Month: February 2016

Anya Quilt – Part 1

I have been working on an Ohio Star quilt for Anya’s bed (figure anyone who lives in Ohio should have an Ohio Star quilt or two in their house!). Constructing a quilt is a great visual example of exponential progression. Piecing the four tiny triangles into fairly small squares … you’ve still got a whole lot of tiny pieces. Strips of three squares put together were still a lot of small pieces. But, the quilt builds up rather quickly from there – strips turn into 3×3 blocks, then these blocks form three really large strips with a border fabric between them. Then border strips go in between the star strips to form the entire quilt top.

I had the final top pinned together and took a quick picture to share. Something didn’t look right. Took the picture, folded up the project for the night, and went on to other things. Right before bed, I pulled the picture up again to send to my mom:

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Something REALLY didn’t look right … stared at it for a few minutes before I realized that two of my block-triangleblock-block strips were attached upside down! Instead of having a pink triangle along the center block, I have a white triangle. Looking back at the previous step, I do not know how I missed it:

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Evidently there is no historical basis for a humility block (an “intentional” mistake put into a quilt – sort of like small dead end roads used to copyright protect maps) … and, honestly, it always sounded like a defensive “I meant to do that!” kind of thing rather than a real “only God is perfect, so my quilt should have a flaw to avoid angering God” thing 🙂

My task for today is to rip out the two backwards blocks and get them stitched back into the quilt. Ugh! Very important lesson learnt — but all in all, not bad for my first quilt.

Buzzard Day Celebration

Join us on 20 March for any of the Buzzard Day activities:

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The arrival of the Buzzards at the Hinckley Reservation on 15 March is an annual occurrence. The Hinckley Township web site has a page detailing the history of this event.

Hinckley’s Buzzard Sunday celebration is the first Sunday following the return of the buzzards — 20 March . Details about Buzzard Sunday can be found at the Hinckley Chamber of Commerce web site.

We plan to meet at the Elementary School at 10AM for the pancake breakfast and then check out the festivities downtown. Weather permitting, we can walk the paved trail around the lake; and we plan to grill some burgers for dinner.

Last year, many of the newly arrived vultures perched in the trees along our driveway. Near sunset, the group took flight and flew around our property and the park. We are hoping to capture pictures of the flight on our BloomSky. Even if you cannot make it to Buzzard Day, check out the BloomSky time-lapse movies to spot some Buzzards.

And for any early risers out there … at 7 AM on 15 March, the Hinckley Reservation has an official Buzzard Spotter at the Buzzard Roost. Maps of the Hinckley Reservation can be found at the Cleveland Metroparks web site. The buzzard roost is at the south end of the park, at West Drive and State Road. Since this is 7 AM on a Tuesday … we weren’t planning on attending this particular event 🙂

Kerberos Authentication and LDAP Authorization In Apache

I’ve been authenticating users of Apache web sites against Active Directory using Kerberos for some time now. Installed krb5-workstation and mod_auth_kerb, configured /etc/krb5.conf for my specific domain, and added some config to the Directory section of the Apache config. Great if you just require valid-user (or require valid-user and then turn around and do some authorization within your web code using something like php_auth_user). Not so great, though, for restricting access to the site outside of web code. And I really didn’t want to code in an authorization function when my web server should be able to do that for me.

I FINALLY got kerberos authentication working in Apache with an LDAP authorization component. Turns out the  mod_auth_kerb version 5.1 that was available from the Yum repository is terribly buggy  – like not usable in this instance buggy. KrbLocalUserMapping did not consistently remove the realm component. I’d hit a site and it would know who I am, click a link and come across as me@REALM.TLD and get access denied errors, click refresh and get in because it knew I was me again. Or not. More than 50% failure rate.I built the 5.4 version from http://modauthkerb.sourceforge.net/ and haven’t had a problem since.

I’m authenticating to Active Directory using the Kerberos module then authorizing against a group housed in an external LDAP directory. You can totally point your LDAP config toward Active Directory & use AD groups instead:

AuthType Kerberos
AuthName “Kerberos AD Test”
KrbAuthoritative off
KrbMethodNegotiate on
KrbMethodK5Passwd on
KrbServiceName HTTP/this.isyour.url.tld@EXAMPLE.COM
KrbAuthRealms EXAMPLE.COM
KrbLocalUserMapping On
Krb5Keytab /path/to/keytabs/keytab.file

AuthBasicAuthoritative On
AuthBasicProvider ldap
AuthLDAPURL “ldaps://ldap.example.com/o=BaseDN?uid?sub?(&(cn=*))”
AuthLDAPBindDN “YOUR SERVICE ACCOUNT HERE”
AuthLDAPBindPassword “YOUR BIND PWD HERE”

AuthLDAPGroupAttribute uniqueMember
AuthLDAPGroupAttributeIsDN on
require ldap-group cn=Website Test,ou=groups,o=BaseDN

 

WooHoo! I hit the site from my domain-member computer, it knows I am LisaR. It then turns around and finds an LDAP user matching uid=LisaR and grabs the user’s fully qualified DN (because AuthLDAPGroupAttributesIsDN is ‘on’ here … if you are using just uids in your member list, that would be off). It then verifies that the fully qualified DN is a member of the Website Test group.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to let the user log in without supplying a realm (not everyone’s in the domain … and they need to be able to log in too. Works fine right now, provided they input their username as uid@REALM.TLD).

Primary Elections In Ohio

This is mostly a note for myself, but if anyone else in Ohio is currently an unaffiliated voter who wants to cast a primary ballot for a party, you can switch party affiliation at your polling location by asking for the party ballot. Since you did not cast a ballot for that party in the previous primary (I’ve used the non-party issues ballot for the past few years. In Arkansas, you did not have to be party-affiliated to use a party’s primary ballot), you may be challenged by the poll worker. If that is the case, tell them you wish to switch parties and would like to complete the appropriate form.

Per Ohio Revised Code 3513.20, this is the proper process *provided that you “support the principals of the political party whose ballot” you vote*. Political party principals are *really* generic (and don’t specify the specifics to reach those goals) – not a lot of people who want more crime, think primary education is a bunch of nonsense, wish there was more unemployment, and so on. Really, even long time party members disagree about how to reach a goal and how well an individual candidate reflects the principals of their party … so not liking a specific policy implementation does not negate my support for the PRINCIPALS of the party.

Buzzard Cam — Almost There!!

We got our BloomSky!!! There has been a lot of snow, and it is very cold. We shoveled our driveway on Sunday hoping there’d be some melting today & delivery vehicles would be able to get up our hill. Then we got another two or three inches of snow overnight. Scott and Anya did some shoveling and put a large plastic box at the bottom of the driveway … and they actually delivered packages to the large plastic box. WooHoo!

The Buzzard Cam is almost ready! Right now it’s inside — so it looks like you could take a tropical holiday in Hinckley because it’s 65 degrees on our window 🙂 But we’ve got the network set up, the device registered, and can upload data. We’ll get the device mounted up outside on Friday or Saturday when it’s not so cold and snowy.

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Pinwheel Dress – Part 1

I’ve started piecing together Anya’s Pinwheel Dress — all of the pieces are cut out, and the strips for the bias tape are sewn together. I’ve got one of the bias strips folded and pressed too — so I was able to affix it to the bottom of the dress layer. Right now, the flounce at the bottom and the bias tape are pinned on so I could visualize the dress. I wanted a really simple white dress with a dark colored bias binding. The binding is a marbled maroon fabric, although that detail is completely lost in the photos. I don’t know that the marbling comes across well in person either – we’ll see.

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This is the hemline – both the dress and tunic have a similar hemline. When worn together, they create a two layer flounce.

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Here’s a view of the trim with a little better lighting – it’s a maroon fabric with a marbled design on it.

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Buzzard Cam! (Coming soon to a web site near you!)

The buzzards that hang out in the Hinckley Reservation roost in the trees that line our driveway. Last year on Buzzard Day, right before the sunset, an enormous flock of buzzards took off from the trees and flew varying paths across the sky. I guess checking out the area before going to sleep for the night. It was incredible to watch.

There’s this weather station with a wide angle fish-eye lens camera — Bloomsky — that we will be installing next week … way before the buzzards should be arriving. Hopefully we’ll have the same area over-flight … but it’ll be available online for everyone to see!

New Dress Projects

I’ve got two more dress projects starting — one is in the “picking fabrics and such” stage, the other is almost ready to be sewn.

First the picking fabrics one — this is another pattern from the Simple Life Pattern Company (who published the pattern for the V-back dresses I just finished). There are two looks that I like for this dress – one is two contrasting solid color fabrics. The other uses two patterned fabrics. I’m leaning toward the two pattern look … thought it might be a little more “fun” that way.

The second is a pattern from Oliver & S that I purchased almost two years ago. And promptly discovered that my sewing skills needed quite a bit of improvement. I’ve now managed to do all of the skills in the dress … so hoping it’ll turn out nicely. I got a white linen fabric for the dress and a marbled maroon for the bias strips.