I fell in love with Wolfram|Alpha after reading this comic. The site is so god damn easy to use and find information it’s not funny. You type in what you need to know, hit enter, and it comes up.

Wolfram Alpha is a knowledge engine (It’s not a search engine or a google killer) which finds and calculates information for you. There are thousands information sources which it queries and provides very concise, but detailed answers.

Give it a go, I can find this being super handy for my uni studies. Wolfram|Alpha The only thing it’s missing is a short name.

So I love gentoo, however on a desktop computer which I will using for Uni it was a little high maintenance. I wanted to try something new so I gave Fedora 11 a go, which failed, so a work mate got me a copy of OpenSUSE.

The hardest part of the install was working out it’s partitioning tool and not getting it to touch my second drive, which had Windows and backups on it. I did finally get it to work, but for some reason it thought 15GB was enough room for me. That’s not a huge problem because I just extended the LVM after the install.

Once install, installing the ATI drivers using the one click installer was wonderful (however I did have to click more than once). Compiz fusion was easy enabled and networking (WPA) was a breeze to setup in YaST. The general look and feel wasn’t quite right, so as usual I modified to my liking.

OpenSUSE for me has achieved my goal as the required amount of terminal use is minimal. I have installed several apps without any problems and it’s been wonderful to use.

When setting up servers and services I used to wonder why people would use UDP. It’s annoying to setup and test with firewalls, however lately while doing my CCNA study I have learned the important uses of UDP and TCP.

TCP has lots of features, like error recovery and acknowledgment which UDP doesn’t support. Both use “ports” and both have error detection. So why use UDP?

I’ve linked to a flickr scan of TCP header. As you can see a TCP header is 20 Bytes long, without it’s payload, where as if you look at a UDP header it’s only 8 Bits long. UDP already has the advantage of being smaller in size, but what really makes UDP useful is it’s lack of error recovery.

In services like VoIP , Video Conferencing and Gaming, by the time TCP has detected an error, sent a request for the missing packet, and continued on it’s way it has interrupted the call, making TCP a bad choice. Since UDP doesn’t have error handling, it doesn’t matter if a packet was lost or damaged, because UDP won’t request (or check) for the missing packet and continue on it’s merry way. Thus keeping the call at low latency.

Ps. Now that I have gotten half way through the first Cisco CCNA book I might share a few other network tips, tricks or info.

When configured correctly in a network QOS can be a wonderful thing. The ability to prioritize network traffic by it’s importance is crucial in most places that use VoIP systems to ensure that normal network traffic doesn’t kill off telephone calls. QOS can be both difficult to configure and simple depending on what systems you use and is being used in industry around the world.

With VoIP moving to home users now problems occur with keeping calls going when other home users are download or the like. Newer modems support QOS but still suffer from a simple flaw which impacts the usefulness of it. These modems can only control QOS for outgoing packets (uploads) and not incoming, becuase the QOS needs to be done on the ISP switches/routers. This flaw means that if someone packet floods your connection, QOS won’t be able to help your VoIP system.

There isn’t really a simple fix to this, however it would be nice if ISPs had a configuration page or the like to allow you to make simple QOS rules. Some people will want QOS on VoIP IPs/ports and others will want it on other services.

So I’ve wanted to setup a file server for home to backup two laptops, and a desktop machine and to store data like Music and Movies (Mum has the whole Stargate collection now on DVD and I’m thinking of ripping them for a backup copy). Previous servers I’ve made or setup have been loud, noisy and chew lots of power. This server is actually a Dell Optiplex that was on death row (ready to be sent to the dump) that I was able to rescue.

Hardware wise it’s just a 1.8ghz, 512mb of RAM, gigabit network card and 20GB hard drive. I’ve added a 40GB hard drive and a 320 GB hard drive for the moment to play with.

It’s quite a nice and quite server and I have ordered a 1TB hard drive and SATA card for the server, from Jack, which will provide me with a decent amount of storage.

Software wise I’ve been trailing Openfiler for the server which is an amazing file server bundle that runs on rPath linux. It uses all the new linux hard drive stuff, like LVM and software RAIDs, and has HTTP, NFS, RSYNC, FTP and SMB support for protocols, which is really nice.

The interface for openfiler is just awesome. You can easily add new partitions, and take snapshots of drive. You can manage all the access rights and everything from the web interface. It’s really really nice.

It still needs a bit of work, I had to hit the terminal a few times to fix some bugs, add new users and resize some partitions. The instructions for install are a littler unclear, like when your partitioning, I don’t think you are ment to partition the parts you want to share.

I don’t like the fact it runs on rPath linux and the way it’s made only for rPath, as this means that you have to have a dedicated server for files and nothing else. Most of the time my file server will be idle so I may aswell make it do something else.

It’d be really nice if it was just a package like software, like a gentoo ebuild or a deb package. That aside it’s really nice software and worth a look at.

As for backup software for Windows Vista, it really does suck. The Vista backup tool tries to backup your whole drive, which I don’t want it to do, and it doesn’t back up everything, just documents and the like, which is really annoying. On the other Vista machine I’ve used SyncToy from MS which is a nice piece of software, and so far it has been working well.

I’ll trial these and report back at the end of the testing period.

Last week I have been messing around with Ekiga 2.8 (or something) calling and video calling people. It was loads of fun and it ran well. The interface however was lacking awesomeness for its day and I was really surprised to see a wicked looking GUI on the Ekiga website. This is where my adventure began.

I first tried the released beta, and after figuring out how to compile (which was clearly stated on the wiki, however the documentation included within the package said the opposite) i attempted to compile, which failed, I then tried the latest snapshots which also failed. I ended up getting a combination of the 15th and 17th snapshots compiled, however it would segfault straight away. I also found out the hard way that there configuration scripts are dumb, and all previous signs of old libraries must be burnt in a fire and that make clean doesn’t actually work.

I then got some other snapshots to compile, although video support would not work, and it was only today when they released the 3.0.1 beta was I able to get video support working.

I’ve included a screenshot of me talking to Hamzah, although his Cam wasn’t included in the screenshot due SDL (from what I gather). Ekiga 3.0.1 seems more stable and nice to use, and feels more skypey. It also ties into libnotify or libsexy (I can’t remember which is which) and does a good job when people are calling you.

Really really nice, and for all you’s wondering my sip is sip:TheSkorm@ekiga.net . ekiga.net provides the best steaks in town, erm, I mean they provide the best STUN service around.

zzap has posted a very in-depth article on why the proposed internet censorship sucks. I agree with zzaps post completely and here are my issues and thoughts with the internet filtering.

ISPs should provide filtering by law to all customers, however, it should be a opt in case not opt out. Filtering customers, destroys privacy, impacts on security and speed and doesn’t work

Filtering cannot stop porn sites from being accessed, and filtering can also trigger false positives.

Filtering provides another place for man in the middle attacks, allowing hackers to gain access to where you go, passwords and usernames by sniffing.

Filtering doesn’t work under encrypted connections making is even more useless.

Filtering all of Australia’s internet, which is already horribly slow, will make it even more slower. This is no way to create a “world class broadband network”.

I love my ISP at the moment, because I know that my data gets from one place to another without being Fold, Bended, Mutilated or Spindled. Packets get from one place to another without going through http proxies or the like.

I can see this ISP level filtering masking my IP and most likely will cause problems with shared sites, that block by IP.

I would like to apologise for this shittyness of this post. It’s taken me 30 minutes to write this, and I can’t seem to stay focused.

This also goes against the idea’s of the Internet. It wasn’t designed to be destroyed like this.

Had a pretty decent LAN Party last weekend. We played TF2, BF1942, CS:S, Diablo 2 LOD and Warcraft 3 FT. The LAN started at 12:00 and went to 12:00 the next day, and the amount of people varied between 2 and 11, although the average was 9 (Damn people needing to work). The flickr stream starts here.

All in all it was pretty good, 8 pizzas, soft drink. Could have done with some more nachos, but meh. Pretty damn good.

When people aren’t playing games it’s a good chance to trade Creative Commons music and the like. I have 50gb of music now that I’m sorting through. This also gave me a chance to test out the new iTunes 8 and I have to say, it hasn’t changed much. It looks a little nicer IMHO.

The LAN also allowed me to test out my new Nvidia 8600GT graphics card, which done wonders. Since my computer naturally runs hot, I under clocked it, and still managed to get over 50 FPS in most games.

This is also the first LAN where I have been able to stop people from using all my bandwidth, by blocking all ports but HTTP, MSN and the like. This stopped torrents and people playing WOW (which I think is a stupid thing to do at a LAN anyway). To do it using my approach you must have a modem / router running and it must have iptables.

Yours will be different depending on the model and brand of modem, but you can have a look at the script I used to block everything but the stuff I wanted.

iptables –delete FORWARD 1
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6667 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6667
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 9002
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 9002 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6697
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 6697 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 443 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 443
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 53
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 53 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 53
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 53 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 80
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 80 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 1863
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 1863 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 21
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 21 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 1863
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 1863 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 3388:3390
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p udp –destination-port 3388:3390 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 3388:3390
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 3388:3390 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 27030:27039 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 27030:27039
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 110
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 110 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 25
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 25 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 465
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 465 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 993
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 993 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 995
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 995 -i br0
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 5900
iptables –insert FORWARD 3 -j ACCEPT -p tcp –destination-port 5900 -i br0
iptables -A FORWARD -j DROP -i br0

Striped of resources and money, we tend to look at DIY and recycling to fund projects. In this case, I wanted a computer that could surf the net, pidgin, email, youtube and play music. I hoard junk like some old granny and her records, so I had some stuff laying around to make up a fairly old PC. What I ended up with was, 800mhz, 512mb RAM, 32GB hard drive, Geforce 2 MX 400 (32mb), RaLink RT2500 wifi card, cd burner (which has now failed after the install). I haven’t spent a cent on this box, it’s just pieces from PCs that would have been thrown out.

You’re thinking, 800mhz, that’s Windows ME old, there’s no way you could possibly do all that on such an old box. Well I can, and I’m doing it right now. Sure it isn’t a speedy box, but with Gentoo on it, it accomplishes all this with easy, I can surf, check my mail, IM, irc, and listen to music at the same time with absolutely no problem.

This is with the help of Gentoo. The way Gentoo is made, it’s made for speed and performance. No two Gentoo installs are the same, everything is compiled (with the help of emerge) for your PC and you choose exactly what you want installed. The smallest Gentoo install only includes the bear minimums, for the machine to boot.

Sure it’s a lot of compiling, but emerge does it all with a breeze, and you just set a few things to compile and goto bed. With the use of CCACHE you can speed up recompiles easily and if you’re lucky enough you can get distcc to use other computers to help with the load (I couldn’t do this).

The Gentoo install was pretty easy and the thing that usually takes me weeks only took me 30 minutes including compile. Wifi, the Wifi card installed a breeze and it only took me a bit of reading before I worked out howto hook it up with my WPA PSK enabled home network.

I’m using xfce4 as it’s lightweight and powerful, and is really nice to use. It’s like gnome without the fat. Xfce4 took the longest to compile but it was worth it.

If you ever have the time to setup a full blown Gentoo setup, I really suggest it, it’s a really good desktop Linux distro. I wouldn’t really use it for servers (I’m a FreeBSD fag) but I’ll be using Gentoo a few times in the future.

Now I wanted to share some of my favourite Linux apps:
- MPD (Music player daemon), I finally got around to installing this nicely and it’s great to use with gmpc. I also found impdclient (shown in picture), so I can use my iPod Touch to control the music on my nix box.

-gkrellm, As ugly as it looks, it’s really nice to have to see stats.

-xchat, has really picked up it’s game the last time I used it, and looks like a really nice client now. Still needs some stuff smoothed out

-Thunderbird, Very nice email client.

-Transmission, Perfect for torrents. (sharing linux distros)

-Gimp, great for image editing

A few more obvious ones that I use a lot are, Firefox and pidgin.

I’ve had a shit box laying around (800 mhz) for a little while that I haven’t bothered to use. I usually use it for a temporary server or to mess around with. Since I’ve started to get back into playing Americas Army, I’ve wanted to be able to IRC and MSN while I’m dead easily. Sp O decided to setup Gentoo on this box and mess around.

After a day or so of waiting for stuff to compile (<3 emerge, hasn't failed me yet) I have a working box, with xfce4 and that. So far I'm really like gentoo, everything has been easy to setup, and once you become patient and wait for things to compile it's really nice.

It's good having only the applications you need, and not any other junk