilliant to see totally world class photos of events almost as they happen.