Alex's Blog

Defying Gravity

2009-09-30T20:58:00.001-07:00

As those of you that followed the show know it's been canceled by ABC, but all hope is not lost. CTV in Canada also airs the series and they have continued to show episodes, given that season 1 was shot in its entirety before the show was sold to ABC and CTV respectively those last few episodes will now doubt circulate the internet. It's a shame that the majority of American's enjoy such terrible TV.

Swine Flu

2009-09-29T00:08:00.000-07:00

Well I've got it. I must say it's nowhere near as bad as I would have thought, and to be frank it's actually not as bad as the normal flu. It has however hindered my ability to think. The finals touches on java program will have to wait; as for me I'm heading to bed I've got class in the AM

Farming

2009-09-28T02:24:00.000-07:00

I was contacted, the other day actually, by an ex-client. They asked me to write an email farming application, I opened eclipse and set to work. I'm more or less done with the link farming classes and I've realized something fairly interesting; farming links from one website leaves you with a majority of the internet. Based on the link I used it ended me with fifty six thousand domains and pages somewhere in the hundreds of millions. I don't even want to know the stats related to emails addresses retrieved. I'll be licensing the software based upon link generation depth, and if you can figure out how to steal it you're more then welcome to. Hell, email me and I'll give you a lifetime unlimited depth license if you send me a white paper. Good morning.

Syndication Pt2

2009-09-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

I've spent most of my day writing a Java app for a client. Its just a simple spider, but it gathers email addresses while it "crawls". These email addresses end up in the hands of spammers in most cases, but hey their money is green.

Syndication

2009-09-25T14:15:00.001-07:00

Freelance web developers are everywhere. Lets face the music development firms cost an arm and a leg. I've seen several fairly posh offices in and around Chicago; the most formidable was on the 32nd story of a building on Michigan that overlooked the city and the lake. It just screams that business owners are overpaying. As a freelance developer I tend to float from client to client doing contract work, and then back again when they get stuck in a rut. I had a client call me yesterday and refer to me as their special forces team when it comes to syndicating content from other sites. Word to the wise, copyright your content or I'll help someone else steal and syndicate it. If you're new to the copyrighting game check out the options from Creative Commons

Installing (and fixing) LAMP + PHPMyAdmin under ubuntu 9.04

2009-09-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Tasksel now works for installing the lamp stack, make sure your have no synaptic processes running:

sudo tasksel lamp-server

PHPMyAdmin is available through synaptic, so install from gui or command line:

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

PHPMyAdmin installs in /usr/share/, so it won't be available by default.

cd /var/www
sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin

You may also want to change the owner of your www directory.

chown alex /var/www

lastly I'd enable ufw (UFW replaced ip tables):

sudo ufw enable

XP and Nvidia 8400M GS

2008-11-20T01:20:00.000-08:00

I read many a google result tonight trying to find the right drivers for my 8400m GS... anyways if this page every get indexed here's the only driver that worked for me:
Softpedia

I'm running an hp dv6500t (if that matters)

A Hardware based solution to comcast & sandvine p2p throttling

2008-04-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

1-You will need one of the following routers:
DD-WRT Supported Hardware

2- Install dd-wrt on your router of choice i went with a linksys wrt-54gs:
Rather lengthy install instructions

3-Hopefully the install went ok and you didn't brick your router. At this point setup port forwarding (Applications and Gaming) and static dhcp (Administration -> Services).

4-Turn on telnet (bottom of the services tab).

5-With your favorite telnet client telnet to the router's ip (default:192.168.1.1)
See this if you're confused about telnet.

6-Ok now its time to get rid of those pesky RST packets. I looked to this tutorial for help. Anyways you only need two commands:
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport[15500:15550] --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
iptbales -A INPUT -p udp --dport[15500:15550] --udp-flags RST RST -j DROP

(actually i would assume you only need the upd one since bt uses datagram)

reboot your router and you should be off and running!
-Alex

Norton

2008-01-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

So Norton's new internet security suite (NIS 2008) is great until you try to do things like file sharing or remote desktop. I contacted Symatec's support stating the following issues: The Anti-phising toolbar- I want it gone, and i have been unable to figure out how to remove it. It's actually like i virus you delete the file (it's a dll in firefox's component directory) reboot and somehow it's back. Symatec's solution to my problem was to take control of my machine, look through all my open windows, and then hid the toolbar. I make an inappropriate comment to "Baruk" and then ask if he thinks I'm an idiot. He says its gone. Ok whatever just fix the remote desktop issue. Their version of a solution is to allow all traffic with the following credentials (255.255.255.0 , 192.168.1.1) for those of you who dont know thats just punching a giant hole in my firewall, and allowing all traffic from my router in. so what have they fixed after numerous hours? nothing. I've been violated by Symatec's curry loving tech support. Here's my solution:

Allowing remote desktop:
(some may consider this unsafe)
DISABLE intrusion prevention (you'll still have a tradition firewall, and from what I can tell all it does is void exclusions).
Getting rid of the toolbar is still beyond me if you have a solution shoot me an email.

My advice on this issue: If you don't have a very good reason don't use Norton Internet security.

Products I've used and like include: McAfee, AVG, Comodo, Zone Alarm, ESET
WINNER: ESET Smart Security Suite (The same guys who did Nod32)
Products I would avoid: Symantec, Avast