Computing
Asterisk & VoIP
Jan/29/2012 07:42 PM
I’ve recently moved to a new home; one of the consequences is the shift of utilities such as power, gas, water, and the topic of this post: phone. Being a Linux using geek, I’ve long been aware of Asterisk, but never really looked into it until lately. What I found was fun, useful, and economical. Read More...
Linux Virtualization
Jan/28/2012 10:15 PM
I’ve been using virtualization on Linux for the better part of a decade now. I’ve tried about everything available too - VMware, Xen, KVM, UML, VirtuaBox, and more. I’ve got some preferences, and I’ve learned that a lot of the decision process depends on how you’re going to be using it. Read More...
Cloud Syncing Tricks
Jan/28/2012 02:41 PM
Given the many cloud-sync services available, I wanted something I could sync over the cloud, but be secure - not “secure” if you decide to trust the service provider, but “secure” as in “good luck, NSA.” Read More...
Mandatory Access Control
Mar/31/2011 06:25 PM
I’ve been using Objective Development’s Little Snitch for almost as long as I’ve been using a Mac; it lets me selectively deny outgoing internet connections based on a number of criteria, which lets me lock down what apps are allowed to talk to places on the network - local or internet.
Intego’s VirusBarrier X6 can also do this to a lesser extent, but it’s not as refined as Little Snitch, nor does it allow much in the way of ‘this program can only connect to this host, using this protocol and this port’.
I’ve recently become aware of a different app: Hands Off!, which appears to do everything Little Snitch does, but it adds a couple of new things. Read More...
Intego’s VirusBarrier X6 can also do this to a lesser extent, but it’s not as refined as Little Snitch, nor does it allow much in the way of ‘this program can only connect to this host, using this protocol and this port’.
I’ve recently become aware of a different app: Hands Off!, which appears to do everything Little Snitch does, but it adds a couple of new things. Read More...
Openswan vs strongSwan
Sep/27/2010 03:23 PM
From the beginning of my VPN project, I knew about strongSwan... but I stuck to Openswan because that’s what is covered in the Openswan book I bought and read.
After perusing the strongSwan website for a few minutes, one thing became apparent: strongSwan is documented much better. After some research, I’ve switched from openSwan to strongSwan. Read More...
After perusing the strongSwan website for a few minutes, one thing became apparent: strongSwan is documented much better. After some research, I’ve switched from openSwan to strongSwan. Read More...
Success in the land of the VPN
Sep/16/2010 11:10 PM
I can finally report success with my recent obsession with getting a functional VPN for my home network. Actually, I can report two... Read More...
More VPN
Sep/09/2010 07:48 PM
I haven’t made any progress with an IPsec L2TP VPN - mainly because I’ve discovered that my ‘secondary’ internet connection (ie. the office) blocks IPsec. This makes it hard to test and verify anything. I’ll give it a go Tomorrow when I go and see my brother. Read More...
VPN Madness
Sep/06/2010 08:22 PM
The past few days (Labor Day Weekend), I’ve been learning about VPN’s - specifically, about IPsec VPNs using Openswan. A couple of years back, I bought a book by the Openswan developers about how to install, configure, setup, and use modern VPNs. Read More...
ntop
Aug/25/2010 10:10 PM
I’ve been playing with ntop, a rather neat way to monitor network traffic. I’ve got it connected to my personal machine at home, and it’s able to monitor all network traffic (of any kind - TCP/IP, raw ethernet, whatever). It’s slick and powerful. Read More...
Google's New Toys
May/19/2010 01:01 PM
This week is Google I/O, and Google is releasing a slew of new technologies. I’m excited about a couple of ‘em:
- Google Font Directory (and the Google Font API)
- WebM: A new video codec, open-source, and a successor to Ogg Theora
MythTV Follow-Up
Apr/19/2010 04:49 PM
After having tweaked my MythTV setup some, I can say it’s starting to actually work. I found another HDMI cable, and a joiner that let me join two fairly long HDMI cables into one cable long enough for the run. I then found I had to replace my nVIDIA GeForce 6200 with a newer card, preferably one that supported nVIDIA’s VDPAU extensions for X11 (VDPAU is a GPU/video decoder library). So with a cheap $40 GeForce GT 220, I can now play full 1080i HD video, with 5.1 surround sound. Read More...
MythTV
Mar/13/2010 01:40 PM
A short tale of my experience with MythTV - probably the most popular Linux DVR software package. Read More...
Apple Mail: Triumph and Tragedy
Feb/18/2010 07:03 PM
I generally only discover new things when something isn’t working for me... and I couldn’t use Apple’s Mail.app to access my Gmail account. (And suddenly, at that -- it worked a few days ago...) Read More...
The Big Enema
Feb/01/2010 03:18 PM
Well, I finally caved: After about three years with the same installation, I nuked my hard drive and re-installed from scratch. Read More...
Holy crap, Google!
Jan/22/2010 05:05 PM
Google crawls some places at the speed of light, apparently... Read More...
Google Public DNS
Dec/03/2009 01:30 PM
Google announced Google Public DNS today; why I think it’s a good thing. Read More...
Hallelujah!
Oct/27/2007 10:47 PM
My copy of OS X 10.5 “Leopard” came in the mail today. My impressions. Read More...