Tim's Blogger Space

DHMN and MakeBit

2012-01-03T21:22:00.000-06:00

Over the course of the past year I have been involved with two Hacker/Makerspace projects.

The first is an active group in the Fox Valley called the Distributed Hacker/Maker Network or DHMN. DHMN has been progressing nicely in the past year. DHMN has two scheduled make sessions, a social lunch, and a business meeting every month. They have also worked on and passed bylaws and are well on their way to having a group that will one day have its own Makerspace.

MakeBit is a pet project of mine with a goal of being a makerspace/hackerspace in Fond du Lac, WI. MakeBit still has a long way to becoming a sustainable group, but I believe in the maker movement, and have high hopes for what MakeBit can become.

If you are in the Fox Valley or Fond du Lac, please connect up with your local group and become a maker today! If you aren't from the area check out Hackerspaces.org and find a hackerspace near you!

Internet Shoebox V1.0

2011-06-02T16:57:00.000-05:00

Note: This post was intended to go out back in January right after MadHackerHaus and never got finished/published

The Internet Shoebox is a collection of equipment to provide reliable WiFi Internet in a place that may not have WiFi, or assist coverage of existing venue. The Internet Shoebox is sorta like a mifi type device, but hopefully better, with less limitations. The Verizon or Sprint Mifi type devices normally support around 5 devices. When at a tech event five is a very limiting number, we almost had 5 devices connected in the mini van for the trip down to MadHackerHaus at Sector67. The number of devices supported will be based more off upstream connection rather than a fixed limit. The Mifi devices also have limited WiFi range and crappy battery life. Version 1.0 of the Internet Shoebox can work great, but I was somewhat disappointed with the overall performance.

The Internet Shoebox has three main components, a Linksys WRT54G, a broken Cradlepoint MBR1000 Router and a Linksys WAP54G. The Linksys WRT-54G is running DD-WRT and used to share wifi to be used by devices and provide QOS. The Cradlepoint is providing the wan connections. The WAP54G can be used to connect to an upstream wifi connection.

The Cradlepoint router can load balance over up to 4 connections, for most of my use, I was using a USB Sprint card and a USB US Cellular card. With the Cradlepoint, each connection is its own path to the Internet so the router does not bundle connections up into once fast connection. This means that any connection is only as fast as the connection that the data is router over. Now with more than one connection things will speed up but load balancing on the Cradlepoint seems to suck. It seems to preference one of the connections over the other. The router also doesn't do any quality of service, or speed tests on the connections. At any point it might be picking the slower connection or one that hardly has service. While mobile we had bad packet loss on the upstream USB connections at some points durning the drive.

I still need to do more testing to determine ways to improve the setup and see what I can to to improve, I would also like to make custom housing to hold all the devices and add a fan to aid in cooling all three devices that tend to get fairly warm while being used. Also each device has its own power brick at the moment and all of them are 12volts so I plan to combine them all down to one power brick to make it easier to plug in. I also want to setup a power cord for use in the car to make mobile use easier.

If you want to see a picture, you can visit Internet Shoebox project page on the DHMN wiki.

Update: The Internet Shoebox was used on the road trip to the Milwaukee Makerspace Open house in April, but didn't get as much testing, and only had one USB card that day because that was all I could borrow for the day.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Review

2011-02-21T11:51:00.002-06:00

I am posting to my blog with a Samsung Galaxy Tab on US Cellular. I am lucky to be the first to evaluate the tablet for work.

I have to say that before getting the Tab I thought that 7" tablets were to small, and that 10" tablets are much better. I have to say that I like the Tab more than I thought I would.
The down side of the Tab might be the screen size, for general web browsing, I think a 10" is still a better size. I have to say in the first day, I didn't browse the web very much, so I really can't take points away for that.

I didn't use the Tab for much browsing yet, so what did I use it for? I used the google reader app for reading rss news feeds. I found the screen size was perfect for the app. I use the Google reader app on my Samsung Mesmerize but I never found it to be a very enjoyable experience.

I also used the Tab to watch videos with my son. We watched some youtube videos and some TV shows that I converted off of my Tivo. The screen size was reasonable for watching the videos. I converted the videos to mpeg4 using Tivo desktop and used dropbox to transfer the videos to the Tab. I like the fact that I haven't needed to connect the Tab to my computer yet.

One of the reasons we are looking at the Tab is as a picture viewer for our sales team to show photos to customers. The Tab would an acceptable photo viewer, but I again feel screen size may win this battle. I think more important than screen size might be the photo viewer app that we would end up building.
Hardware wise, the Tab is just a bigger version my phone, without the ability to make phone calls. It's reasonably speedy

I think I will have to fork the Tab over for another person to try on Monday so I am trying to use it a lot this weekend to see how I really like using it so far.

I hope to do a follow up post after I use it a little longer.

MadHackerHaus at Sector67

2011-01-23T17:51:00.003-06:00

Yesterday 1/22/11 I went on a road trip with the Distributed Hacker Maker Space group from Appleton to the MadHackerHaus at the Sector67 Hackerspace in Madison. The day started with DHMN picking me up in Fond du Lac. The ride to Madison was the first real test of the internet shoebox, a collection of USB cellular cards and routers with the hope of providing reliable mobile internet. The first half of the trip the upstream connection seemed to be unreliable, but as we got closer to Madison things improved.

We got to Sector67 and had a fun filled day of learning and socializing with others of the MadHackerHaus. I learned some more about android programming but I was most interested in Sector67 and how it was started. I don't think anything was ground breaking information, but it made me confident that DHMN could do it and that I might be able to do something in Fond du Lac some day.

Stay tuned for a post on the internet shoebox, what I learned and what my plans are for making it better.

You can also check out Bob's post with some other details of the road trip.
http://mydigitechnician.blogspot.com/2011/01/mhh-sector67-road-trip-update-fond-du.html

Simple Invoice

2011-01-17T09:55:00.000-06:00

My brother asked me to help him do some invoicing for him. In the past I have used freshbooks and was very happy with how it worked, but in the end the free product wasn't enough. I set out to find a simple free product to create invoices. I tend to use a bunch of different computers so a LAMP based solution seemed like a good choice for me and desktop software like GnuCash seemed overly complicated for my needs.

I looked around a while and found a few different options, but Simple Invoices stuck out to me because it had a unique offering. Simple Invoices is a LAMP based project, but somebody created a Windows version. At first I thought this is a great way to test out Simple Invoices with out investing a lot of time into setup. With the Windows version, you extract the zip file, and run exe, and you are off and running in minutes. I was able to test and determine this would work fine for me. This Windows version was enough to get me in the door and get me hooked on using it.

The exe starts prepackaged versions of apache and mysql and allows you to open your default browser or the included app (a very simple browser). I was going to setup my linux server to host the final install, but before I did the setup I wanted to make sure I setup ssl so I would feel a little better about the idea of doing billing over the internet. I had a brainstorm before I get a chance to setup ssl. I use a wonderful service called dropbox to keep a folder synced between my computers, and the windows version of Simple Invoice runs out of a folder, why can't I put my Simple Invoice install in my dropbox?

I have been using Simple Invoice in my dropbox on three computers for a few weeks now, and so far no problems. I will add this disclaimer, I have not had simple invoices running on two computers at the same time yet. I would imagine two copies of mysql running at once against one database could lead to big problems so I have avoided that by being very careful to always shutdown when I am done. Maybe some rainy day I will to more testing on my test install before messing with live data. Speaking of test install, I have two simple invoice folders in my dropbox, one that is my live data, another that is a dummy test folder. I keep the test one just in case I need to test how something works before I go live with something.

So check out http://www.simpleinvoices.org or check out dropbox with my referral link http://db.tt/QOohbuE

January 1st Vampire Make Session DHMN

2011-01-05T08:48:00.000-06:00

Saturday night I went to a DHMN work session at @erinql house in Appleton. I didn't really have a project of my own to work on, but I had fun just the same. DHMN is a new Distributed Hacker Maker Network based in the Fox Valley, and this was my first chance to attend an event, but I hope to attend more in the future.

This session featured a lot of talk about android programming and many other good discussions.

If you want more information on the work night, vis the page on the DHMN website.
http://www.dhmn.net/Work+Session+1+Jan+2011

Drupal

2009-05-16T22:56:00.003-05:00

I've been playing with drupal and wanted to tester something. Watch out for the drupal kool-aid..

Android on the Sprint Touch Pro (in color)

2009-03-17T06:57:00.005-05:00

As of last night, Connect-UTB has released an Android build that fixes the color issues on the Sprint Touch Pro. This build for the RAPH800 is still not ready for day to day use, but is a clear sign that progress is being made. Currently you can't make phone calls, or much else, but does give you the chance to see how Android runs on the phone. I have to say I'm impresses how smooth it runs. The wonderful people at XDA behind this are doing a wonderful job making this happen and deserve a shout out. Also a thank you for Connect-UTB for hosting the file.

Grab the new build here

Ubuntu, CPU Scaling, Battery life and You

2008-09-22T21:32:00.001-05:00

My laptop was almost burning my legs tonight so I did a little looking for CPU scaling options in Ubuntu. I found a very useful page on how to adjust the power save method in Gnome on Ubuntu 8.04.

Ubuntu, CPU Scaling, Battery life and You

Last Nights FDLLUG Meeting in Review

2008-09-11T20:31:00.005-05:00

Here is a list of things from last night to review, if I miss anything
feel free to let me know. Thanks to everybody who helped.

MPTC blocks IRC, work a rounds were needed to join the "fail safe" channel.
MPTC wireless issues, most of use had issues joining the network/getting an IP. Once on the network with an IP things were ok.
Streaming video over EVDO Rev A. isn't to bad. (Sprint)
Group audio is an issue. (headsets would help)
I want a better camera
DimDim might work best for whiteboard, and maybe presentations, audio and video kinda lacking yet. Only the presenter can stream a small video. Limit to 3 Audio mics and seemed laggy.
Stickam had decent video and audio for a presenter, might be one of the best options to stream video.
Adobe Breeze was kinda neat, was the best "shared" video experience We got 4 streams going at once everybody had the same size video window. Audio was also decent. Sharing docs was better in DimDim.
I should get a headset with a mic built in.
Learned a bunch about the touchscreen thingy that controls the room. It is east to use but we still don't know everything.
Having more than one internet connection was nice when we started loading on the video.
We could have used more time and been more prepared.

Other thoughts and ideas.

I had an idea that might be good to try. We have two projectors that can be hooked to two different computers, for presentations coming from a remote source we could combo a shared presentation on google docs on one screen and a stickam session showing video of the presenter with audio on the other.
More research about what we can do at MPTC with what the room is equipped with might help.
Maybe look at Talkshoe for audio, didn't have time for this last night.
Look for other video options. I'm sure there are other options that might have andvantages.
It would be nice to figure out how to record the audio/video for later distribution via a podcast.

New Podcast and FDLLUG News

2008-09-06T22:33:00.004-05:00

I added the new gdgt podcast to my listening today done by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block. The podcast can be found at http://gdgt.com or in iTunes. I have listened to a little over half of the first weekly podcast. This podcast is going over things in the gadgets in the past year. It sounds like future podcasts might be more about the current weeks gadget news in the future. Audio quality was good and the two make a good team, I think this podcast will stay in my subscription list.

I am also preparing for the next FDLLUG meeting, so far things are going ok, I think we will have enough things to test to keep us busy for a little while. It looks like DimDim might be a good option to use overall, but we will see what that night brings. If things go well, I might be able to wrap everything up into a podcast and release it also.

NSLU2 Internet Gateway

2008-08-28T22:10:00.003-05:00

I had an idea to try to setup my NSLU2 as a Internet gateway to be able to share my HTC Mogul's Internet connection when needed. I've almost had it working over bluetooth pan except the NSLU2 doesn't seem to be getting an IP address. Once I get that issue figured out I hope to have a full guide. I hope to have it setup before the next FDLLUG meeting in hopes to attempt see how streaming video over Sprint EVDO Rev A. works.

Debian on the NSLU2 - Success

2008-08-25T21:40:00.002-05:00

I finally succeeded in installing Debian on my NSLU2, now to play around and see what it can do. I am considering making it a webserver to server content to my Wii via the browser.

This is my first arm based linux box so it will be interesting to see what I can do with it. I also wonder how the 133Mhz is going to hold up. The NSLU2 can be modded to remove the factory underclocking, but there are some concerns about stability when running full speed. Time will tell what I can do with it now that it is a working linux box.

iContact for Windows Mobile

2008-08-25T20:20:00.003-05:00

I came across iContact for Windows Mobile today. The iContact app brings iPhone like finger-friendly contact management to windows mobile. The out the authors website.

Debian on the NSLU2

2008-08-24T18:04:00.003-05:00

I've now made a couple attempts to install Debian on my Linksys NSLU2. The NSLU2 has a very limited amount of memory so installing is a challenge. My big issue is seems to be running out of memory while formatting my drive. I've been lucky so far that it hasn't locked up because I am remotely accessing the machine via ssh from home. It looks like it isn't going to work again, I think I will have to prepare the drive in another computer and try again tomorrow.

Internet Laptop Update

2008-08-23T23:47:00.004-05:00

I've made some progress on my fast booting internet laptop. Right now its booting in just under a minute. I hope to do some more tweaking and tuning yet, but 45 seconds is seeming harder to hit off of my Ubuntu install. I have already delayed starting of most non critical services until after firefox is loaded. Laptop is working decent otherwise except I also want to scale the CPU down a bit after its done booting to help with heat and battery life. Hopefully I will post a full guide after I'm happy with the results.

I still haven't made much progress on my simple web based wireless card manager. I have thought about it and I'd also like to maybe include a few other things like battery life info on this web page. I would really like to be able to get any computer information I need directly from firefox.

Project: Simple Internet Device

2008-08-19T16:30:00.002-05:00

Goal: Create a fast booting laptop to get me to a browser asap and have simple wireless setup.

I have a laptop that boots up ubuntu base install with fluxbox right now. My plan is to have it boot up and start firefox. My current issue is I want to be able to setup wireless without having to fire up anything extra on the gui. My idea to fix that is to create a web based wifi manager to find and connect to access points. I lack php skills so this may be an issue, but I don't think it will be that hard to do.

Hopefully I can round up some help on this project. Once I can get a handle on the wireless then its time to start tuning the boot time and add some firefox extentions to fill in any other gaps.

I think this would be great to be able to apply this same idea to a web tablet, but until tech crunch comes out with their web tablet, I'm hoping this will be the next best thing.

Ubuntu 8.04 mogul usb tethering

2008-05-05T15:27:00.004-05:00

I got my Windows Mobile Sprint Mogul to work via USB tethering and Internet Connection Sharing on my Ubuntu 8.04 install.

Here are my simple steps.

apt-get install subversion
svn co https://synce.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/synce/trunk/usb-rndis-lite
cd usb-rndis-lite/
make
sudo ./clean.sh
sudo make install

Next plug in the usb cable, and fire up Internet Sharing and click connect on the phone.

On the computer click on the network icon on the top panel and select "Wired Network (Unknown USB Wireless Interface)" from the list and shortly you should have a IP address and be all set.

As a side note to make tethering work make sure that you turn on "Enable advanced network functionality" under "USB to PC" icon on the connections tab in your windows mobile settings.

3 Phase Makes the Motor Go Round

2007-12-26T22:08:00.000-06:00

I did a little reading today about the Tesla Motors sports car that is coming out next year. The Tesla car makes use of a 3 phase AC motor with regenerative braking. I also did some reading on frequency drives today. The frequency drive is how you can control the speed and torque of an AC motor, and reduce power draw during startup.

I don't know how easy it would be to do, but the question I am asking at the moment is can I make a computer control the frequency drive? If not full control it would be fun at least to be able to have three profiles that we can use. I'd like to be able to adjust from max battery/econo mode to performance/max acceleration mode with just a click or knob adjustment.

Well off to more research.

Dominic's First Christmas

2007-12-25T22:10:00.000-06:00

Today was Dominic's first Christmas. While he is kinda young to understand what is going on, I think he had a wonderful Christmas. Dominic got a lot of stuff, but I thought I would take a moment to share one gift we got for him that I really liked. We got him the Sakar Crayola Keyboard. This is a keyboard designed for younger kids with easy to use large buttons. Dominic is only 9 months, so he has a long way to go, but its never to early to start. More details on the keyboard here.

Dominic likes playing on the computer while we are trying to use it, so I want to set him up with a computer and software designed for infants and toddlers. I hope to start him out right from the start with a linux computer.

Fond du Lac Technology Conference

2007-12-24T23:15:00.000-06:00

I had an idea a few weeks ago to have a Fond du Lac Technology Conference. My idea is to help help boost technology and linux/open source on a local scale. Details are scarce at the moment, but I am looking for anybody who might be willing to help. My goal is to make something happen by 2009/2010. One of my goals in this idea is to promote the Fond du Lac Linux Users Group (FDLLUG) and promote people and businesses that make a living of open source. If your interested or have suggestions, please email me at t i m f d l l u g . o r g

Blog Change

2007-12-24T23:08:00.001-06:00

I'm giving the blogging thing a try again. In the past this blog was mostly planned to be computer related, but I'm changing it up a little. I hope to keep it a little more up to date with what I'm doing. Why I need to write a blog post to say this, I don't know.

Stay tunned for more stuff.

Steam power and Turbines

2007-12-24T22:53:00.000-06:00

I know I posted the other day about want to convert a car to electric, and while telling somebody about it today, I was reminded of a past idea. I want to teach my son how everything works, one thing I always wanted to do what to build some sort of steam engine. I think it would be an interesting shop project for the two of us to work on. I justed wanted to write this down someplace while I was thinking about it. I wanted to follow up the steam project with a homebuilt turbine, but thats a different days project.

On a side rant, maybe it would be could to be able to recharge my future electric car with a steam powered generator.

Electric Car

2007-12-20T23:40:00.000-06:00

I have been tossing around the idea of late of building an electric car. I know I can't afford it at the moment, but its always fun to dream and plan. I want something I can use for my daily commute to work. Most days I put on less than 30 miles, but I would like to be able to safely make a 150 mile trip. I'm working on some research, and things are in the early phase right now, I just started looking up things today.

Being early in the research phases yet its hard to say where this goes. One vehicle I would like to convert is something like my wife's 2002 Ford Escape. I really like how it handles, and it is a handy vehicle to have, plus I like the idea of having a 4wd EV.

Hopefully I will do more planning and you will see more blog postings here.

AstLinux

2006-11-01T16:09:00.000-06:00

Its been a while since I posted any updates. Currently I've been playing with Astlinux. My previous post talked about trixbox, a linux distribution designed to be the easiest way to get a Asterisk box up and going. While true, the web-based config seems to be somewhat of a pain.

I was talking with a friend and he really like Astlinux, so I went to work on trying it out. Astlinux is a striped down linux disto designed to boot from a compact flash card. In my test setup, my machine is booting from a 64mb CF card, and has a USB thumb drive to store voice mail and other data.

I have to say it was more effort to get the Astlinux machine going and achieve the same things I was doing with Trixbox, but in the long run I learned more and much prefer dealing directly with the config files over the web interface of the Trixbox.

My test setup now has the Astlinux box and a phone at my home, and the Trixbox and a phone at work. I am now able to call between home and work via Free World Dialup. I am also experimenting with a Skype to SIP program, It would seem like I can get my SkypeIn number to ring in on my Asterisk box.

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do next with the setup, I may be getting a land line in my home so, at that point I might push that number into my system, and I also might be connecting to anyother VoIP provider to handle long distance calls.

In the future I would like to be able to connect an Asterisk box to the work Shoreline system, allowing me to extend my work phone, to where I'm working and break me away from the desk, but I'm not sure I really want to be that reachable to the point that I will spend money on the hardware required.

TrixBox

2006-09-22T14:46:00.000-05:00

This week I had some time to play with Trixbox, for those unfamiliar with Trixbox, it is a linux distro based on centos designed to easily setup an Asterisk VoIP server. I was able to get the machine setup with a couple Polycom 501 phones, but I haven't had much time to setup much else yet. I'd like to experiment more and what advanced features I can use to benefit me. I have a few projects in my future that might benefit from me doing some further testing.

Wanted, pair of computers

2006-09-14T15:50:00.000-05:00

I guy I work with came up with an interesting idea, and I'd love to play with it just a little bit to see if it would really work. The idea is this, have a pair of machines both the same, one that backs up the other machine. Nothing really interesting about that until we start talking about the details of the proposed way of achieving redundancy.

Newer Linux 2.6 kernels support AOE (ATA over Ethernet) protocol designed for high volume data thoughput over Ethernet interfaces without TCP/IP overhead. Unlike most network storage AOE volumes appear to the OS as block devices in /dev. Now because the OS sees the drive as a block device, you should be able to add a remote drive to a software mirror.

The long and short of it is you have two systems connected via a crossover cable, one system boots up normal, the other boots up in slave mode. In normal operation Server A is mirroring all data to server B via software raid. In the event of problem with server A, server B could be promoted or rebooted to be the master. Server A could be repaired or replaced and resume operations as a slave to B.

I have to say it may seem kind of crazy, but I have to agree I like the idea of using raid to mirror volumes over any other way I can think of. I was also worried about network overhead, but I think gigabit Ethernet can outtransfer most hard drives, and AOE keeps network overhead down. Exact details about switching a machine from slave to master are still in the works, but it just might work.

I'm trying to find a pair of machines just to some basic testing.

Qemu

2006-08-15T13:46:00.000-05:00

Today's app of interest is Qemu. Last night at the Fond du lac Linux Users Group (FDLLUG) meeting, Rene Horn did a presentation on Qemu. Qemu is software to emulate a virtual machine within your existing operating system. Before last night I had never used Qemu, however I do have to say it seems interesting. Today I got a chance to play with it a little bit and it seems to work fine, I haven't had a chance to do much yet. I do have to say that it seems to have some interesting options that VMware doesn't have. I'll have to do further testing before I can talk on the full usefulnes of Qemu.

Google - Its all coming together

2006-08-15T09:51:00.000-05:00

Like many, I like to watch what new service Google is releasing now. Google has a full array of services beyond the basic search, these include blogs, email, word processing, photo handling, mapping, and more. I am a Google fan, and I like that they are continually adding services that I like to use. One emerging problem with these services is lacking integration to each other to make getting from point a to point b faster and more user friendly. Just last night I noticed that the navigation bar in the upper left while in gmail has some new additions. These new additions are links to photos, spreadsheets, and "all my services".

One of the new services, Picasa Web, I've been playing with for the past month or so, and I have to say the integration with Picasa is a nice start, however it still has a long way to go. To start with a 250MB limit? What the heck is that? Google the same people that started with a 2GB email box that is growing every day, impose a 250mb limit on photos? Last I checked I have 1.7GB of pictures, I would like more than anything to have a place to store those that is relatively immune to data loss. The other thing that I think would be another useful step with Picasa Web, would be the ability to connect the Windows application back to the web albums. That way if you got a new computer and didn't have the local copies you could browse the online albums as if they were local.

From the web standpoint Picasa Web is fairly nice clean and simple, and easy to use. I was about to complain about lack of RSS support but that must have just been added in the past couple days too. I'm happy to see improvements, I hope they can push to further blur the line between your OS and web apps.

I personally look forward to a day where I might be able to take most of my life with me anywhere I can get on the Internet. I have to say Google has already released one app that has been helping me with that, Google Browser Sync, a firefox app that automatically syncs your bookmarks, and open pages. I love that when I bookmark a page on one of the three computers I normally use, it will be synced up to the rest of them next time I connect. I no longer need to worry that I bookmarked that on my laptop, or at home, its all the same list.

I guess we just have to stay tuned to see what Google does next to help push web services to the desktop.

Another Wonderful Morning

2006-08-11T09:01:00.000-05:00

Well its Friday morning. No big plans for the weekend yet but I'm sure I have more than enough to do. I'm still working on tweaking my RSS collector page to improve the overall usefulness, its coming along slowly. I'm mostly trying to improve the sidebar to help relay what the page is for, and setup the links to more of my content of sites I like.

I will be out of the office for a few hours today to help with a wireless tower installation. I don't expect to have time to play with any personal projects. Maybe of the weekend I will be able to get some stuff done.

In the mean time feel free to check out my RSS page progress.
http://www.polishcrap.com/rss

RSS of Me

2006-08-10T15:27:00.000-05:00

Today I've been working on an interesting project. Many Web2.0ish sites can provide RSS feeds of what your doing on their site. In came my problem, how to bring me together in one place? In comes planet. Planet is a python script that runs and collects RSS feeds into a single page arranged by date.

While still a work in progress, feel free to check out my page.
http://www.polishcrap.com/rss

Looking for the RSS of me

2006-08-10T11:03:00.000-05:00

I had an idea today for creating a new website for me. I'm sure this isn't a new idea, but I just don't know how or where I'm going to set this up yet. I have a handful of websites that will creat RSS feeds with my activity. These websites are spread all over the place, I'm going to see if I can create or find a website that pulls all my RSS content from other sites into one common place for others to view.

Anybody know of anything like this that already exists?

Smoothwall

2006-08-10T09:13:00.000-05:00

While growing up living in a dialup only area and having more than one computer in the house has forced me to use a few different dialup gateway options. My first experience with internet on two computers in my house was with Windows 98se Internet connection sharing. This got the job done but didn't do much else. I later upgraded to Windows 2000 and this was an improvement allowing port forwards and all that happy stuff but still left room for improvement.

Time passed and I was able to get a Cisco 805 router that was able to connect external modem, this was highly configurable, however lacked a friendly web interface, and caching options. I was able to use clarkconnect behind the Cisco to help cache pages to ease bandwidth problems. Clarkconnect is a all in one Linux gateway offering web proxy, dhcp, dns, file sharing, mail and more. While this setup worked ok, until the Cisco started acting up and I needed to look at replacement option. One of the biggest downfalls of the clarkconnect box was it didn't support dialup directly.

Here comes Smoothwall 2.0 to save the day. Smoothwall supports almost all WAN connection types including dialup, ISDN, DSL, PPPoE, and Cable. I have had smoothwall installed at my parents house for years now, it has been working fairly nicely. I have been running it on a old P150 laptop with an external 56K modem.

Since then I have moved out of my parents house to an area where I can get cable internet. I have been trying to get setup to do more computer repair out of my house. One of the things I want to try to do is setup a caching proxy that will hopefully cache windows updates and other files I use often like Adaware and Spybot. I would rather have my proxy cache them from a remote rather than put them on a USB thumb drive, or CD because that way I will make sure I have the latest copy. I also hope that it will cache windows updates. I personally don't feel that my Internet connection is that slow, its just nice to have LAN transfer speeds on file downloads. I figured I would give Smoothwall a chance for the job to see how it works. I went over to the Smoothwall.org website and see that Smoothwall Express 3.0 is in Alpha so I thought I would give it a try. I took a spare computer added a second network card and installed away. Setup was rather simple and from the limited testing I've done so far it seems to work nicely. I think I will give this a try for the short term and see how it works.

For the long term I have a bigger project in mind that might require me more configuration options to allow for web based user tracking and wireless security. Hopefully stay tuned for more details about Smoothwall and future gateway options.

CCleaner

2006-08-09T16:53:00.000-05:00

I tried a new program yesterday called CCleaner, it seems like it would be a very useful program to free up drive space but cleaning up leftovers on your system. I think I'll be looking at using this to help round off my programs I use to when I do virus and spyware cleanups. On my laptop I was able to clean up almost 1Gb of crap, including log files, and tempory files.

http://www.ccleaner.com

Ubuntu 6.06

2006-08-09T15:53:00.000-05:00

Today I installed Ubuntu 6.06 on a Athlon 1.4Ghz machine. I played with a older version a few months ago, and it wasn't bad. I have to say 6.06 is really easy to use. I booted the live CD a to the gnome desktop. From the desktop all I had to do was click the install icon on the desktop, and answer a few questions, and in about 20 minutes it was ready to go. The install came with all the major basic componants, including Firefox and OpenOffice so you could get down to work right away.

When the system was booted it checked for updates and I installed them. The update system was very easy to use, and much prefered the windows update. I like the fact that the update program handles updates to all of the programs that come on the install CD.

I could go on to write more, but I'll close with this for now. If your looking to leave the norm, and try something a little different without being forced to learn a lot try Ubuntu.

More Cranky Geeks

2006-04-26T09:22:00.000-05:00

I'm still trying to catch up on my podcasts, currently I'm over 14 hours behind. I've listened to a few Cranky Geeks shows now, and the show isn't bad, but they really do a crappy job cutting in the commercials, they really need to work on that. This brings up an interesting point, this is the first podcast I am listening to with commercials. Personally I don't mind the commercials as much as I mind the audio level differences between the show and commerials. If I had it my way, I'd say no commerials, however I do understand that most podcasts are done out of personal interest, and can get costly.

I've fired up the monitoring server again, and started to get to work on it. I haven't made any progress yet, but I'm hoping to get it done sometime next week.

Slow day

2006-04-21T15:10:00.000-05:00

Today has been a slow day here at work. I haven't really tackled any interesting projects this week. I've played with Google Calendar, it seems rather slick, hopefully I'll continue to use it.

I'm still behind on my podcasts from before vacation, I was starting to catch up but then I added Cranky Geeks to my queue. I still have 2 1/2 hours of podcasts before I get to those anyway. Currently my podcast queue is 12.7 hours.

The last few weeks of the security now podcast have been interesting, they have covered crypto. I really didn't understand very well how that all worked, but now its all starting to make sense. If you are kinda lacking in your understanding of crypto, I highly recommend listening to the podcasts.

Crossed off my list of things to do was upgrade the Propel Highspeed dialup server. The server stopped working, and forced a version upgrade. I had to install the new software on the Redhat 7.3 server. I have tried to get the software to run on other versions of linux, I could get everything but logging functioning. I'm still waiting to hear back from Propel to see if they will ever be supporting something just a touch newer.

In the to-do department, next week I'm planning to do further work on the new server that will be running nagios to monitor our network. When the server is completed, it will also hopefully be running a few other services, including IMAP for the corporate email/webmail and a wiki internal office documentation. Documentation here is a mess, I think a wiki will help exchange and enhance company processes.

I also have to install a new router at one of our locations, however I plan on waiting to do this until I get the WIC-1DSU-T1 cards for my router. My other choice is using an external CSU/DSU, and I'd like to avoid that.

Hi

2006-04-18T09:59:00.000-05:00

I thought since I am a Google fan, I would try out Blogger. I'm fairly interested to how it all works, in particular, the integration with Picasa. So that's about all from me for now.