Health Savings Account Info

Some info on Health Savings Accounts. Look into this further...

Google Maps Updated to Work With Opera

Google Maps now work with Opera and Safari browsers. I want to thank Google for taking the time and effort to support my browser of choice. Kudos to Google.

Opera 8.0 Beta 2 released

Opera Software released Beta 2 of their new browser over the weekend. Preliminary tests show it works great with Gmail and Google Maps (two common sites I use with Opera issues). I know Google Maps was fixed on Google's side, but I think some of the issues with Gmail were fixed on Opera's side. I'm testing Opera 8b2 with Blogger right now to see how it's going to work. It was real hit or miss with Opera 7.60.

UPDATE: It works better with Blogger (this post worked), but there are other parts of the text editor interface that didn't seem to run at all. Fortunately it didn't keep be from posting at all, just using some of the advanced features (like "preview"). Come on Blogger, address that one.

Linux Magazine Article Touting Debian's Advantages

Linux Magazine has a short article dispelling the myths (or current status) of the major complaints about Debian of the past and tell why it's currently a top contender for your desktop/server.

Xbox 360 Artist's Rendition

Create Your Own Automated .deb Repository

Here's a HowTo on creating your own DEB repository. This is handy if you're backporting things or creating custom packages you may want to access from multiple machines.

New Toothbrushes Play Music Through Your Bones

Hasbro has announced an upcomingline of toothbrushes that play music through your jawbone. The sound quality is supposed to be comparable to an orginary set of headphones. The music plays for two minutes, the intended duration of an average brushing. This might help kids brushed for longer... maybe it'll help me brush longer... "Excuse me, it looks like you've got some Korn in your teeth."

Firefox 1.0.1 Released (Security Update)

News is out that Firefox 1.0.1 has been released, addressing address spoofing and cross site scripting exploits among other issues and stability fixes. It's good to see they're still working hard on making Firefox stable and secure. It's one thing to be stable or secure, it's another thing to stay that way.

12 File Managers for Linux Compared

A great overview of 12 Linux File Managers to check out. I had previously used mainly mc via ssh connections and whatever default file manager came up with my GUI connections (in KDE or Gnome). These are definitely worth checking out. worker sure brought back memories of my Amiga days. After a little digging I discovered worker's author has written PC<->Amiga utilities so he must have been an Amiga user as well.

HTML Tidy

A short article on a handy html utility that lets you process "barely tagged" html text files into standards compliant html. Looks handy for quick and dirty jobs.

Free Gmail Invites!

I was blessed with a ton of free Gmail invites. If you're interested, leave your email address in a comment to this post. I'll give one to the first 20 people who ask.

Dual Boot Windows/Linux on Two HDs

A nice short article on how to Dual Boot Windows/Linux from separate hard drives without monkeying with the Windows setup.

Penny-Arcade

This comic strangely reminds me of my dad... except he doesn't work at Ikea. :)

SHA-1 Broken (More Info)

More information about the hashing algorithm SHA-1 being broken. SHA-1 is used in SSL (ie. your browser's security used when making purchases or doing online banking). This is serious stuff.

Looney Tunes Become Loonatics

Apparently Warner Bros. isn't making enough money, they have to rework the classics to make ends meet. Meet the new Looney Tunes.

Learn About "/\/\4d $k1llz" From Microsoft

Microsoft posted a document teaching parents how to read 133t5p33k. Funny stuff to be coming from Microsoft.

Google Coming to Oregon!

Google just bought a 30-acre parcel of land in The Dalles and will be opening a tech facility there. Odd location in my opinion, but still cool nonetheless.

Top 10 Useless Limbs (and other vestigial organs)

A funny look at useless limbs of the animal (and plant) kingdom. Mostly they seem to be things that evolution has deemed unnecessary, but they still hand around anyway (like the human tailbone or the whale's rear leg complete with thigh bone!) It's an interesting read.

Learn to Love the Command Line

An interesting article on embracing the command line. GUIs are great, but there are some simple tasks that are quicker/easier from the command line. Part of recognizing when/where those tasks pop up is having some experience using the command line. This is part 1 of 2.

Kid Rock Arrested (Updated)

Apparently Kid Rock was arrested last night after a fight with a DJ over his music choices. My favorite part, he asked reporters to cover the story "if his haird looked okay". :)

Update: CNN.com's coverage as well.

Updated again: He's out now.

SHA-1 Broken

Bruce Schneier has a post on his Blog reporting that the popular hashing algorithm SHA-1 has been broken. This makes a brute force attack on SHA-1 go from 2^80 iterations to 2^69 iterations (or 2048 times faster). This is still a considerable amount of iterations to perform for an attack, but as computers get faster and potential other advances in breaking algorithms occur, their stength in use will dwindle. Digital signatures have already been accepted for legally binding form of identification. How is that affected as components of digital signature schemes deteriorate? At what point do we say, since SHA-1 can be theoretically compromised, in a court of law we cannot beyond a reasonable doubt be sure this message wasn't tampered with?

Interview with FreeNX author Fabian Franz

Here's an insightful interview with Fabian Franz (author of FreeNX, the free implementation of NoMachine's NX server). This covers a lot of info about NoMachine as well. It's an interesting read if you've ever used FreeNX and a nudge for you to try it out if you haven't!

Opera Slams Bill Gates' commitment to Interoperability

I love it! Microsoft's Bill Gates announces his commitment to interoperability and the chief technology officer from Opera rakes him over the coals about the hypocrisy of claiming they conform to standards and should be interoperable with other products but have a long documented history to the contrary. Well done Mr. Lie (um, that's the Opera guy's real last name, not a swipe and Bill Gates).

Linux Powered Cat Feeder

I've been wanting to try out a BASIC Stamp project for a while... maybe someone will remember that at birthday time? :)

AutoGK 1.91 Beta Released

The next version of AutoGK is out. This time it's 1.91 beta.

VERSION HISTORY
1.91 beta

• fixed a bug when AutoGK didn't pick up all the vobs in DVD mode under FAT32 file system
• fixed check for update for some systems
• GUI is no longer reset after minimize/maximize operations
• message "color correction enabled" is no longer always displayed in the logs
• DGIndex updated to version 1.2.0 RC5
• faster color correction process via ColorMatrix.dll 1.8

Google Maps (again)

Google Maps is just cool enough to warrant a 2nd post. I wanted to point out the fact that you can enter search info in very natural ways. Try searching for "RV parks near Eugene, OR" or "Costco near Eugene, OR" and it does a pretty decent job of getting the hits you were looking for in the first few links. Check it out, I've found it's almost quicker/easier than the yellow pages. One kink that still needs to be ironed out is that sure, it found the Costco you were looking for, or the Selco Credit Union, but the phone number offered as the first hit might not be the "regular" phone number, but the phone number of some department within the store as a whole. For instance, the first result for Costco provided me with the pharmacy for Costco. Correct store, and all the maps were right, but it should return the main phone number first. Not a problem I'd like to tackle, but they're already doing amazing stuff, I'm sure they'll get it worked out. If you haven't checked out Google Maps yet, go do it now!

The "at" Command... Cool!

Ever have the need to execute a command at some certain time but don't want to go through the trouble of setting up a cron entry? Use the at command. Usage is pretty simple, type at and a time (do an man at for usage), press enter, enter your command(s) (each one on its own line), the press CTRL-D on a blank line and the command will appear to just go away. But at the time you set, the commands you entered will be executed. This is a great way to run one-time commands with no setup. Need to turn your machine off in an hour? No problem. Want to download a file in the middle of the night when the server isn't being pounded, just use at in conjunction with wget and you're set.

Independent Browser Speed Comparison

My suspicions have been confirmed, Opera kicks ass! Regardless of platform.

Chroot Jail Configuration Made Easy

Here's an article that shows you how to configure a chroot jail with very little effort. What is a "chroot jail" you might ask? It's a container you can create on your Linux system that users and/or programs will see as their entire file system. So while your account may be able to get to the real / directory, theirs will be tucked away in some nice harmless area of your system. It's one way to protect from remote users or programs getting access to areas of your system you don't want them to. The beauty is that they have no idea they're in a chroot jail as the file system looks completely intact (albeit a little boring, I'm sure)

PHP/MySQL Tutorial

This is a tutorial showing how to access MySQL databases from PHP in a web browser. This is a key way to create dynamic web pages. Also see here.

Cub Scout Popcorn Sales Record Broken

Here a CNN.com article telling of a Cub Scout that sold more than $25,000 worth of Trail's End popcorn, breaking the previous all-time record by a cool $5k. That's a LOT of popcorn!

AutoGK 1.90 Beta Released

AutoGK 1.90 Beta has been released:

• split of AVI files is adjusted a bit to prevent small undersize of the first CD
• cosmetic GUI changes
• DGIndex is updated to version 1.2.0 RC3
• added check for unsupported MPEG-1 files
• file mode is working under win9x (and even DVD mode compatibility with win9x is improved)
• fixed bug in parsing of TS (again)
• added ".colorcorrection" hidden option (see hidden_options.txt for more info)
• installer deletes saved AutoGK settings

ATI Catalyst 5.2 Drivers Released

Read the release notes here.

Never heard of Alien for Linux?

Here's an article on a great utility that allows you to convert between Red Hat .rpm, Debian .dpkg, Stampede .slp, and Slackware .tgz file formats. Sometimes you'll find a rare program you want to check out but it's not prepackaged for your distribution. Alien might just save the day!

MSN/Windows Messenger Outage Fixed

While they didn't elaborate much, the recent Messenger outage is now fixed. I noticed the day before the outage it kept telling me my password was wrong (even though I could use it to log into Hotmail). Weird. Probably just some disgruntled employee...

Recycled Machines Make Great Linux Routers

A nice "real world" story of how a guy used leftover machines to make Linux-based routers to help a senior community expand their computer offerings over the years. This covers many years of implementation and growing. An interesting read.

Google Maps Beta

Google has unleashed their latest beta service, Google Maps. Unfortunately it doesn't currently support Opera, my browser of choice. It does work fine in FireFox though, so I can still use it and avoid IE. Google Maps is more like an atlas program (such as Streets and Trips) than other online mapping sites. Maps are draggable, addesses searched for pop up with a nice little drop shadowed caption, and road are fleshed out to more than single-pixel lines. It's a very nice mapping system. I did notice a few "missing blocks" of data from time to time, but usually a simple manipulation of the map filled in the data. Check it out, you might like it.

History of Samba & Development Style

A very interesting article that describes the history of Samba and the development style they use. I mistakenly thought it was developed to be compatible with Windows CIFS file sharing when in fact Samba was released the year before Windows NT and their CIFS was released. An interesting read for Windows or Linux folks that would like a brief history of Samba/CIFS.

Xbox 2 to be "Xbox 360"?

Engagdet is reporting a person "in the know" told them the Xbox 2 will be named Xbox 360. I like the reference to Microsoft feeling Xbox 2 somehow seemed inferior to Playstation 3 so they changed their naming scheme. I was thinking recently that Sony really nabbed a great name for a videogame system with "Playstation". I'm sure they won't stray too far with the name of their next machine.

Google "Local" Searches in Beta

Google just launched a handy new local search on their beta page. Enter somthing like "boats" and "Eugene, OR" and you get something like this which comes complete with a labeled map highlighting the top hits. This is definitely the direction search engines should be going!

Setting up an Internet Lounge

While this article is about setting up a temporary internet lounge, I found it to be a very concise recipe for creating your own custom Knoppix LiveCD. This could be very useful.

18 Linux LiveCD Distros Reviewed!

OSNews reviews 18 Linux LiveCD Distros. That's a lot of CDs!

Among those who made the list:

• Basilisk (based on Fedora)
• BeatrIX (based on Debian/Knoppix/Ubuntu)
• Berry Linux (based on Fedora)
• Damn Small Linux (based on Debian)
• FreeSBIE (based on Free BSD)
• Gnoppix (Knoppix/Debian plus Gnome, now merged with Ubuntu)
• Kanotix (modified Knoppix/Debian)
• Knoppix (the first big live CD, based on Debian)
• Luit (Debian/Xfce, rox filing system)
• Mandrake Move (based on Mandrake)
• Mepis (based on Debian)
• Morphix (modular Knoppix/Debian)
• PCLinuxOS Preview (a Mandrake fork)
• Sam (based on Mandrake/Xfce)
• SLAX (based on Slackware)
• Suse 9.1 and 9.2 (rpm-based)
• Ubuntu Live (based on Debian)
• Xfld (Debian/Damn Small Linux and Xfce)

Linux Migration Cookbook Review

Here's a short review of IBM's Linux Migration Cookbook. Good reading before switching over to a Linux desktop.

I Just Couldn't Resist...

Which Website Are You?

Here's what I was...

Which Website are You?

Remote Access with FreeNX in 5 Steps

Here's a short tutorial on setting up FreeNX that covers installation on a Mandrake machine. For Debian, simply replace all the rpm downloads and installs with:

apt-get nxserver (yes, that's it)

Note: I use FreeNX all the time and think it's great. It's so much faster than regular X11 over the net and really close to 100% speed when used on a 100mbit LAN.

AutoGK 1.89 Beta Released

Not to be outdone, AutoGK 1.89 Beta has been released.

A couple of old bugs fixed, improved handling of TS sources and minor cosmetic changes. Full change log:

- fixed audio detection for some configurations in file mode
- AutoGK respects max resolution settings after change of matrix during resizing step
- some new icons (should look OK on non-WinXP systems)
- improved PIDs detection for transport streams
- remove .tstream hidden option
- added .aspect hidden option to override 16:9 vs 4:3 input AR
- input dir (or its parent) are persistent for different AutoGK runs.