A Sceptical Mind

It’s time for the last blog post in our series of wedding related posts. After a great wedding day, a few days went by with organizing gifts, figuring out who bought what, cleaning up at home etc. etc., and then on July 14th we jumped on a plane headed for Dalaman, Turkey.

We were going on a fairly expensive 8 day trip to Marmaris in Turkey, where we were going to be staying at Turban Palace down by the shore. A 5-star hotel resort complete with All-inclusive concept, 3 pools, private beach, 4 restaurants, 7 bars, a water park, mini golf, huge apartment area for the rooms and.. well – a shit load of other things! The all-inclusive concept means that we don’t have to pay for food and drinks at all. Even several of the activities were included in the room price! So 24 hours a day, we could go to any bar and ask for a coke, a beer, a whiskey or whatever, and get it for free! Even the restaurants were free (however with special rules for the ala carte ones – more on that later).

So we got down there sometime around 1 am local time on Wednesday the 15th of July and quickly proceeded to our hotel room because we were so tired. Here we were met with a fantastic room, complete with a huge bed, a guest bed, a balcony, a flat screen TV and a lot more – and we even found out the mini bar was a part of the all-inclusive concept, so we were happy to be able to drink the few waters that were in there at this point.

Next day, we woke up and went down for breakfast. Here we saw how nice this all-inclusive thing really was! Huge buffets, specialized cooks standing around making specific meals (i.e. omelets or pancakes), free beverages and all you can possibly eat! It was great and you quickly started eating a lot more than you probably should. I’m pretty sure we gained quite a lot of weight down there! The same principle held for lunch and dinner, however with a lot different kinds of food and changing from day to day. You could even change your normal Main Restaurant meal for a ala carte restaurant once a week, so that you could get i.e. a five course meal in Italian cuisine or Turkish cuisine.

So the first day, we didn’t do much. We went for a small strole down Marmaris towards another hotel where we had an info meeting with the travel guides and where we also needed to pay for a few extra trips we wanted to go on. But all in all the first day was mostly relaxation in the resort. The second day was pretty much the same. We simply used our time getting used to the weather, enjoying the pool, the all-inclusive stuff and basically just relaxing. I also used a bunch of my time reading Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters – a book I recommend to anyone who has an interest in criminal finances, specifically how heroin is bankrolling the Taliban and Al qaeda.

But then on Friday, we went to something called Haman, which is a traditional Turkish bath at a spa house. The bath consisted of several things. We started off by changing clothes to bathing clothes and we then proceeded to sit in a sauna for 10 minutes (as if the 40 degrees Celsius outside wasn’t hot enough). After these ten minutes, we were guided to a big bathing dome where there was a large marble round table in the middle of the room and a bunch of fossets around the walls in this very damp room. Here we received a bath and scrub by a trained Haman specialist and were afterwards sent to a shower and rapped in a bunch of towels and stuff – basically like a mummy! Last but not least we received an oil massage for something like 20 minutes and was then finished – clean, relaxed and floating a bit!

On Saturday, we had planned to go on a boat trip with Star Tours – so that’s what we did. We joined another group of Danes on a small boat lead by a local. Here we proceeded out from the harbor and sailed to different bays in Marmaris, where we stopped for around 30 minutes and jumped of the boat to swim in the bays. I was a bit hesitant to begin with, as I knew the bays had some tiger sharks and white sharks, however both were very very seldom seen. The first time I didn’t jump in the water, but as Sara was pressuring me a bit, I finally decided to give it a try. I however got up quite quickly again, as did Sara – it was simply too creepy! I prefer swimming in pools! Later on in the day we stopped for some food on the boat and finally sailed back towards the harbor. We had however gotten seriously sunburned from lying on the boat during the siesta hours, so we were in a bit of pain the rest of the day and the day after that.

On Sunday, we were simply relaxing most of the day. Only in the evening did we do something special – we attended Turkish Night at a local restaurant where there was music, dance and food. All in all the entertainment there was great, since they had a bunch of dancers some of which were extremely talented. However the food was in no way something we can recommend. They market it as a real traditional Turkish three course meal, however in reality only the first course was Turkish and only the first two could even be called courses. A few water melons cut out does not constitute a course! However, as I said, all in all it was a good evening. Especially the male belly-dancer was cool – that guy is completely psychotic.

Monday, we once again mostly just relaxed and enjoyed the pool. Only during the evening did we do something special. We used up our ala carte reservation at the Italian ala carte restaurant at Turban Palace. Brilliant food really! Five courses, all of which were traditional Italian meals. Complete with a brilliant view of the mountains and the local bay – simply beautiful! Monday evening we started packing, because we had to go home the next day, and we did a final attempt at using our all-inclusive rights by taking up something like 8 drinks to our room.

Tuesday, the last day of our vacation, was used to the max by a trip with Star Tours. We began the day by packing everything and going down to eat. After having eaten, we checked out from Turban Palace and was picked up by a Star Tours bus. With this, we drove to a fishermen city called Dalyan were we would try a mud-bath, see ancient burial monuments and even visit turtle island. An island that’s special because it has fresh water on the one side of it and salt water on the other side. Also, turtle island should be the home of Caretta Caretta, an endangered species of sea turtle – however we didn’t see any. After the days activities we got a shower at a local hotel, got something to eat and then proceeded to the airport for our plane home.

All in all it was a great trip with a lot of experiences. Obviously I left out a ton of details here, because I’m trying to describe a week of activities – but I hope you got somewhat of an idea of what we did in Turkey.

Also, last but not least. A cute Turkish kitty cat we saw relaxing under a tree!

As I said in my last post, I’m currently doing a small series detailing the activities involved in my recent wedding to Sara Lind (now Sara Lind Mortensen). After having covered the bachelor party in my last post, it’s time to cover the actual wedding.

On July 11th 2009 I woke up after having slept at my dads house. As you may know, it’s customary the couple don’t sleep in the same house together the day before the wedding, so I had gone home with my dad to Haderup in Midwestern Jutland. I had slept fine really, however when I woke up I was oddly dizzy and was bleeding from my nose, so I was probably more nervous than I was aware of! After having eaten breakfast and gotten ready, we drove towards Silkeborg at around 11 am, stopping on the way to drop off a few things where my dad was sleeping the next night.

When we finally got to the church, it was around noon and only a handful of people had shown up yet (the wedding was at 1 pm). So we simply waited and said hi to the people who had shown up already, before we went into the church to sit up by the alter at around 12:40. At this point I was quite nervous! Time went by, as people slowly arrived and filled up the church. My best man, Michael Dahl, however hadn’t shown up yet. And even 5 minutes before it all started, he still hadn’t shown up. Apparently there had been some trouble with getting all people in the car from Aarhus fast enough, so they had arrived just a few minutes before the wedding started and Dahl came rushing in, apologizing straight away. At this point everyone was pretty much there and now we were just waiting for the bride to walk in.

And then, the music started and in came Sara! Smiling, happy and beautiful as ever. If there ever was a time where I was truly fucking nervous, this was it! A very odd feeling really. One that I don’t think most would understand unless they’ve tried it. You feel oddly overwhelmed and confused..but in a good way! So well, it’s fairly hard to describe – however what I can say is that for once I actually felt like crying because of something else than sadness.

So there we were – sitting across from each other, listening to the priest’s speech (which was surprisingly good.. she even dissed religion at one point: “We all know nothing in the bible is science and nothing should be taken literally” – I like her!). Things happened fairly like you would expect, with everything going smoothly. We even had two professional singers sing “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge as a duet – something that actually did prompt a tear from me – again.. overwhelming. All in all, a brilliant ceremony where everything worked as planned and everything was great!

After the ceremony, we had a small photo session with a friend photographer, a few pictures and greetings from guests outside and then onwards to our reception next door with champagne (imported from Italy), cake and other food and beverages. The wedding cake was even made by Sara’s little sister Anna, who has used the last several months figuring out how to make the perfect wedding cake (sshh: Don’t tell anyone, but I think she nailed it!). Anna is the girl to the right of here, the one in the red dress. After having eaten and greeted people, we got picked up by a white limousine, so that we could be transported to our photo session with a professional photographer by the name of Lars Lærkesen (www.laerkefoto.dk) – a thoroughly brilliant photographer, that did everything exactly like we wanted it, who was extremely professional, funny and creative.. basically the greatest pick we could have made! We highly recommend him! Also the limousine firm DanLimo (www.danlimo.dk) was very professional and the driver was very cool.. he even came up with great picture ideas!

After a great photography session at Gl. Skovridergaard and Lunden in Silkeborg, we drove to Funder Kirkeby, where the rest of the wedding would take place. Here we started out with a few more pictures (your face feels quite numb after smiling that much) and then proceeded with a welcome drink and food.

Our Toastmaster was my brother Lars Bruun-Mortensen, whom handled the assignment perfectly, timing every speech, song etc. efficiently, so that it never seemed stressed and always seemed like everything was going smoothly. The first speech was mine, which I had initially written a lot for, because I was so nervous about it and wanted it to be perfect. But shortly before the wedding I threw out speech after speech, starting from scratch over and over again, simply because I didn’t know how to express everything exactly like I wanted it and exactly the way in which Sara would understand what I meant. In the end I ended up with not really having a speech.. I basically only had a baseline of what I wanted to say and then let it come out naturally on the spot. I even sang a song for her, because that’s something she loves – even though I’m no Sinatra! So I sang “You Belong To Me” by Jason Wade from Lifehouse (accompanied by Mads Noe on guitar).

Sara also gave a speech and a song – specifically “Everything” by Michael Buble. Something I enjoyed very much! On top of this my brother Lars, my dad Steen, Sara’s mom Karin, Sara’s sister Anna, my grandparents, Sara’s half-sister Birgitte + her family and a few others I sadly don’t remember right now, all had either a speech, a song or a complete musical piece.

All in all it was a brilliant wedding with everything you could expect! We even had a great band called Rockfathers (www.musiknu.dk) whom everyone loved – even the oldest of the guests praised the band for being very comfortable, varied and talented – so if you’re planning an event and need music in Denmark, consider Rockfathers!

After having danced the first and last dance, having eaten and drunk a lot, and having had a fantastic time – Sara and I jumped into a car and was driven to Gl. Skovridergaard where we stayed in a suite for the night!

In all regards – it was a great day!

So, some of you probably already know this, but for the few who don’t: I recently got married! For that reason, I have decided to write a few blog posts detailing some of the activities surrounding these events, starting with one of the obligatory activities before ones wedding: The Bachelor Party!

On the July 4th 2009 I woke up, made some coffee and, as I remember it, took out a melon for breakfast. Everything seemed normal. Sara was at work, but she’s always at work Saturday morning until noon, so nothing odd about that. In general nothing much seemed out of the ordinary, so I was a bit unsure if this was the day the bachelor party was going to take place. But then, at 11 am, 4 guys stood outside my door with breakfast and an irritating camera pointing at my face. These guys were: Michael Dahl (the best man), Wel Rachid, Mads Noe and Morten Slot Kristensen. (later on Lars Bo Brink joined us – he was initially unsure if he could join because of work).

After having eaten we took Wel’s car to Event Company on Katrinebjergvej, where it was time for massive fighting! Basically, what they’d apparently thought of was, that given my love for violence and brutality, beating at each other for an hour seemed like a good way to go.. So we started out with sumo-wrestling wearing these silly giant foam sumo-wrestler outfits and fighting each other in a top-down tournament style ending up with two fighters up against each other for first place and braging rights. These two fighters?: Morten Slot Kristensen and myself – evidently also the two guys with most martial arts experience (not that kicking or grabling is much of an option when you’re wearing a giant foam suit). Each fight was 3 rounds, and best out of 3 won. As I recall, Morten took the first round after a lot of pushing each other around and trying to get on top of each other. Second round was taken by me after having thrown Morten behind me and landing on top of him for the takedown..but sadly, the last round was taken by Morten who then effectively became the winner of the sumo-wrestler challenge. Oddly enough actually, it did seem as though martial arts and/or military experience seemed to dictate the outcome, with Morten being the most experienced (my guess: 10+ years), myself (6 years experience), Wel (military experience), Dahl (some Karate experience some years back), Mads (no experience to my knowledge) and Lars Bo (also no experience to my knowledge).

After the initial sumo-wrestler fight, I did however get back at Morten in a gigantic fist-fight with giant foam gloves (that were extremely heavy). None of us wanted to give up the fight, that basically kept on until one of us called it quits. However after having taking a shitload of blows to the head, Morten eventually feel to the ground having bitten his tongue after I hit him with a hard frontal blow.

Last but not least we gave a mechanical bull a try to see who could stay on the longest. As I recall the score at the end was:

1. Morten – 54 seconds
2. Michael (me) – 49 seconds
3. Dahl – 48 seconds
4. Mads – around 30 seconds
5. Wel – around 20 seconds
6. Lars Bo – no score (he didn’t have an attempt)

At the end, most of us were extremely tired and a few of us were somewhat beaten up. When Morten beat me in the first challenge, he gave me a few marks, just for me to remember  him defeating me. We documented it below just because it looked fairly cool:

That bitch Morten used nails

Not sure who gave me that - probably Morten

So what about the rest of the day? Well, first we just took something to eat and drank a few beers.. you know – the obligatory stuff. Then the guys had planned something relaxing on top of the fighting – going in to see a movie! Specifically: Public Enemies! By far one of the greatest movies I’ve seen this year. I love their film technique and how they use sound so beautifully to make every shot out so much more intense – it’s well worth the 90 DKK (about 17$) the ticket cost. (even though I obviously paid nothing.. bachelor party you know..).

After this, we went back to my apartment where we drank a shit load of beer, a bit of wine (at least me and Morten did before we passed out), grilled and for some reason watched a shitload of Jackass on MTV. Apparently people hurting themselves becomes extra funny when alcohol is involved – who knew?

So all in all – a great bachelor party! I thank all of you guys who were there and all who helped to plan it. I’ve been told finding the date was more than a bit tricky, especially because I forgot to tell Sara about a belt graduation at the Shotokan club.. something she wasn’t especially happy about. But in the end you got it done and everything went fine. Even though only a few of the invited peeps were able to come that day, those who came made it a fantastic day. Thank you!

Just a few last pics from the evening before I shut up!:

Hehe – If you’ve just had a couple of statistics courses, this joke just seems a million times funnier:

When it comes to music I’m mostly a Metal, Jazz and Hard Rock kinda guy, but lately one artist has captivated me in a new and deeper way – This artist is the talented and beautiful Ayoe Angelica.

Truth be told, I actually know Ayoe indirectly through my fiancee Sara Lind, however Ayoe never striked me as a potential world artist until I heard her sing. With a combination of mellow soul and powerful lyrics, Ayoe’s debut-album is a wonderful piece of art that tears up your mind and soul. Not only do I firmly believe Ayoe’s music will appeal to most everyone in some way or another, but I also believe that 5 years from now, such a statement will be so universal that it almost constitutes a given!

This belief was strengthened even further when I accidently turned on Denmark’s DR1 in December and saw Ayoe Angelica as a supporting singer for Ufo & Yepha (for a charity event as far as I know.)

So am I expecting you’re just gonna take my word for it? Of course not!! You can find more information about Ayoe on her own website: http://ayoeangelica.dk/ … Other than that Ayoe also has a MySpace page, a Facebook fan page and a bunch of YouTube videos, one of which is included in the bottom of this post! I hope Ayoe’s music brings you enlightenment as it has me! … That is all!!

Ayoe Angelica – Dr. Jekyll:

Ufo & Yepha feat. Ayoe Angelica (This is in Danish):

I recently had a bit of a problem with a server running a Ruby on Rails application. I wanted to make sure the server didn’t give out any information about service versions, however mod_rails didn’t give any easy way of doing this within the module itself. I therefore began searching for another way of doing this, and found that an easy solution was to make Apache remove the headers via. the mod_headers module.

So how is it done? Very simple, just enable the module mod_headers and add the snippet below to httpd.conf or another included configuration file in Apache. Both actions have to be done as root of course.

Enable the mod_headers module (This example is Linux Debian – it might be different for your system)

# cd /etc/apache2/mods-available/
# a2enmod headers

Add these lines to httpd.conf

Header always unset "X-Powered-By"
Header always unset "X-Runtime"

Restart the Apache server (Again – this is Debian! It might be different for you)

# apache2ctl restart

And there you go. Try making e.g. a Nikto scan on the server and see if the headers aren’t there anymore.

Hello everyone,

I thought I would try something new today. I just bought a microphone a few months ago and haven’t really attempted to get it tested yet, so I guess it was about time. For this reason I’ve recorded a small message to the world, summing up the status of the world.. Enjoy!

The Status of the World

So I recently had to come up with a simple backup solution that didn’t involve any fancy system and basically just gave one the opportunity to choose what directories to backup, where to back them up and notify if something goes wrong.

So I came up with a solution which, in my own view, could be better and more “clean”, however this is how it is right now. You’re welcome to take the script, change and redistribute it – it’s released under the BSD license.

You might notice it’s refering to a bunch of files – these files are the error messages sent in e-mails and need to be placed somewhere, with corresponding changes in the script. If they don’t, e-mail notification won’t work.

Right now it’s sending e-mails when it’s succesful in making a backup. Depending on how often you want your cron job to do a backup, it might be irritating to get that many e-mails, so all you need to do is basically just remove the last part so that it only notifies you if something goes wrong.. That will however create the possibility that the e-mail functionality of the server will stop working and you won’t notice.

But yeah.. Here’s the script + all the error-messages zipped for download: backup_script

I’ll be the first to admit it’s not optimal in any way.. it’s a quick solution and has a bunch of DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) violations… but hey.. it works and given it’s low complexity I don’t wanna prioritize cleaning it up that much – but you are more than welcome to do so!

Here’s the code copied into the post:

#!/bin/bash
# Copyright (c) 2008, Michael Lind Mortensen
# All rights reserved.
#
# Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
# modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
#     * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
#       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
#     * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
#       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
#       documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
#     * Neither the name of Michael Lind Mortensen nor the
#       names of his contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
#       derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
#
# THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY MICHAEL LIND MORTENSEN ''AS IS'' AND ANY
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
# WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
# DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL MICHAEL LIND MORTENSEN BE LIABLE FOR ANY
# DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
# (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
# LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
# ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
# (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
# SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
 
# Define settings
DATA="/home/user1 /home/user2 /etc /var/www/virtual /var/log" #Location of backup files.
DISC="/mnt/backup" # Mount location of backup disc
DEVICE="/dev/sdb1" # Backup devicename
MAILREC="info@example.com" # Define message recipients. Comma-separate for more recipients.
SENDER="noreply@example.com" # Define sender e-mail for error-messaging.
LOG="logfile.txt" # Location of the error logfile
DBPASS="databasepassword" # The root password to the mysql server
 
set $(date)
 
#####################################################
#  Define email functionality for error messaging   #
#                                                   #
# Parameters: MESSAGE - E-mail content from file    #
#                                                   #
#####################################################
function error_mailer {
        MESSAGE=$1
        SUBJECT="Backup process encountered errors!"
        # Send the email using mail
    if mail -s "$SUBJECT" -r "$SENDER"  "$MAILREC" < $MESSAGE
    then
        :
    else
        echo "$3-$2-$6-$4 - ERROR: Mail functionality not working!" >> $LOG
    fi
}
 
#####################################################
#  Define email functionality for success messaging #
#                                                   #
# Parameters: MESSAGE - E-mail content from file    #
#                                                   #
#####################################################
function success_mailer {
        MESSAGE=$1
        SUBJECT="Backup created succesfully!"
        # Send the email using mail
        if mail -s "$SUBJECT" -r "$SENDER" "$MAILREC" < $MESSAGE
        then
                :
        else
                echo "$3-$2-$6-$4 - ERROR: Mail functionality not working!" >> $LOG
        fi
} 
 
# Mount backup disc
if mount $DEVICE $DISC
then
        :
else
        echo "$3-$2-$6-$4 - ERROR: error while mounting disc!" >> $LOG
    error_mailer "/etc/backup_inc/errors/mount_error.txt"
fi
 
# Perform daily full backup
if tar cfz "$DISC/data/data_$3-$2-$6.tgz" $DATA
then
        echo "Data saved successfully!"
else
        echo "$3-$2-$6-$4 - ERROR: error while saving data!" >> $LOG
    error_mailer "/etc/backup_inc/errors/data_error.txt"
fi
 
# Create SQL dumps of databases
if mysqldump -u root --password=$DBPASS --all-databases > "$DISC/database/db_$3-$2-$6.sql"
then
        :
else
        echo "$3-$2-$6-$4 - ERROR: error while making mysqldump!" >> $LOG
    error_mailer "/etc/backup_inc/errors/mysqldump_error.txt"
fi
 
if gzip "$DISC/database/db_$3-$2-$6.sql"
then
        echo "MySQL databases saved and compressed succesfully!"
else
        echo "$3-$2-$6-$4 - ERROR: error while saving mysql databases!" >> $LOG
    error_mailer "/etc/backup_inc/errors/db_error.txt"
fi
 
# Unmount backup disc
if umount $DISC
then
        success_mailer "/etc/backup_inc/success.txt"
else
        echo "$3-$2-$6-$4 - ERROR: error while unmounting disc!" >> $LOG
        error_mailer "/etc/backup_inc/error/umount_error.txt"
fi

The fast person will probably notice that Wordpress writes < and > as &lt; and &gt; .. that’s just the code plugin messing things up and I hope you can figure out how to fix that yourselves.. if not, the zipfile has the code without any odd layout errors.

All in all the code should be fairly self-explanatory.. if not, there are plenty of comments to help you use the script or change it to whatever you need.

Last but not least – Remember to add a cron job with the script.. If you don’t there won’t be much automatic backup about it.

That’s just about it.. Enjoy!

I saw a new TV-add from “Elsparefonden” this morning. As many before it, it tried to get people to think about how much power they consumed and thereby consume less to save the environment. Before I go on, you can watch the add here from YouTube:

So what’s my problem with this? Well, basically it’s just plain bullshit! Sure, power consumption will fire up energy production demands and thereby harm the environment because the energy production harms the environment. However the only reason why energy production harms the environment is because of low-quality materials like coal! Why the hell try to get people to go back in technological development by using less power, instead of just making our energy production more effective and clean (which would probably also be cheaper than all does damn adds all the time).

But apparently the global warming hype has become almost a religion, with fanatics fighting to jump back in time on a lot of fronts like electronics, food, industrial production etc. For some reason they believe the world population was better off with the status we had 50 years ago! Like for example a Linux guy I heard at FOSDEM 08, whom claimed that the German government should not use Windows Vista and instead use Linux – what was his reason? Vista uses more power and Microsoft was therefore fighting to destroy the environment…. Now, there are many valid arguments for using Linux instead of Vista, however saving the environment is definitely not one of them! It really pisses me off a lot of organizations are using this global warming frenzy to push their agendas, just by coating it with some environmental bullshit.

So – My conclusion? Shift all energy production to wind power and nuclear power – and stop irritating us with demands of lower power consumption. The only real reason to consume less power is saving money – power is expensive and will probably keep on getting more expensive for a long while, so if one can develop machines that consume less power, these machines will obviously be cheaper – this however has nothing to do with saving the environment.