The Blog

Updated the Email Server

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:32:00 GMT

I've been using ASSP for while now as our email proxy service. It's kept us clean and clear of tons of spam while OS X's email service has been filtering out the viruses thanks to ClamAV.

The server project over this holiday season was to disable OS X's virus scanner and go with ASSP doing everything. The OS X email service will be responsible for solely delivering email. The advantage to this is that viruses will never go through ASSP, then to OS X, and then get scanned and rejected. Instead ASSP will drop them at the front door and that will be that.

After installing a bunch of Perl modules for the new version of ASSP, it's working, and working very well. ASSP is still even using the version of ClamAV that shipped with OS X, which has the added bonus of less work for me. Apple often updates the ClamAV binary as part of it's Software Update process, so I will know that it will always be up-to-date.

Christmas 2008 Pictures Are Here

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:54:00 GMT

The 2008 Christmas pictures are up in the Photo Albums. Enjoy!

Wish List for 2009

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:21:00 GMT

Household Ideas:

Good Coffee Beans
Ionic Breeze Silent Air Purifier
A Decent Wood-Splitting Axe
Rechargeable C and AAA Batteries
Tow Strap, Chain, or Rope

Steve's List:

DVDs

Babylon 5: The Movie Collection
Stargate Atlantis Season 3
Stargate Atlantis Season 5

Computer Items

Nicole's List:

Delta Seven Shower Head (need two)

Rachel & Smantha's List

Any Size Balls To Play With
Pool Toys
Sandbox Toys (non-plastic trucks, etc.)
Disney Learning: Preschool

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:58:00 GMT

I'm a little late to the party on this, but I'm glad I discovered Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. It seems during writers strikes, Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly fame is not idle. Done on a shoe-string budget and released on the web only, this 45 minute 3 act musical is hilarious. You can watch it right on-line at the above address too.

A DVD is in the works as well as a sequel. You can also purchase it on iTunes (the video as well as the soundtrack, which is also fantastic, BTW.)

Channel Changing via Firewire...

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:29:00 GMT

Getting prepared for HD with my home brew PVR has been fun. The final piece of the puzzle was getting GB-PVR, my PC, and Time Warner HD box talking. Items needed:

Tim Moore's firestb Package
ExDeus' STB Firewire Driver Package

Since I'm using GB-PVR and not MCE, Tim's package needs to be installed using the following arguements: msiexec /i firestb.msi IDENT=”1”

Next, if you're like me, you'll find Tim's package of drivers are a bit dated, you'll need to use ExDeus' package if you have a modern HD receiver. Just follow standard "Add new Hardware" protocol once you connect your receiver via Firewire.

Finally, test your install using the channel command and the instructions provided. I learned, although it is not clearly documented, that there are several different ways to send channel commands to a receiver. These are accomplished using the -a flag. For example, to change to channel 300 the command for my 4250HDC would be: C:\channel -f -a0 2 300

All done! Just use GB-PVR's built in exe caller for channel changing to call the channel program and execute the commands!

Fan Edits

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:46:00 GMT

Recently, I've been checking out the fan edit community. These are fans that are otherwise unhappy with a movie in it's original form or even a Director's Cut. These folks love their movie of choice and re-edit it such that it's seamless, professional, and ready to burn back onto DVD. While not a movie critic by far, I've watched the following as an owner of the original:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The 5th Kind Edition. The fellow that did it put in every cut scene, deleted scene, and other material back into the movie. At a whopping 2 hours and 48 minutes, it is quite a ride with every bit of back-story back in it. If anything is bad about it, it's almost too long.

Dune The Alternate Edition. This is a re-cut of the original 1984 version with deleted scenes as well as scenes from the Extended Edition back in. I've always been a fan of this version of Dune, but found it lacking in certain areas. No more! A lot of the back story and scenes from the book are included making it a much better flick. 2 hours and 43 minutes of coolness.

Star Wars Revisited. This is the grand master of fan edits. While not longer than the original, the creator redid most of the special effects, and fixed a ton of continuity errors and nitpicks totaling 156 changes in all. Oh, Hans shoots first! Need I say more? He's currently working on The Empire Strikes back and I, for one, start drooling when thinking about it.

Phish Scams & User Foolishness

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:51:00 GMT

We've had a ton of Phishing Scams at work. These are attempts by people to get your user name and password so that they can, in turn, use your credentials to send out more phishing scams and spam. Usually an official looking email is sent out to users claiming some system maintenance or other "thing" is going on where we need your information to verify "you", and if you don't supply them, there is usually an "or else." Hence phishing, get it? Fishing for user's information?

So, if you're a naive user or just not thinking, preoccupied with doing something else, whatever, I can see where you may and would fall for this scam. My gripe comes in when:

1) We've sent out two emails to our population expressly stating these are scams and that we will never ask for your information over an email.
2) The latter email even includes a website with an annotated sample phishing email, again noting in at least three places that we will never ask for your information over an email.
3) We've pasted a banner in BearMail (or primary student email portal) with the above website, again noting that we will never ask for your information over an email.

A new phishing email started to spread last night and a bunch of people fell for it. I can only conclude:

1) They ignored our emails and warnings.
2) They got our emails and warnings, read it, and promptly deleted it.
3) They got our emails and warnings, read it, and just don't get it.
4) They are ridiculously stupid people.

I'm sure there are defenders of these folks that would say something like, "they are not stupid, they are just not good with technology." I would have to counter that "we will never ask for your information over an email" is pretty clear to me, and since you're reading your email you obviously know what your user name and password are, else how did you get into it to read it? As for not good with technology, I don't need to know how to drive a car to understand that it's a bad idea to step out in front of one on the street.

Can you chomp-chomp help slurp-smack me?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:39:00 GMT

This one has been a long time coming for the Gripes list. Exactly what makes people think that I want to hear you eating food while you're speaking to me? At least once a week I answer the phone to someone eating their lunch in my ear. This has to be one of the rudest and disgusting things you can do to a person; it is no different than talking with your mouth full. At this point I just politely ask them to either stop eating while speaking with me or finish their lunch and call me back when they are finished.

Did I mention this is rude? Good.

Drobo

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:04:00 GMT

As an early gift for my birthday I received a Drobo "Storage Robot." This is a little USB 2.0 storage device that holds up to 4 hard drives, but is seen as only one drive to your computer with lots and lots of storage. Plus, it has redundancy so that if a single drive fails, your data is still there. "Ah, RAID" you're thinking. Yes and no. Usually with RAID you're stuck with a fixed size disk. If you use 250GB drives x 4, and one fails, you can only replace it with another 250GB disk; do so with anything larger and it's wasted space. The Drobo lets you use a combination of different sized disks and when you start getting low on space, simply remove the smallest disk and replace it with a larger one - and it's space is instantly available.

While still a little pricey, it's a zero maintenance solution that can grow as your storage needs do. I could have (and had!) done my own RAID system and was maintaining it just fine, however when I had to grow the storage it was always a pain. I'm starting to value my time over tinkering with hardware and Drobo just works so I can do more important things.

Roomba Revolution

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:54:00 GMT

Based on a trustworthy recommendation and some research, we purchased a Roomba, made by iRobot. It is quite possibly the most useful gizmo we've ever purchased. This little robot vacuum is a wonder. It is about 15" round (a good size dinner plate) and about 6" tall. It can do almost everything your normal vacuum does for cleaning a floor, and here's the list of what it can do above and beyond that:

Because it is basically a 6" roving disc, it can get into plenty of places that your regular vacuum can't easily. Under the bed, in and around tight spaces, and under anything taller that it's height.
It has really decent edge cleaning. It has a brush that sticks out of the right hand side that spins and knocks debris in front of its main pickup. Part of its algorithm is to detect edges and run that "sweeper" along them.

On top of that, it is really quiet. If it's in the same room as you, turn up the TV an extra notch. You'll never know it is in the same room as you.

With the included "Lighthouses" is virtual wall mode you can confine it to areas where you don't want it to go, or put them in lighthouse mode and they'll keep the Roomba confined to the first room for about 35 minutes, then allow it into the next room you want cleaned for 35 minutes, and so on.

Cleaning it is a snap, and even with a shedding dog, emptying is only needed once per run. I suspect as we will eventually schedule it to clean automatically, emptying will be every few runs as it will stay on top of the build up. Oh, and when it is done it homes in on it's recharge dock on the floor and starts to charge itself for the next day. Groovy.