DRAGON

Started to look at the DRAGON code. A bit disappointing that they haven't ported from Zebra to Quagga, and I'm wondering if this suggests deeper changes.

When it's time to set up the switch path some RSVP-TE commands are send to the virtual label switch router. The VLSR is a proxy, converting RSVP path establishment into a set of commands for each ethernet switch. DRAGON supports Movaz, Force10 E300 and E600, Raptor E1010. The vendor-dependent magic happens in dragon-sw/kom-rsvp/src/daemon/unix/SwitchCtrl_Session_*.cc.

These files consist of hooks called by a very ethernet-oriented API. It's not clear to me if there is a higher-level API which might be used by the ethernet-oriented API. Let's hope so, I don't particularly want to munge VLANs into SDH paths.

CANARIE has a TL1 proxyi which they use for their UCLP service. Must find out more about that from Rene Hatem. I'd like a proxy to protect the statically-assigned SDH paths from errors by the DRAGON GMPLS path establishment. Asking Google suggests the MonFox TL1 proxy. Perl has a TL1 module, and that might allow simple filtering (which I think is all we actually need).

A treasury of royal scandals

The shocking true stories of history's wickedest, weirdest, most wanton
kings, queens, tsars, popes and emperors. Micheal Farquhar. 2001.

Tour de France

So I got sucked in again, after last year's disappointment with watching for three weeks and then the Landis scandal.

One by one the people I admired most in the race have proved to be cheats. I thought perhaps I was cursing them with my support. But this can't be so, because a moment's thought gives this list of people who were meant to race in Le Tour 07 and found to be doping: Ullrich, Basso, Jaksche, Mazzoleni, Sinkewitz, Kessler, Moreni (taking out the Cofidis team), Vinokourov (taking out the Astana team, which must please the Tour organisers greatly since least year Astana forced their way into the race against the organisers' wishes), Rasmussen.

All Tour winners before 1966 were doping. If you make a list of the tour winners since 1966 and cross off those with some proven connection to doping you get only: LeMond 1986, 1989, 1990; Hinault 1978, 1979, 1981-2, 1985; Van Impe, 1976. Let's be generous and add Armstrong 1999-2005, since his positive test seems to have been a prescription paperwork error.

Merckx says "for me, that's the end of cycling." And with the lists above, you can see his point.

You have to feel sorry for the team. Imagine being in Rabobank. You can't blame Menchov for throwing in the towel, after all of his efforts to advance Rasmussen and the cost of his own chances.

And still the cloud of Operación Puerto hangs over Contador; even with the Spanish court saying he was not involved.

Hornblower and the Hotspur

CS Forester. 1962.

Nice writing, but the charecterisation is dire for the minor characters.