My Blog

Picture taken from here Mobile computing is becoming my newest fascination. My previous fascinations included network based storage, network redundancy, and network security. I enjoy making things do things that they were meant or designed to. This is part of the sould that drives my curiousity to the edge of insanity and teeters over the maw of the great beyond. I think eventually I will completely loose it and tumble into that gaping mouth that will swallow my soul and my body whole. Mobile computing isn’t what it was even 3 years ago, mobile computing by traditional defintion means being able to computer while having the ability to travel. Mobile computing devices were originally laptops, then PDA’s were taking over, now cell phones and custom Internet devices like my N810. The question you need to ask is this still what mobile computing is, or is it being morphed into the new Internet buzz phrase “Cloud Computing”? While I’ve been doing my crossposting series I’ve been thinking about what it truly means to be mobile and to work in the Internet cloud. Ironically there is more to my online activities then my blog and how far reaching I can make the posts go. I have pieces of me that exists in the cloud. Part of this is my blog postings, sometimes this gives you an intimate side of me. There is more that make up who I am and my goal is to see how I can migrate that online so I can access it any time and anywhere I have a net connection and an interface to the online world. I have the basic or myself, my memories in the blog posts. As I go on and digg further in my past more of these will survive through that. What about everythign I create? What about my pictures, my videos, my friends, my documents; will these things always be able to exist in the cloud? While there are methods to storing these data types online, what about when a service goes belly up? If a company goes out of business and you are relying on them with your data, where do you turn? Even the great and powerful Google isn’t immune to canceling a service and dropping your data. How do you stop that? How do you save your data? Is there even a reason for home storage anymore? I can say just typing that out that there will always be a reason for home storage. There will be private documents that you never want to show online. Private thoughts that will always remain yours alone. Until extrememely heavy encryption is ubuiquitous and tied soley to you, there is no reason to trust this data online. If you don’t want ANYONE ELSE to ever see it, keep it away from the Internet. I’m going to start a new blog series that investigates working in the cloud. I know that this has been done before, but I think it will work nicely with my crossposting god series. Why? Because I’m going to focus on data redundancy and survivability in the modern Internet age. I’m going to touch upon security and point out the insecurity that exists that most of us seem to ignore. There are pieces of me scattered in teh clouds, I want some semblance and organization before I run into the hurricane. Original From: Pieces of Me That Exist in the Cloud

Picture from here Myspace. Myspace. OK, I’ve repeated it a couple times I think I’m ready to actually talk about it. Unlike some other services where I explain the community and the functions, I’m going to refrain from doing that for Myspace. While I do have a myspace account, I won’t say that I truly like Myspace. I haven’t even bothered to give myself the uber l33t cool profile page. It’s a thing, not a good thing, not really a cool thing, just a thing. So if I’m so “meh” towards Myspace why do I post there? Because unfortunately some of my friends haven’t seen the light and still utilize the server. I keep in touch with old gaming friends there especially, so I feel I want to broadcast my information there as much as I do anywhere else. I’ll tell you what though, it isn’t easy. Myspace may proclaim new found openness, yet getting information into Myspace without using their tools is a pain in the butt. There are three things you can do remotely to update Myspace and keep your friends up to date on you. - RSS Widget - Status Updates - Blog Posts RSS Widgets: For any site that allows you to place a widget into your profile, and does not allow you any remote options to any other functions, RSS widgets allow you to bypass the whole “you can’t put our data in our service unless you use our tools” wall. While Myspace is getting better, it still wants you to play with it’s tools. If you do a search for RSS widget “Service Name” in Google you shuold be able to pick and choose the one that is right for you. By editing your Myspace profile and putting your embed code into your profile, you should be able to display the news feed you want right there on your profile page. While this is all fine and dandy it doesn’t really cover what a crossposting god wants to accomplish, so let’s move onto some of the other options. Status Updates: Your status updates, the “I’m in my room crying cause Kurt Cobain is still dead” status updates that you use on Myspace if your an aging emo kid, these can be done remotely. By utilizing service such as Ping.fm and Hellotxt you can update this via instant messenger or my choice, my Twitter account, without ever logging in. You can do this by creating an account on Hellotxt or Ping.fm and they will give you an email address in which you can notify them of your current status. We’ve discussed on ways to utilize e-mail notifications for use with other services, now you know the gateway to updating your Myspace status message. Blog Posts: Blog posts are the final achievement of the crossposting god when it comes to Myspace, unfortunately I only have a solution for Wordpress users. There is a plugin called MySpace Crossposter that will send your post over to your Myspace blog when it receives a publish event notification. To get some of the information in configuring this plugin (it’s one of the most pain in the butt) you will have to open up your wp-config.php file to get the accurate information. The options to program this plugin are as follows: Database Settings: These options will be automatically configured in future versions of the plugin. Most of the data is available in your wp-config.php file if you need to reference it. - DATABASE HOSTNAME: URL of your database host. NOTE: there is no “http://” before this server name - DATABASE NAME: Name of your WordPress database - “POST” TABLE NAME: Only change if your wp_posts table has a different name… Most users need not change this variable. - “META” TABLE NAME: Only change if your wp_postmeta table has a different name… Most users need not change this variable. - DB USERNAME: Username for the database - DB PASSWORD:Password for the database Blog Information: These options will be automatically configured in future versions of the plugin. - BLOG URL:URL for your blog, complete with http:// - BLOG NAME: Name of your blog, as you’d like it to appear on your MySpace post. Please note that it seems to have a problem with non alphanumeric characters, using them can cause some strange results. I had to configure it to be “Creevas World” instead of “Creeva’s World 2.0″, your mileage may vary. Myspace Login Credentials: Without these, you won’t be able to crosspost. - MYSPACE USERNAME:Your MySpace username - usually your email address. - MYSPACE PASSWORD:Your MySpace password. Post style: Choose “notification” or “full story”. - POST STYLE: n = Notification Style *recommended* (will drive traffic to your external blog) w = Whole Blog Entry (formatting may be lost in translation) Because of longer posts like this one won’t show up in the myspace blog I just have it setup to post a notification of a new blog post, this also allows me to see how often I get hits from my Myspace blog (not often I’ve either unloved or uninteresting). If you have further questions on making this all work together, please drop a comment below. The next chapter in the crossposting god series is going to be on RSS feeds and making them work for you in broadcasting your information across the blogosphere in a controlled manner. Picture from here Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series: The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox The Crossposting God Series Part 3 - Live Journal and Derivative Sites The Crossposting God Series Part 4 - Entry, Distribution, and End Points Original From: The Crossposting God Series Part 5 - Myspace

Tonight Xie and I went to the drive-in. The drive-in, America’s greatest past time decades ago. We were driving looking for a used computer store (which we never found) and stumbled across this drive-in. WIthin driving distance there are three drive-ins that we know about, this one happened to be playing the new Indiana Jones movie and Iron Man, neither of which we had seen. We killed time for a couple of hours and got there just as the line was forming. We did sneak in some food, but also bought beverages and candy from the concession stand. The admission was 5.00 and I thought that was a decent price, hence hte concession stand purchases. There has always been something special about the drive-in for me, my parents took me there quite a bit as a kid. I remember defintely seeing The Last Star Fighter and Ghostbusters at the drive-in with my parents, and as a teenager I went to quite a fwe more shows. There is somehting about having the freedom to talk, smoke, or make noise and watch a movie. If you get a chance make sure you get to your local drive-in, it’s a dying item in the world we live in now. Original From: Going to the Drive-In

So last night I did try to turn my laptop into a hackintosh, and it didn’t turn out so well. After installation I seemed to have an issue with my video not working (ironic that it works for the installation screens). I futzed with it for awhile and since have given up on it. I’m willing to work around issues and change my methodogy to do something becuase I’m not using it the way it’s supposed to be used (part of the mantra of everything I do - My old home network used to have 16 PC’s on it). I can only go so far in futzing before it’s more a nuisance and get’s in the way of getting things done. After following the Kalway steps that should have enabled to work, I relented and went back to Ubuntu Hardy Heron 64 Bit - a fresh install (plus the addition of 2 GB of ram) has mad it more “peppy” then it was before. I guess my next step will be working on getting VMware working so I can get the couple windows programs (Finale) that I want to work with running on my laptop. One great thing about a fresh install is that Ubuntu detected my wireless NIC right away - that took a couple hours to get working when I first installed Gutsy Gibbon. Xie had been having issues with Vista and we salavaged her data and loaded Ubuntu on her laptop as well. She remarked to me that it seemed to simple. I explained how complex do you need your operating system to appear? We’ll see how it goes with her, if she likes it, and if she’ll stick with it. She has become a bit more like me in the belief of the cloud computing dream and as long as the browser functions as well she’ll learn to work around everything else. I can say that I did have mixed feeling migrating to OSX since I wouldn’t be able to test Gnome Conduit anymore (except the N810 port), which would make it alot harder for me to work on documentation. Regardless it seems I’m now a linux for life type of guy, though it’s not like I don’t have an XP desktop 5 feet away from me, a 2k3 server in a basement, a first gen mac mini in the next room hooked to the TV, and my work assigned Mac Book Air next to this laptop. Maybe since the N810 is linux based I should have done a BSD on this laptop? I do think I’m very comfortable switching between OS’s and machines. Original From: Hackintosh Failure

So most you know that I was running Ubuntu Hardy Heron, but during some patching I hit some data corruption that caused my laptop to go all screwy. The first thing I noticed was the touchpad stopped working. Um….ok. Then I was getting errors on boot up, more or less when I logged in some packages kept crashing and wouldn’t restart. Upon trying to fix and reinstall packages I managed to loose gnome and then I couldn’t do anything. I did manage to get into the laptop last night with a Hardy Heron live DVD, after getting i I setup an FTP server and managed to save everything I cared about in my home directory. With this migration and the thought that I’m going to have to reinstall Linux anyways (yes I could sit down for more hours and repair the ubuntu installation, but I’m originally a windows guy I’ve saved my data it’s quicker at this point to format/reinstall), that I would try to get OSX working on my laptop. I have heard with the Intel GMA video driver there is some mouse artifact issues, but I didn’t notice any problems when I booted up the install DVD (this was when I was trying to decide my course of action and before I saved the data). Since I’ve read that the wifi works now, and the toushpad and audio should work, I don’t really give a care to the fact that the built in web cam might not work. I’ve been using my work Mac Air most the time at home and figured it is time to take a plunge to try to go more OSX based. I’m going to try to dual boot between OSX and Ubuntu, but I think that’s mostly to stick around for gnome conduit since that’s the only unique app worth me sticking around for. I do have it running on my n810 and I’ll still have linux on there, so I’m it’s not like I’m running. It’s like I’m experimenting around. So after I’m done I’ll let you know how successful I am. Original From: Tonight I’m Trying To Make My Laptop A Hackintosh

Photo From Here When we think about crossposting, it actually is more in depth then most people think. From a very simple level you go from one site to another. At a higher level though you are publishing from a single source to tens if not hundreds of places. Used correctly crossposting is a very publishing tool that lets you gain readers very cheaply (or free), as long as you are willing to login to all of these other sites to maintain readers and communities. If you are not willing to login to all these remote services and address comments, suggestions, and criticisms; then crossposting is not for you. There are three different functions in a crossposting architecture. These functions include your entry points, distribution points, and end points. You could also add filtering points but utilizing services like yahoo pipes, but for the moment that is out of scope of this discussion (for the moment). Each of these steps is important and you need to make sure you don’t get them screwed up or you can be in for one heck of a data cleanup time. Data entry points are areas in which you interact, create, and start your data. In my example if I wanted to put up an audio or video post to my blog I would use Utterz. With Utterz I can be on the road and pick up my phone, record a post, and it automatically gets posted and disseminated throughout my network. If I have a picture I want to share I normally upload it to Flickr and the chain starts all over again at that scale. Via SMS I can insert a quick status update to twitter and alert everyone following me and change my status across many network (I also do this via IM). For longer written posts I normally start at my own main blog. It just feels write to actually write this and start with my blog (though other blogs I may write an article on will eventually make it back here). Distribution points (which in some cases double as end-points in my design) are sites or services that pull in data (or has data pushed into it) and at that point sends the data off to another service. In my architecture sites that can resend data out via e-mail (such as blogger) become major distribution points for me. You have the ability to resend out up to 10 e-mails to other services from blogger. Another major distribution service for me is feedburner, this allows me to shape and filter me RSS feed and push this data out to other services either via widgets or into services that can import in RSS feed data directly. End points are the sites or feeds in which your readers are actually interacting with you at. It’s where they are reading and processing your information. It’s where comments are given and it’s where your data actually has meaning has come to rest. Some end-points may seem useless in your overall architecture (and yes when you become a crossposting god it is architecture), but how much is the one or two readers worth that may discover you through that service? Normally it takes only a couple minutes to setup a profile on a new service and set your data in place once it starts from it’s entry point. If you can’t automate this you need to decide if it’s worth the time to copy and paste the data across. To me, if I have paste data into an end-point manually, then it’s not worth it to me. Everything has to be done automatically. In the beginning of this article I mentioned that you need to make sure you don’t confuse a role in your architecture. The reason you need to be aware is that you have a chance of regurgitating the same data over and over again across all of your end points. When this happens the clean up is horrendous and can take anywhere from hours to weeks. The amount of effort you put in is relative to how much you care about that extra data hanging out on your end points. The more popular and feedback you get from an end point the more care, feeding, and presentation care you should put into it. In the crossposting god series part 5 we’ll be covering myspace. Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series: The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox The Crossposting God Series Part 3 - Live Journal and Derivative Sites Original From: The Crossposting God Series Part 4 - Entry, Distribution, and End Points

Picture from here Today I read a comment on slashdot that inspired me to write on this subject. The comment was written on the Secret History of Star Wars article and was given by Omestes and was as follows: Oh god, the Nerd/Dork/Geek argument. We always went with nerds being unwashed, antisocial geniuses who small vaguely like cheese, and somehow manage to reference Yoda, and differential equations in every utterance. Dorks are just like nerds, but dumber. And geeks are the swashbuckling generalists who get all the chicks (er…) because they have some modicum of social skills, while still knowing their swallows apart. By your jargon though, there still is a deep relation between nerds and dorks, since both of them are “systems” people. D&D is just another complex system to play with, just like math, code, and circuits. As is, oddly, the various nerd friendly mythologies. Both groups, by your classification, are equally likely to get the chicks… Not very. Neither math nor D&D impress many of the chicks I know. So where does arguing over the semantics of nerdery put one? Now this has been written about hundreds of times (if you don’t believe check google), but wanted to stick my two cents into this discussion. Let’s go over my own defintions:

Picture from here Dork: A dork is an invidual that has an interest in something in so far that they are singled out and people believe because of some title given to them they are thought to be an expert. In all actuality they are no better then a lay person and has the largest social anxieties and problems dealing with others. They normally think they are smarter then they are, but yet normally lack in depth knowledge to move them up the dork/nerd/geek ladder. However there is a missing factor to this definition, that is the fact that a dork is more likely to be the one that non dorks/nerds/geeks are most comfortable around. They are the ones that come off lovable - like when your friends or significant other says “You big dork”. While in some terms dork is an insult, when you properly it is definitely the least offensive to the general population at large.

Picture from here Nerd: Nerds are the individuals that have an interest in things the goes so far that not only do they have to prove tehy are better then everyone on the subject of interest, they also are so intensely interested in there area of focus that social situations really don’t bother them. It’s a waste of time for them. They don’t know why you don’t want to dig into replicating a hologram in your microwave with tin foil and baking soda, which they do daily for amusement.

Picture from here Geek: Geeks usually can deal with society the best, but completely zone out similar to nerds to nerds, but are normally capable of human relationships, though they took the hologram in the microwave and made a short film out of it to upload to youtube. They are interested in the obscure and bringing it into fruition. Normally geeks wear the term geek on themselves with a badge of honor.

Me and my grandparents - Years Ago (Years and Years) I can say in certain areas I’m all three, but I’m mostly a geek. I’m normally quite knowledgable in the things I have extreme interest in, and i’m capable of zoning out. Most of my family considers me a nerd when it comes to social networks (and I really am when it comes to crossposting). When it comes to certain items and gadgets I’m definetly a dork trying to be a geek. Wait what am I saying I was a pimp, I don’t know why I’m sticking myself into any of these groups. You don’t believe me? Behold Creeva with a mullet (once again many years ago):

So which do you identify with and what is your definitions? Original From: Nerd vs. Geek vs. Dork

Live journal is another online blog that focuses on community. While it is not as active and communal as Vox, it is infinitely more focused on true interaction between users compared to Myspace, Facebook, or any other of the more traditional collect as many friends as you can pokemon style social network. I can say that in rankings of comments and feedback I get back from readers that my live journal is only to third to my vox and my main blog in terms of interaction. Live journal has been so successful that there are derivative sites that use the live journal engine, the steps listed below should allow you (with some tweaking) to post to any of those sites as well. I really wish I could say that I had options for you to crosspost to live journal from Vox or Blogger, but currently unless you have a paid account you won’t be able to use the post by e-mail method I mentioned in the Vox article. If you do however wish to use a method and have a paid live journal subscription the steps are similar to the steps in the vox article. Since my main blog is wordpress I of course us a plugin to facilitate the crossposting - LiveJournal Crossposter to be exact. When wordpress 2.5 was released there was some issues with this plugin, but it’s since been updated and corrected. To configure this plugin you do the following steps. 1. Download and install the plugin 2. Activate the plugin in your wordpress installation on your plugin tab 3. Go to your settings tab and click on the live journal option 4. Fill in the following options: - LiveJournal-compliant host: (If you are using a LiveJournal-compliant site other than LiveJournal (like DeadJournal), enter the domain name here. LiveJournal users can use the default value) - LJ Username - LJ Password - Community: (If you wish your posts to be copied to a community, enter the community name here. Leaving this space blank will copy the posts to the specified user’s journal instead) That gives you the most basic configuration of this plugin, however unlike many other wordpress plugins that would end there, livejournal crossposter gives you a myriad of more options. Here are a few more things you can tweak: - Crosspost header/footer location - choices at the top or bottom of the post - Set blog name for crosspost header/footer - you can use your own blog’s title or a customer title - Custom crosspost header/footer - gives you the option for custom coding in the header or footer - Privacy level for all posts to LiveJournal - choices are public, private, or friends - Should comments be allowed on LiveJournal? - You can force commentors to come back to your blog to comment or allow them to comment directly in live journal (I just let them go directly onto live journal’s site) - Tag entries on LiveJournal? - Choices are -Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress categories only, Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress categories and tag, Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress tags only, and Do not tag LiveJournal entries. - How should LJXP handle More tags? Choices are - Link back to WordPress, Use an lj-cut, and Copy the entire entry to LiveJournal. - Select Categories to Crosspost - You have the option to choose which categories of posts you wish to send over to live journal. This allows you to target which posts and topics you wish to share, a big boon for some online publishers who are capable of writing on topic. I think livejournal crosspost should be a benchmark plugin for all other crossposting plugins to come. You can crosspost to live journal from other services, such as Utterz or Ping.fm - and I’ll be covering the Live Journal crossposting functions from those sites when I get to those articles. The next article in the series will cover the difference between crossposting endpoints and crossposting distribution points. Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series: The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox Original From: The Crossposting God Series Part 3 - Live Journal and Derivative Sites

Vox is a blog community that really focuses on the community aspect. When Xie first started blogging on vox I kind of poo pooed it. However I didn’t find some people that I knew from SWG that posted there, ever since I can tell you it is definetly a close knit community. Since I’m a crossposter I’m kind of on the outside, but I reply to comments and Oh My Yod! is a blog I visit every other day. Vox is one of the easier services to crosspost to since it allows post by e-mail. To enable posting by e-mail go through the follow steps: 1. Go to your account settings 2. Go to mobile settings - here you can get your moblog address (which you can post to from any e-mail address) and the settings you wish to apply to it. 3. Setup your account that you are crossposting from (which can be any service that sends out emails) There are two services I can recommend that you can use to post to Vox with (or bridge across with more on that around part 18), these are Blogger or a custom wordpress installation. For Blogger: 1. Go into your blog’s settings 2. Go to your emai tab 3. Paste your Vox moblog email address 4. Now any post that goes to your Blogger account (I’ll talk about crossposting to blogger in a later thread) For Wordpress 1. Download a plugin that allows for publishing via e-mai ( I use DJ EmailPublish) 2. Go to your settings page and configure the plugin pasting in the Vox moblog address 3. Save and apply settings 4. Now any post that goes up on your wordpress account crossposts over to your vox account. In part 3 I will be covering crossposting to live journal, so I hope to see you then. Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series: The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction Original From: The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox

Recently at work there was a security incident where a worker was tricked into loading malware on their machine. I was asked if your desktop antivirus solution fully protected us against this. While I’m sure most people that read my articles are aware of the answer I gave I thought I would share it with you (some parts have been rewritten from the original email) While our desktop antivirus solution does detect malware, spyware and virii vectors into the machine, the vendor needs to release definitions to make sure it can detect it. Due to the fact that we don’t have the name of the spyware in question I can’t verify whether the vendor has the definitions loaded to detect this particular piece of software. The problem with spyware and malware in general is the fast moving vector in which it changes code, when the code the definition was written for changes even slightly usually they won’t be able to detect it. Our desktop solution does include heuristics to detect malicious activity done by a software program, but this only goes so far. Researchers and malicious code writers have even turned this into a game - http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/28/Security-vendors-slam-Defcon-virus-contest_1.html. Without knowing all the steps included I think that the vendor did not have the definitions for this particular attack. Not only would it have to bypass the desktop virus scanners, it would have had to bypass the web filters if it came via a web page, the mail servers scanners if it came in via e-mail, also possibly any network scanners andmail gateway scanners that we may utilize. Protecting from malicious software will always be a moving target that there will never be 100% protection against. There are things that can be done to minimize it’s effects: 1. Layered security - scanning at the desktop, proxies, mail servers, mail gateways, and virus and IDS at network level - these can help detect known attack vectors and suspicious activity. 2. Vista - not something some people want to hear, but from a Windows perspective with the UAC (User Access Controls) it makes it more difficult for malware to get a foot hold into the operating system. This is much more effective on machines where the users do not have administrative rights to their machines. While machines with Linux and OSX operating systems are essentially immune to virii ( there is more virii added to Windows AV Definition files in a week then have ever been discovered for these operating systems) there are not immune to all malicious software. 3. Machine policies - group policies initiatives that lock down the machine lower the surface area that this malware can attack. Requiring users to only go to trusted sites and disabling unsigned active-X controls go a long way to minimizing these type of attacks from vectors outside of the just e-mail concerns. 4. User education - the more educated a user is, and the more conscious of the possible repercussions of their actions the less this type of attack happens. While even all of these will never have 100% coverage combined gives the desktops the best chance of detecting these types of threats. Original From: Does Our Desktop Anti-Virus Protect Us?