beatmaster's blog

woher kenn ich diese Situation nur?

Have you already attended a public viewing?
You will possibly say yes - and mean the "big screen" parties during WM 2006 or EM 2008 ...

I still get irritated - and somehow strangely amused - when I hear or read "publc viewing"!
Don't know why? Well, that term means in 'american english' something totally different: giving a deceased person a last visit and show him/her respect!
(translated into german "Leichenschau") ...

example

strange ...

refering to this article of Byggvir.
But still new methods of attackers rise around.

I'm watching (well, what else can you do with this?) one, who brute forces my whole cluster of webservers for days now! :(

Here a little piece of the cake of one server:

May 14 00:51:27 server sshd[4029]: Invalid user allistir from 64.83.58.161
May 14 00:51:27 server sshd[4021]: Invalid user allistir from 83.12.137.44
May 14 00:52:56 server sshd[4319]: Invalid user allistir from 70.145.116.241
May 14 00:53:03 server sshd[4346]: Invalid user allistir from 190.8.192.66
May 14 00:55:11 server sshd[4804]: Invalid user aloysius from 88.87.195.14
May 14 00:56:39 server sshd[5109]: Invalid user alphonse from 87.230.19.127
May 14 00:56:46 server sshd[5132]: Invalid user alphonse from 217.220.122.58
May 14 00:57:37 server sshd[5266]: Invalid user alphonse from 212.18.40.143
May 14 00:57:50 server sshd[5301]: Invalid user alphonse from 168.243.236.228
May 14 00:59:03 server sshd[5535]: Invalid user alphonso from 149.156.65.10
May 14 00:59:04 server sshd[5545]: Invalid user alphonso from 62.141.42.54
May 14 01:00:07 server sshd[5939]: Invalid user alphonso from 89.6.154.247
May 14 01:00:19 server sshd[6093]: Invalid user alphonso from 200.171.228.149
May 14 01:01:39 server sshd[6285]: Invalid user alturing from 88.48.111.85
May 14 01:02:39 server sshd[6454]: Invalid user alturing from 69.53.25.154
May 14 01:02:44 server sshd[6465]: Invalid user alturing from 87.126.111.187
May 14 01:04:13 server sshd[6613]: Invalid user amabelle from 62.38.242.231
May 14 01:05:07 server sshd[6766]: Invalid user amabelle from 203.20.62.10
May 14 01:06:34 server sshd[7084]: Invalid user ambassador from 68.112.226.71
May 14 01:06:39 server sshd[7103]: Invalid user ambassador from 67.151.95.69
May 14 01:07:57 server sshd[7329]: Invalid user ambassador from 88.191.29.130
May 14 01:08:06 server sshd[7357]: Invalid user ambassador from 76.160.167.251
May 14 01:09:00 server sshd[7537]: Invalid user ambrosio from 82.127.25.235
May 14 01:09:08 server sshd[7566]: Invalid user ambrosio from 74.238.169.202
May 14 01:10:29 server sshd[8020]: Invalid user ambrosio from 72.237.31.200
May 14 01:10:45 server sshd[8084]: Invalid user ambrosio from 80.39.105.189
May 14 01:11:31 server sshd[8255]: Invalid user ambrosius from 69.53.25.154
May 14 01:11:37 server sshd[8282]: Invalid user ambrosius from 209.254.234.18
May 14 01:13:00 server sshd[8606]: Invalid user ambrosius from 217.7.232.220
May 14 01:13:04 server sshd[8621]: Invalid user ambrosius from 168.243.236.228
May 14 01:14:00 server sshd[8838]: Invalid user ammamaria from 200.126.119.91
May 14 01:14:04 server sshd[8863]: Invalid user ammamaria from 217.7.233.155
May 14 01:15:27 server sshd[9273]: Invalid user ammamaria from 213.94.214.50
May 14 01:15:35 server sshd[9301]: Invalid user ammamaria from 76.160.167.251
May 14 01:17:03 server sshd[9636]: Invalid user anabella from 69.15.172.22
May 14 01:17:06 server sshd[9645]: Invalid user anabella from 168.243.236.228
May 14 01:18:03 server sshd[9872]: Invalid user anabella from 81.140.3.90
May 14 01:18:07 server sshd[9890]: Invalid user anabella from 164.77.145.60
May 14 01:19:22 server sshd[10201]: Invalid user anabelle from 85.92.138.60
May 14 01:19:22 server sshd[10196]: Invalid user anabelle from 217.16.114.87
May 14 01:20:29 server sshd[10603]: Invalid user anabelle from 69.60.118.191
May 14 01:22:07 server sshd[10994]: Invalid user analiese from 200.150.13.171
May 14 01:22:54 server sshd[11174]: Invalid user analiese from 88.247.180.216
May 14 01:23:00 server sshd[11196]: Invalid user analiese from 195.120.101.75
May 14 01:24:23 server sshd[11561]: Invalid user anallese from 217.160.20.154
May 14 01:24:36 server sshd[11619]: Invalid user anallese from 66.251.14.143
May 14 01:25:26 server sshd[11872]: Invalid user anallese from 211.115.112.45
May 14 01:25:58 server sshd[11974]: Invalid user anallese from 209.254.234.18
May 14 01:26:58 server sshd[12261]: Invalid user anallise from 87.28.13.76
May 14 01:28:16 server sshd[12525]: Invalid user anallise from 85.25.139.12
May 14 01:28:40 server sshd[12597]: Invalid user anallise from 122.249.20.112
May 14 01:31:35 server sshd[13421]: Invalid user spiel from 85.219.222.6
May 14 01:32:52 server sshd[13671]: Invalid user spiel from 71.129.151.193
May 14 01:33:45 server sshd[13853]: Invalid user admin5 from 201.224.224.37
May 14 01:33:47 server sshd[13864]: Invalid user admin5 from 64.238.127.90
May 14 01:35:05 server sshd[14180]: Invalid user admin5 from 81.5.160.149
May 14 01:35:06 server sshd[14198]: Invalid user admin5 from 82.127.50.9
May 14 01:36:06 server sshd[14423]: Invalid user orant from 88.103.123.217
May 14 01:36:10 server sshd[14433]: Invalid user orant from 200.43.219.134
May 14 01:37:27 server sshd[14719]: Invalid user orant from 82.106.69.157
May 14 01:38:55 server sshd[15037]: Invalid user albrecht from 193.251.186.239
May 14 01:38:56 server sshd[15044]: Invalid user albrecht from 217.126.31.206
May 14 01:39:42 server sshd[15215]: Invalid user albrecht from 212.80.237.58
May 14 01:40:15 server sshd[15481]: Invalid user albrecht from 196.212.26.82
May 14 01:41:06 server sshd[15683]: Invalid user appen from 83.15.64.221
May 14 01:41:27 server sshd[15744]: Invalid user appen from 200.126.119.91
May 14 01:42:05 server sshd[15846]: Invalid user appen from 84.202.156.20
May 14 01:42:13 server sshd[15865]: Invalid user appen from 69.15.172.22
May 14 01:43:24 server sshd[16085]: Invalid user bache from 217.173.42.51
May 14 01:43:32 server sshd[16114]: Invalid user bache from 217.159.148.94
May 14 01:44:33 server sshd[16310]: Invalid user bache from 212.18.40.143
May 14 01:45:55 server sshd[16619]: Invalid user bartloff from 207.47.162.126
May 14 01:46:09 server sshd[16676]: Invalid user bartloff from 200.21.231.45
May 14 01:46:51 server sshd[16739]: Invalid user bartloff from 217.126.31.206
May 14 01:46:57 server sshd[16754]: Invalid user bartloff from 67.151.95.69
May 14 01:48:12 server sshd[16959]: Invalid user bethke from 87.139.20.244
May 14 01:48:26 server sshd[16982]: Invalid user bethke from 62.118.210.94
May 14 01:49:37 server sshd[17169]: Invalid user bethke from 213.41.176.229
May 14 01:49:42 server sshd[17184]: Invalid user bethke from 81.115.35.60
May 14 01:50:49 server sshd[17492]: Invalid user boback from 201.47.43.70
May 14 01:52:20 server sshd[17679]: Invalid user boback from 221.8.255.134
May 14 01:52:26 server sshd[17702]: Invalid user boback from 217.86.172.186

The problem is: there is no IP to block within your firewall! (quite useless)
The hit-rate is quite low (you see a log excerpt of one hour, and each IP is overall used 1-4 times a day!
(quite a nice huge bot-net ;-) )

The point is, I was curious for days now, since "Logwatch" reportet pages over pages of failed SSH logins, but noone trapped into my iptables script (10+ probes at a high hit rate)!

so, a simple grep "Invalid user" /var/log/messages showed, same username in probe + different ip; waitstates between requests vary, and user names aren't used that often ...

Those guys are annoying :(

Edit:

they seem to walk through a database.
The same user names occur on different hosts at similar times, but the bigger server seems to be detected, it gets more requests:

grep "Invalid user" /var/log/messages|grep fuhrhop
May 14 02:23:12 s1 sshd[21841]: Invalid user fuhrhop from 200.209.6.130
May 14 02:23:15 s1 sshd[21851]: Invalid user fuhrhop from 165.228.98.64
May 14 02:23:46 s2 sshd[15418]: Invalid user fuhrhop from 67.71.212.50
May 14 02:23:57 s1 sshd[21990]: Invalid user fuhrhop from 62.2.211.46
May 14 02:24:06 s1 sshd[22014]: Invalid user fuhrhop from 200.67.193.252

grep "Invalid user" /var/log/messages|grep boback
May 14 01:50:49 s1 sshd[17492]: Invalid user boback from 201.47.43.70
May 14 01:52:09 s2 sshd[15291]: Invalid user boback from 190.8.192.66
May 14 01:52:20 s1 sshd[17679]: Invalid user boback from 221.8.255.134
May 14 01:52:26 s1 sshd[17702]: Invalid user boback from 217.86.172.186

grep "Invalid user" /var/log/messages|grep friebe
May 14 02:18:11 s1 sshd[21085]: Invalid user friebe from 66.122.59.6
May 14 02:18:44 s2 sshd[15387]: Invalid user friebe from 195.30.95.109
May 14 02:18:55 s1 sshd[21119]: Invalid user friebe from 193.41.235.225
May 14 02:19:02 s1 sshd[21134]: Invalid user friebe from 213.134.152.66

*morons*

Hai,

ich bin im Moment auf der Suche nach einem Fotorucksack, der einerseits Platz für Kamera + Blitz und ein oder zwei weiteren Objektiven haben sollte. Zusätzlich sollte auch noch ein 15-Zoll Notebook Platz finden ... (zuviel verlangt? Jetzt kommts aber erst *g*)

Wichtigstes Kriterium ist aber: er sollte als Handgepäck beim Fliegen "durchgehen" ...

Ich habe jetzt keine Idee, welcher da passen könnte oder wie groß er als Handgepäck maximal sein darf.
Das liegt evtl. aber auch daran, dass ich mit meiner Lowepro Nova5 Fototasche bisher ganz zufrieden war ... ;-)

kontrast logo

Kommendes Wochenende (8.2. - 10.2.2008) findet das 9. Kontrast Kurzfilmfest im "Zentrum" in Bayreuth statt.
Link: www.kontrast-filmfest.de

Es macht wirklich Spass, nette Leute, viele verschiedene und wirklich gute Filme.

Link

Today, it's 60 years, that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi got shot by a fanatic extemist hindu.
(wikipedia::en, wikipedia::de)

But his memory remains, he's still a shining example how to do it:
not war, not bombing, suicide attacs ... passive resistance is his inheritance!

He once said: "eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind!"

Links:

• Ausgeraucht?
• Bild Online
• NDR

Wie lächerlich muss das alles noch werden *g*, als "Körperverletzung" kann man das wohl nicht werten ...

Ich muss sagen, ich halte mich an das Rauchverbot indem ich schon den ganzen Januar nicht mehr ausgegangen bin ... langsam fällt mir die Decke aufm Kopf und ich sehne die Biergartenzeit herbei ;-)

OK OK, it's saturday and nobody really wants to think about the office ;)
But this video is worth a look, nice compilation of "random madness" ;)

... it's only strange that it's only men "freaking out"?!?

Today, the german parliament has voted for the storage of all connection data for several months :(

This is one step further away from freedom, democracy and liberty of press, medics, etc.
The only two hopes that remain, is the law suit of www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de and the same on european level driven by ireland.

The only thing to say is: don't elect black or red on the next parliament elections!

Oder: "Wollt Ihr die totale Überwachung?" ...

Edit:

nice article (german, sorry) on zeit.de ...
and through the forum f the heise.de-article goes a "red wave", as a sign of protest any written article gets bad ratings ...

what is happening now? Did the database crash?

what a shock!

Hi all,

just want to give you a tip about two very nice books I lately finished reading.
Both are available in german and english language, already that is quite unusual ;)

The first is called 'lowbudgetshooting', the second 'close-up shooting' (website) and both are from the same author Cyrill Harnischmacher.

The "2:1 series" was already a test or maybe 'first result' while I was reading it, and I can tell they gave me already nice ideas what to do during cold and dark winter evenings ('Bastelfieber') :)

new Dimension (4)

Hi there,

today I read funny news I have to write about right now ;)
For several years now, forms on web pages get "secured" by 'captchas', small images with smehow scrambled text.

The intention behind that is, that machines like spam robots can't read them, but humans do.
Disturbing the background or juggling with characters should protect from ocr.
Unfortunately this 'protection' is getting weaker and weaker, because of the massive computing power of bot nets, 'social captcha decoding' (redirecting captchas to own pages, letting your own human clients decode them), and last but not least highly intelligent detection/decoding tools ... :(

Since the modern internet is somehow a new kind of "Wettrüsten" (german for 'arms race'), between the good the bad & the ugly, new strategies are in constant development ...

The latest idea: let the cats do the work (could certainly also be dogs, birds, (car) brands, etc.) :)

E. g. the KittenAuth project creates 'catchas', an other project uses a database of homeless pets/cats, so it also has the intention to find new homes for the little ones :)

Ths might be only one 'next step' in image recognition (and for sure will be broken again in near future), but to me it shows again the unbelieveable reservoir of yet unthought ideas, that's actually what i love about computer science :)

Hi all,

inspired by Doomshammers article about HDR photos, I made some tests on a walk through my hometown for comparision today.

I wanted to know when and if hdr photos really are an advantage, just to get "more photo" out of the raw ;)

guess which one of the both pictures is the HDR ;)

Forrest / HDR

Forrest / Lightroom

You're right, the left one (huhh, what?)
Yes indeed, the HDR has absolutely more contrast and detail in the sky (although I tried to get the same effect in LR). I'd prefer the LR version though, because the leafes of the trees are greener and brighter and that's what I want from a photo of the nature :)

The next photo is of a weir under a car's bridge, bad bad lightening ;) so I thought this one might be the right case for a HDR:

Weir / Lightroom

Weir / HDR

And again, in the HDR (right picture) you get colours where you wouldn't expect them, nice
BUT unfortunately the noise of the sensor gets pushed too, so because of this and because the "normal" developement (left picture: the frame with the highest exposure (+2), Lightroom) looks quite more natural, again I would choose the normal development.
Luck that I had taken many exposures (-2,-1,0,+1,+2) for the HDR though, so that I was able to take the most fitting one ;)

Allright, direct sunlight then:

Flow / HDR

Flow / Lightroom

At first: this time I choose the HDR (left one) :)
As mentioned before at the forrest pictures, the sky gets with HDR beautiful colours!
Although you might get the same effect of the sky with a polar filter ... but this time, the colours of the leafes of the tree in the front arenot only shilouettes, but have also painting :)

Difficulties:

HDRs with moving objects like trees in the wind are a pain in the [bleep]! Sometimes I didn't get the several frames together without blurring the trees and so far destroying the impression (manual and automatic corrections: result NULL). Especially pictures with a high angle or more zoom are risky, so normal development is still needed as fallback (and that is a "no go" for camera makers who think about HDR functionality built into the cams):

trees & sky

So this may be seen as addition to doomys article that showed the effect on night frames, I don't have a bottom line, since I do still regard HDR photography as an auxiliary technique ;)

The weir picture without the bracketing for the HDR wouldn't have had a result, so perhaps it is quite an advantage to always do many exposures when using the tripod, the decision what the photo gets will either be made on the computer ...

 

EDIT: pictures got rearranged during post: left = top

Seit Mittwoch ist es nun wieder soweit, die Bayreuther Festspiele haben begonnen. Die Stadt hat sich herausgeputzt, so dass sich die Gäste hier wohl fühlen.

Als neugieriger oder auch nur schaulustiger Bürger kann man sich auf dem grünen Hügel allerlei Promis anschauen:

Mitte August ist dann alles wieder vorbei, und Bayreuth verfällt dann wieder in einen kleinstadtähnlichen Zustand :)

Most of the time, my amount of pictures I take is within a two-scale range. (and the "always plugged" 1GB Ultra2 CF card fits my needs)

But sometimes on events, partys, or as now on vacations, I arrive home with several hundrets of photos (480 raw files the past weekend) ...

good morning

For comparision: in february I took nearly 250 pictures on a film fest, and it took me about 8 evenings to sight and prepare (the "old way") an output of something around 200 photos.
Now, the photos of the past weekend were done just on one evening :)
(480 input, 320 output)

(and alright I'm a freelancer, so I'm used to count the time ;) )

In the README-File to the Update of LR to version 1.1, adobe writes the following:
"Printing on Vista using the Manage by Printer color management setting may produce unsatisfactory results. It's recommended that specific printer profiles be selected for that setting."
Well yes, you may call false colors "unsatisfactory results" *g*
So I need color profiles for my selphy 740!?! Where to get them, canon themselves don't have any ... :(

So I'm curious what the 1.1-update brings (just installed, not tested yet), we'll see ;)

The thing with panoramas

BTW., LR can support creating panoramas! :)

Panorama (1)

You'll probaly think "what, why that? LR isn't meant to do that ..." *g*

I'll explain: The thing I mean is called 'synchronize'! You refurbish one single photo of a set that is meant to get a panorama one day ... then you apply the settings to all of the photos of the set pushing the synchronize-button, finished :)
(beware: when you've selected all photos of the set, look again before hitting this button! There are two grades of highlightening in LR: one for the selection and a little bit brighter for an - hmmm, let's call it - 'active selection'! If a non-edited photo is actively selected, all of the selected photos get it's - non-existend - settings, and even worse: the already edited photo is 'naked' again ;) )

The benefits are clear: the stitching software (I use PanoramaStudio, it's nice and easy to use and runs with the sacred help of WINE under Linux - my main operating system) finds fitting places between pictures more easily, has nearly nothing to do to chage brightness and colors of the given pictures and so far works faster and more exact! That's it :)

Lightroom (2)

Basic impression: Okay, this was a fun week, mostly because I love exploring new things :) As I already mentioned, I nearly had arranged myself into something that may be called a 'workflow', it looked like this:

1. imort raw files onto harddisk
2. do corrections of exposure and white balance with the EOS Utilities
3. export into 16Bit Tiffs
4. open each file in Paintshop Pro Photo
5. do croping, and rotating
6. do some coorections with graduation curves
7. perhaps do some other things like sharpening and denoising
8. save files for archiving as jpegs and delete tiffs

That's a lot of things ;)

Now this week, I haven't used any other Program (except one, that comes later) to work on the pictures :)

So, the long enduring process of exporting all the pictures into a temporary file format is gone (Lightroom still could do that with the option 'edit with external program'). Each of the 'working' steps above would be done in the screen "Develop/Entwickeln" going top down the menu at the right side :)

The Library: I now do realize, that importing of all my archive CDs and DVDs wil slightly fail!

Having done that with only a small amount of my discs, lightroom is already getting slower by each imported picture (10000+ in moment)!

The conclusion I plan will be, to have at least two Databases/Libraries: one for the "latest" pictures that are still on hard disc and not archived, and at least one for the long-term archive, if not two (a third one with the "very old" pictures).

So hopefully, the every-day-library will be the smaller one, and this way the faster one ;)

lightroom printing

Printing: The printing functions are wonderful, but to me unusable :)

Although I'd love to use the 'multiple pictures on one sheet'-function, Lightroom produces flat and 'green-yellow'-toned prints (the right one on the picture, the left print was the jpeg-export, printed with the windows image viewing utility) :(

So far: this must be a translation of the color profile lightroom does in the moment of printing, and that although this was intentionaly left to the printing driver! Another point of the help was '... if left to the printing driver, make sure to use the Windows-ICM profile in color adjustments ...', hehe Windows Vista doesn't know any Windows-ICM color-profile ;)

... perhaps I don't wait for the german 1.1-update, we'll see ;)

Finally: Nevertheless I absolutely don't regret switching to Lightroom! The processing of the pictures is a lot faster now (had 100+ pics last weekend, and a tenth of the time developing them) :) The "printing thing" isn't that important, so that it could change my opinion. :)

lightroom

today it was delivered :) A really impressing piece of software! Also the ergonomy is excellent clear directions of usage (horizontal from left to right main tasks, top-down the possible tweaks of one task).

But unfortunately I'm already missing something of my previous workflow (I knew this would happen ;) ): rotating pictures, so that foreground or prominent objects (walls etc.) aren't lop-sided ... well, perhaps I only haven't found the function yet and else I have to concentrate more on it when taking pictures ... ;)

 

 

Dinner for One

This is a first result of a first test. And by the way, the neat light comes from a lightsphere 2 (clear) ... ;)

Michael