Skip navigation

Author Archives: hrbrmstr

Don't look at me…I do what he does — just slower. #rstats avuncular • ?Resistance Fighter • Cook • Christian • [Master] Chef des Données de Sécurité @ @rapid7

AwesomeChartJS Meets Microsoft Security Bulletins

I wanted to play with the AwesomeChartJS library and figured an interesting way to do that was to use it to track Microsoft Security Bulletins this year. While I was drawn in by just how simple it is to craft basic charts, that simplicity really only makes it useful for simple data sets. So, while I’ve produced three diferent views of Microsoft Security Bulletins for 2011 (to-date, and in advance of February’s Patch Tuesday), it would not be a good choice to do a running comparison between past years and 20111 (per-month).  The authors self-admit that there are [deliberate] limitations and point folks to the most excellent flot library for more sophisticated analytics (which I may feature in March).

The library itself only works within an HTML5 environment (one of the reasons I chose it) and uses a separate <canvas> element to house each chart. After loading up the library iself in a script tag:

<script src="/b/js/AwesomeChartJS/awesomechart.js" type="application/javascript">

(which is ~32K un-minified) you then declare a canvas element:

<canvas id="canvas1" width="400" height="300"></canvas>


and use some pretty straighforward javascript (no dependency on jQuery or other large frameworks) to do the drawing:

var mychart = new AwesomeChart('canvas1');
mychart.title = "Microsoft Security Bulletins Raw Count By Month - 2011";
mychart.data = [2, 12];
mychart.colors = ["#0000FF","#0000FF"];
mychart.labels = ["January", "February"];
mychart.draw();

It’s definitely worth a look if you have simple charting needs.

Regrettably, it looks like February is going to be a busy month for Windows administrators.

Your web-browser does not support the HTML 5 canvas element.

Your web-browser does not support the HTML 5 canvas element.

Your web-browser does not support the HTML 5 canvas element.

Backup Workflow

I was trying to convey my backup workflow/setup to @joeday in 140 and it just wasn’t working very well. Twitter – as one might expect – is not exactly the place for detailed technical discussions, but it does provide fertile ground to spark ideas and dialogue. I told @geekshui that I’d blog my setup and that turned out to be just enough of a catalyst to force me to iron out my strategy for rud.is and future (if any) non-cooking/family blogging.

Background

I’m [still] a die-hard OS X user, despite the increasing gatekeeper motif Apple is sporting these days. My main computer is a MacBook Pro which I would stupidly run back into a burning building to rescue. Everything is on it. Everything. I digitize receipts, house our multimedia, spin out VMs like a DJ, create, compose, torrent, rip, zip and hack from it. Consequently, ensuring my data is available is kinda important to me.

I’ve been around computers long enough to have learned some painful lessons from four simple characters: MTBF. Drives break. Electronics fail. It’s an undeniable fact. The only way to recover from these failures is to have a good strategy for keeping your data available.

Strategy #1: Backups

While hard to digest on Twitter, my backup strategy is pretty straightforward. I use Time Machine for OS-managed full system backups. I rotate these between two large (1TB & 2TB) hard drives and I retire one large hard drive each year (MTBF…remember?). This gets me individual file recovery pretty quickly over a decent time period and a bit of hardware piece of mind.

I also have two 2.5″ IEEE 1394 drives that I SuperDupe/CarbonCopyClone images to every time Apple issues a 10.x.y update. Again, I rotate between since I really don’t trust drive manufacturers. I haven’t relied on TrueCrypt for a while (which would make for an ugly workflow) for system volumes, but it’s easy to clone disks that have FileVault protected data as long as you do so from an account that does not use or rely on FileVault data.

Both Time Machine and the drive cloning can occur while I’m sleeping, so no workflow is impacted.

Strategy #2: Dropbox

I have to start by sharing just how much I <3 Dropbox. I don’t use the free service as I grew weary of keeping within the paultry limits. Getting a paid sub to it provides more than just freedom from minutiae. I now get (as long as they have no hiccups) full recovery back as far as I want in the event I do actually lose a file or two. I have Dropbox configured on my MacBook Pro, a home Windows machine and a home Linux box. This means that even if I lose the drive on my Mac, I can get some of my non-sensitive data back from one of the other Dropbox-enabled systems (which is much faster than recovering from backups). It also means that I can get right back to work on a different system – as long as I have not used an OS X-specific program.

I could rant for quite a while about Dropbox, but it should be pretty obvious why this is part of of my backup strategy.

Strategy #3: rsync.net

While Dropbox houses non-sensitive data offsite (again, assuming no service hiccups), there is a subset of my information that I do want housed off-site in the event there is a catastrophic issue with our abode. For that, I have been using rsync.net since it’s inception. They provide outstanding customer support, have a unique view and practices around warrants and fully understand the needs of technical users concerned about availability and privacy.

There are some other things we do to ensure a refresh of the content on media drives that get hooked up to our PS3 or displays, but the the above three steps are how I ensure that I always have access to the data that enables my workflow.

HDMI Overscan Tweak For Wimpy Windows Font Display

CATALYST Control Center

Overscan setting

I recently hooked up a Windows 7 box to my Dell ST2310 monitor and was surprised at just how horrid the fonts looked, especially since my MacBook Pro looks fantastic using both DVI and HDMI with the display. I even tried all the ClearType tweaks to no avail.

Then, it suddenly dawned on me – when I started viewing some iTunes videos – that the OS was not taking advantage of the available screen real estate (in full screen view mode).

I tried to go minimal with the Windows 7 install, as I find that too many utilities, tray icons and services still manage to clog up the works. To solve this problem, I had to grab the ATI CATALYST Control Center software to do more detailed tweaks.

It turns out that the problem was with the overscan settings. The original, default setting by the built-in Windows 7 drivers had the slider right in the middle. I had to move it all the way to the right (full overscan) to both reclaim viewing space and font crispness.

Believe it or not, Engadget has a pretty good breakdown of the in’s-and-out’s of overscan if you’d like further reading. I blogged this mainly to help folks out who may be as frustrated as I was.

Bootstrapping The New Site

A swirling mass of shiny new objects has caught my attention this year. Carving out a more dedicated space to document, opine and discuss.