First of all I set a date for Lakeland geek gathering. April 25 during Sun-n-Fun. And again yes I know it’s out of the area of most but I am widening the circle for some Tampa and Lakeland folks I know.
March there will be no Saturday gathering but going to the Linux Show in Jax. I can take maybe four more riders as I already have one confirmed coming with me. Trucks holds six and leaving from Deltona via Daytona Beach.
Third I have begun notice the PB’s are shutting down the wifi during lunch hours (11am to 2:30pm) They did this to us in Daytona and I noticed it yesterday in Sanford so this must be a trend. I am moving the start time up to 2:30pm from now on. Better to avoid the crowds anyway.
Of course lunchp’s at any time. Kevin Korb seems to like Stardust so may have another one there next week.
In case you hadn’t noticed Last.fm is now offering free downloads. It gets better though because you get an RSS feed that you can add as a podcast feed into iTunes or your favorite podcast aggregator and suddenly you don’t even have to work at downloading them they just appear! Each time you listen to something on Last.fm it picks free downloads that match what you listened to and stuffs more into your feed. Holy cow that’s cool. But wait as they say on television commercials.. there’s more. Because the feed is un-authenticated I can literally suck off the feeds of anyone else whoose username I am aware of in Last.fm as the format is:
In fact you don’t even have to be a Last.fm subscriber to make this gem work for you. If you know someone whose listening taste matches yours (at least some what) just suck off the feed.
My public folder which has been online for over ten years now has just been butt ugly. But a prodding from Kevin Korb to make some changes to it got me thinking so I dug out the old Apache manual and went to the mod_autoindex options page. Lots of cool Apache hacks available here especially for Apache later than 2.0.33. First I created an .htaccess which in part now reads:
IndexOptions HTMLTable FoldersFirst ScanHTMLTitles SuppressHTMLPreamble
HeaderName .header.html
ReadmeName .footer.html
IndexIgnore README .htaccess .header.html *.bak *~
AddDescription "GIF Image" *.gif *.GIF
AddDescription "Text file" *.txt *.TXT
AddDescription "HTML file" *.html *.HTML *.htm *.HTM
AddDescription "JPEG Image" *.jpg *.JPG *.jpeg *.JPEG
AddDescription "PNG Image" *.png *.PNG
AddDescription "Binary file" *.bin *.BIN
AddDescription "OpenDocument (OpenOffice) Presentation file" *.odp
AddDescription "Sun and NeXT audio file" *.au
AddDescription "Adobe Shockwave file" *.swf *.SWF
AddDescription "Compressed or archive file" *.gz *.Z *.zip
AddDescription "Portable Document Format file" *.pdf
AddDescription "Microsoft Windows Dynamic Load Library file" *.dll
AddDescription "Microsoft Windows Media Format file" *.wmf *.wmv *.wma *.avi *.wav
AddDescription "Microsoft Windows Executable file" *.exe *.com
AddDescription "Microsoft Word Document file" *.doc
AddDescription "Microsoft PowerPoint Document file" *.ppt
AddDescription "3GP video format file" *.3gp
AddDescription "MPEG video format file" *.mpeg *.mpg
AddDescription "MPEG-3 audio format file" *.mp3
AddDescription "MPEG-4 video format file" *.mp4
AddDescription "Microsoft Advanced Stream Redirector file" *.asx
AddDescription "Microsoft Advanced Systems Format file" *.asf
AddDescription "Apple Quicktime video format file" *.mov *.qt4
It’s true that I had to manually add a description for every file type I currently have in the folder which took a bit of work. I suppose I could have used one of those online file type databases to create the descriptions in this file but I will save that exercise for later.
Next taking advantage of the fact Apache was now generating HTML for the file listings I found I could hijack the process by creating header and footer files (see below).
The finished result is I was able to place a menu at the top of the directory listing while allowing folders to be first. I found this blog post that showed even more cool things you could do using CSS and Javascript.
I attended Apple’s iPhone Under the Hood educational seminar yesterday out at Full Sail in Orlando. Learned several things I was not aware of. For one the SDK comes with a native simulator much like the old Palm POSE I was used to working with. I also discovered Dashcode which can be used to make web applications hosted on your site.
Bottom line is you can get all the tools for free (if you have a mac and
OSX 10.5+) and you can write code all day long on the simulators (one
for web also). But you cannot put the code on a device till it’s signed
and that’s where the $99 comes in. There are several subscription tiers.
Here is my email from yesterday to the Orlando iPhone enthusiasts group:
“$99 gets you 100 (so-called beta testers that I can sign my apps and they can install on their phones) -or- submit to the store at -any- price. Apple gets 30%. Open source guy says ask my lawyah. Yeah ok. I think it comes down to what you display about the SDK itself. Enterprise for $299 gets you a signed key privilege for virtually unlimited. Ok so you can bypass the store with that one if you want to. He didn’t indicate a known upper limit but a company is the thinking here.
Then of course universities are free and considered enterprises as far as key singing apps. Anyway I am jazzed and he says sample they give you in the SDK is ready to compile and that folks have actually submitted it to the store (a human checks everything and makes decisions – no rhyme or reason and Apple gets to decide for arbitrary reasons). Guy admits fart and flashlight apps are ridiculous but it seems to sell and even saw one developer add both to the app just to get it in top 15 and it worked. Ugh.
Anyway this weekend I will play with the sample. I already have a unique app in mind to write but let me write it first.
A friend had asked me about surfing in public places and asked if I use a VPN. I answered yes … sometimes. I do use my own private VPN on my iPod Touch to access my home network (files and such) and I also can use my own network as a proxy server for sites that are blocked for whatever reason. I also use my employers VPN when working on the company network. But I confess I do generally surf out in the open in hotspots such as Starbucks or Panera Bread. Of course most of my surfing is news reading or web browsing not filing out private forms. And I am careful to use the SSL login screens only. But still I thought what would the average joe do if they wanted an always on secure connection when out in public. So I set out to do some research.
I came up with two basic scenarios: connect through your home network or connect using a trusted (underline that word trusted) VPN provider.
First using your home network.
Now it’s true I have Linux servers at home through a maze of firewall ports and connectivity to provide my rather secure VPN needs but what if you don’t have a Linux server or don’t want to go through all of that configuration? What can be done by the average user?
Well there are two basic methods of achieving a home based VPN: hardware and software.
By hardware I mean set it and forget off the shelf consumer hardware (with easy to use ubiquitous client software) not high-end network gear like Cisco routers or the like and costly keyfobs and software. These seem to be accessible with two types of client software: embedded (already in your operating system for the most part) or SSL web based access. I came up with several consumer grade hardware devices: Linksys BEFVP41 and D-link has several models of routers that provide VPN end points.
With the Linksys instructions can be found here on creating an IPSec connection to your home router. Similar instructions can be found for a Mac or Linux.
Ok that takes care of hardware now what can be done in software?
This one turns out not to be so straight forward. For instance it is possible to turn your desktop at home into a VPN end point for Windows or Apple. And of course you can do what I am doing with Linux and OpenVPN. There are so many choices here it is really hard to nail one down to recommend. I would use software that will allow you to use IPSec and avoid pre-shared keys. The most popular vendor for zero configuration is LogMeIn’s Hamachi. Hamachi is free for personal use and comes highly recommended. There is also SSL software you can install on your desktop at home like SSL-Explorer which is also zero config but a bit of an install headache.
Ok then this leaves VPN providers. Let’s say for whatever reason you don’t want to leverage your home network as a VPN end point. There are draw backs to this of course. You need to use dynamic DNS if you do not have a leased line or dedicated address (usually only available with business level accounts). Also your home network connection tends to be slow broadband and cable at best have typically horrible upload speeds.
I found the following online vendors who will provide public VPN services for a fee: BananaVPN, VPN Accounts and Black Logic. Most seemed to have a luke warm reviews at best. I have not used either service and cannot vouch for either. I would pick a company that is co-located in the same country you are or will travel in. Laws vary widely on how much snooping outside governments can do on your sessions. Personally I would much rather use my trusted networks as slow as they may be. And definitively only use IPSec or L2TP if you must.
Finally there are Web Anonymizers out there that don’t provide encryption or security for your connection but do provide some privacy to your web browsing. Use with caution.
So what would I recommend for the average hungry web surfer looking up their stocks portfolios while sipping coffee? I would use my home network.
My last post about finding Popular magazines online at Google Books had me wondering if any other magazines I enjoyed as a kid were online such as Popular Electronics, Byte Magazine or Popular Communications. Well no joy there only the occasional article or limited pages view. However I did find a virtual cornucopia of literature on ham radio and electronics. Google Books also has a virtual library you can share out and use to read from. I have already started adding books I have found this way. My library link is http://books.google.com/books?uid=1869878289210954457.
I plan to have these monthly at various Panera Bread locations around Central Florida from Lakeland to Daytona Beach. Let me know of interest in your location and I will attempt to make it a priority.
Coldest I can personally remember other that Christmas Eve in 1983 when it went to minus 10 at times. I had the van (filled with newspapers) running full blast and it virtually had no effect.
“Super Bowl XIX falls on the same day as the private ceremony for Reagan’s second inauguration, the public ceremony to take place the next day. Reagan takes the private oath then officiates the game’s coin toss on television. San Francisco beats Miami 38-16.”
Yes I am having this problem as well having faithfully kept my boxes up to date in portage. Here is what works for me almost universally thanks to this comment:
Be sure to perform the –fetchonly first! This is critical because wget will indeed break when you uninstall com_err and ss. Follow the steps in comment #7 except I always needed to add a step after c7’s #5.
1. emerge -NuDav --fetchonly world
2. emerge -C ss com_err e2fsprogs
3. emerge -NuDav --nodeps e2fsprogs-libs e2fsprogs
4. echo "sys-libs/com_err" >>/etc/portage/package.mask
5. echo "sys-libs/ss" >>/etc/portage/package.mask
6. mkdir -p /etc/portage/profile
7. echo "sys-libs/com_err-1.40.11" >>/etc/portage/profile/package.provided
8. echo "sys-libs/ss-1.40.11" >>/etc/portage/profile/package.provided
9. Continuing updating: emerge -auvDN world (yes sometimes I change my USE flags).
Another interesting way to do it (I did not try this with my production systems):
