Marilyn Levin has generously decided to give one of her kidneys to Thomas Harris. The transplant is tentatively scheduled for August. But without your help, the life giving transplant will be delayed.

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5 Person Chat if I am On-Line - give me a shout!

If I am on-line and you want to chat in real time, or if I am off-line and you want to leave a message with my local IM program, allow pop-ups, then :::

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Cheese Weasel Day - April 3rd, bring bread!

31 March, 2008 19:39

Each April 3rd, the Cheese Weasel -- and I'm not making this up -- visits every IT person on the planet and leaves a slice of cheese under his or her mouse. I suggest checking under yours...

"Who brings the cheese on April 3rd?
The Cheese Weasel
He's not a silly bunny or a raindeer or a bird,
He's the Cheese Weasel
He's got a cute black tail
And tiny buck teeth
He doesn't bring fish, and he
Doesn't bring beef
So you'd better be good if you wanna get some cheese
From the Cheese Weasel."

[Day to Day] [Technology]
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Comcast compresses three HD television channels into two - FiOS and Comcast comparisons

31 March, 2008 18:36

It appears Comcast is working black magic on HD television media.  If you thought you were receiving true HD, think again, as Comcast is compressing three HD channels into two HD streams.  Bandwidth and television quality examples are shown after this post in relation to Comcast's delivered services:

"A public FCC hearing was held to discuss the accusations that Comcast was limiting bandwidth to file sharing peer to peer networks such as Bittorrent.

Documentation has arisen that Comcast has been sending reset packets to peers using these types of services.

It is claimed null personalities were paid to fill the seats of the FCC hearing, shutting out other interested parties and to applaud Comcast's positive remarks.

As recorded, one person admitted to this claim, and the response was: needed room for company executives.

Even National Public Radio (NPR) was having difficulty attending the hearing, amongst many other concerned citizens outside the walls of the room.

At the bottom of this post is audio with interviews of random attendees of the Comcast FCC hearing.  The source for this audio minutes:  http://www.freepress.net/node/35906" 

---

"The greatest differences are seen with movement. With slow movement on Comcast, the first thing you notice is added noise and a softer image, as fine detail is filtered from the picture signal. The greater the rate of movement, the more detail you lose and the more noise you see. With intense movement, you see more blocking and skipped frames. In VideoRedo, I noticed that a number of frames in the FiOS signal simply did not exist in the Comcast signal during motion intensive scenes. This may be responsible for the stutter and excessive motion blur seen with some video sequences on Comcast.

To Comcast's credit, I saw little to no difference on movie channels such as HBO, Cinemax, and Starz. I did see some blurring and reduced detail during fast movement on Starz, but the recordings from Cinemax and HBO were virtually identical, even on action movies such as 300 and Gladiator. When there was blocking on the Comcast feed of Cinemax, that blocking was also on the FiOS feed." -- [user on AVSforum]

[Technology] [Bullshit]
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Sage essential oil as an alternative to Wormwood, clinical properties of Thuja, Absinthe and y-aminobutyric acid receptors

30 March, 2008 14:50

In relation to (sage essential oil as an alternative to wormwood), I have a couple resources you may find in interest related to Wormwood - Absinthe, following my Blog post text about Thujone displayed here:

"Wormwood essential oil is hard to come by.  Most often you have to import the oil from another country and hope the FDA doesn't take it has a digestible substance.  The reason for this, or the feature is absinthe.

This word meaning 'undrinkable' in Greek is an elixir containing the chemical thujone.  Thujone is known as a psychoactive drug causing hallucinations and addiction.  Current research concludes that thujone is a GABA antagonist.  Although it was banned in the united states by the FDA, (I am uncertain about DEA regulations) with no evidence to conclude such, thujone can be found in many other readily available essential oils.

Sage essential oil can contain as much as 50% thujone, however the FDA considers this a safe additive to food products and cosmetics.  Anis and Florence fennel also contain thujone and readily available to US consumers.

Sage essential oil is used as a food additive in Vermouth for flavoring.  Sage, as used by an aromatherapist can help treat stress related symptoms and act as a cerebral sedative.  Sage should be used with care however, because of the large amount of thujone it contains.  Thujone in large quantities is toxic, (causing renal failure and death) and any oil that contains thujone should be used with care.

Sage in conjunction with niacin, ginko biloba, or other herbs that improve circulation through vasodilation is known to help treat symptoms of Schizophrenia and other mental disorders.  Sage, and other camphor chemotypes can also have strong adverse reactions with those prown to epileptic seizures." -- My Blog post dated March the 2nd of 2007

---

"..thujone is found in plants of the Thuja genus, which is arborvitae and cedar.  They are in the conifer family Cupressa-cae, which also includes Juniperus (the source of gin), and nutmeg; the related Tsuga genus is hemlock (a well-known poison).

The newly noted connection with GABAA receptor channel antagonism should not be surprising in light of previous observations..."

-- Absinthe and y-aminobutyric acid receptors Richard W. Olsen* Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, University of California School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1735: This is a link to the PDF file.

---

"Arbor vitae (Thuja occidentalis L.) is a native European tree widely used in homeopathy and evidence-based phytotherapy. Many reviews and monographs have been published on the herbal substance’s descrip- tion, mode of action and clinical use. However, no comprehensive evidence-based review is available. Therefore, our aim was to search MEDLINE databases and survey manufacturers for further details or unpublished data. This review presents the botany, ethnobotany and phytochemistry, especially the different contents of essential oil (Thujone) in relation to different extraction procedures of this medic- inal plant. Thuja’s antiviral action and immunopharmacological potential, such as stimulatory and co-stimulatory effects on cytokine and antibody production and activation of macrophages and other immunocompetent cells, have been evaluated in numerous in vitro and in vivo investigations. Although no controlled trials have been conducted on Thuja occ alone, many clinical studies have been performed with a herbal medicinal product containing a special extract of Thuja occ and other immunostimulants, demonstrating its therapeutic efficacy and safety in respiratory tract infections."

-- Thuja occidentalis (Arbor vitae): A Review of its Pharmaceutical, Pharmacological and Clinical Properties, Belal Naser, Cornelia Bodinet, Martin Tegtmeier and Ulrike Lindequist: This is a link to the PDF file.

---

I often use Wormwood essential oil, which I was once afraid of, to ease stomach pains, muscle tension, and anxiety.  If it is not an Absinthe drink, their are a lot of safe uses that responsible, medically uneducated, yet aware people can take advantage of.

---

[Aromatherapy]
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Internet Services Business Meeting Mock-up - hilarious video

30 March, 2008 11:14

Internet Services Business Meeting Mock up - hilarious video of off the wall, over the top employee personalities, in which the attendees are at a business meeting with all sorts of surprise technology humor involved:

[Day to Day] [Technology] [Software] [Bullshit]
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dealing with a mess of wires / plugs of all different sizes, not enough room on your surge protector? - here is a solution

29 March, 2008 07:37

Most surge protectors have 4 to 6 power slots making it hard to deal with large bulky power adapters taking up two power outlets at a time.  You will be lucky to get 4 power outlets available to you.

Here is a nice solution and fix:

"The ezSpace UFO...You have never seen anything like it. The ezSpace UFO is more than just a plug expander. It is the most versatile power extender in the world. With its PATENTED design (internal and external), there are things that you can do with the UFO that can’t be done with any other expander. The UFO allows you to fit a power transformer on every plug in the most compact configuration. The inverse slanted design allows you to use the least amount of space to plug in large power transformers. The UFO comes in a host of specialized configurations. UFOs can be plugged into the wall or be configured as an extension cord. You can get one with surge protection or as just a plug extender."

via [Gizmodo] 

[Day to Day] [Technology]
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Postfix backup mail server using the defer and hold queues - Here are the parameters I used for this test:

28 March, 2008 01:51

First thing is first.  If I decide to move out of state, and my home mail server is unavailable, I want to make sure mail is held for at least 45 days, even though the primary mail exchange server might have a week or two of queue lifetime.

The backup MX priority 20 will not accept any incoming mail other than the domains or addresses listed as I will describe bellow, it is not a matter of resource load, it is just a pure backup mall server. 

For mx1.mailhost [DNS MX Priority 10, the first], I have the ONE variables defined to use, for relay to the backup after its own queue experiation: 

SMTP_FALLBACK_RELAY = MY.MX2.IP.ADDR

---

I couldn't imagine not having the need to flush the queue after 45 days, so here is the variable I defined:

MAX_QUEUE_LIFETIME = 45d

Next you want to list the domains, or fully qualified e-mail addresses that you want backed up.  You can store this in text, hash, mysql, sqlite, etc...

permit_mx_backup = host1.com host2.com user@host3.com user@host4.com

When you initially receive mail for the permit_mx_backup list, it is put immediately into a spool, that of which you can define the type of with FALLBACK_TRANSPORT.  It is not touched: no attempt to deliver, scan the messages - it just plain forgets about the incoming mail that got stored.  This is how I did this:

MINIMUL_BACKOFF_TIME = 43200

The above example is in seconds which equals 8 hours.  I can get an easily repairable downed server up in that amount of time.  The suffix can be appended with h (hour) or d (day).

After the initial  back-off time, the next attempt will not be made for another 2 hours as defined in this following configuration variable:

QUEUE_RUN_DELAY = 7200

Consecutive attempts will be made every two hours, after the minimal backup time, until the max queue lifetime of 45 days expires, in which case you could use a non normalized form of archiving your mail to an external source, or a 3rd backup MX priority 30 for a third archive.

After 8, 10, or 45 days, you may then deliver the mail back to your primary mail exchange server by flushing the hold queue into the active queue, with instructions in "man postsuper"

---

Since we re not accepting incoming public mail on mx2, I use this variable to defer the e-mail at each connection attempt until mx1 can be brought back on-line:

SMTPD_RECIPIENT_RESTRICTIONS = defer

This will defer the message from all - FROM: email@ANY, and notify that the sender that the e-mail is temporarily unable to be received. It will then try other MX priority servers in your DNS entries.

If the address or domain is in the permit_mx_backup list, than this list is the only mail that will be accepted and backed-up.  Make sure you have your trusted networks in which this is allowed defined for this. I use the following variable (incoming mail):

SMTPD_SENDER_RESTRICTIONS = permit_mx_backup, defer 

Make some modifications to the above, and see what works best for you.  I have only tested, needed, and used this for two days, so numerous modifications may be needed, not to mention modifications in conjunction with other SMTP provisionings you may have.

[Software] [Projects]
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NS 347 NAS LAN Disk - excellent firmware for the RDC2882 chipset

28 March, 2008 00:26

A little more than a year ago, I blogged about my NS-347 NAS LAN Disk, and my inability to utilize any of the features of the SMB and FTP built in services, and that the connectivity issues were weak and almost unusable.

After trying a couple third party firmware software systems, I decided it would make for a better USB external drive instead, mainly because of the aluminum casing and the ability to format a ext3 file system - also making the NAS capabilities unusable.

About 6 months ago I formated the drive with a FAT file system so that I could have a portable large storage device.

I mostly forgot about the networking aspect of the machine, until I found a firmware update in which currently allows me password protected windows (SMB) folder shares, and username & password FTP accounts, including public FTP access to a designated folder.

For the last couple of days after updating the firmware, I have decided to keep it on the LAN permanantly, as the dependability is now solid enough to use for both personal, and personal project type storage application needs.

Trying to find the IP address I set a year and a half ago was pretty easy.  I used tcpdump -i ethX -vvv, set a snap-length of 3500, and discovered the UDP SMB advertisements of the shares I set way back then, and with that the IP I had set on the network of that time.

So now I had the IP, but damn if I could remember the password I had set for the machine.

Documentation for the NS-347 is not centralized, so it took me a bit to figure out how to reset the firmware configuration.

The first thing I did was look inside the casing on the bread board for a reset button, and I could not find one.  I later read on a forum that their was, quite indeed, a button on that board.

I took another look, and by god I found it.  That button is damn small, and looks more like small chip, like a power regulator, or resistor.

In order to reset the device to its default settings, you must hold down the button while powering up the system - holding for about 10 to 15 seconds while it boots its operating system.  I had to give this firmware a shot.

The default IP for the LAN disk is  169.254.0.1, with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 - how strange.  I set my ethernet device to an IP on that network address, fired up my browser, and received a login / password prompt.

The default username and password for the NS-347 is admin / admin.

I didn't even play around, knowing quite well the last third party replacement was just as cheap as the factory default firmware, so I immediately update the device.

I have tried NAS-BASIC 47, and I was not happy with it, switched, and now I updated to 48, with the same boot loader, hoping I could maintain some productive usability with it.

Once the firmware was updated, I was overjoyed to see that you could set per folder passwords on Windows File Shares.  No ability for custom usernames however.

Next I realized that I could now set both username and passwords for FTP folders, read write permissions, along with the options of enabling public FTP on a specific folder, and changing the default FTP TCP port.

I quickly moved to the testing faze.  SMB shares, which were once unusable for more than single access, one file per session transfers, now has the ability to support sessions with multiple access to the file system.  At this point I was pretty much sold on keeping it on the LAN, instead of a USB drive.

FTP access is great for providing WAN access, as the software has the ability of using both a username and password of 12 characters per account.  Do a dd on /dev/urandom, and you have a quite secure FTP server in which I feel comfortable putting on the WAN side of my network for several projects of mine in which I need to exchange data.  In the past, I have always used sftp, scp, or netcat (nc) from my remote sites.

You can set a private static IP for the NAS, or use DHCP to retrieve network information.  It also has a built in DHCP server which I have no use for.

You may also set a hostname for internal DNS, and a group name for workgroups.

Another nice feature is it's built in NTP client in which you have the ability to update the date and time from any time server you choose, for filesystem accounting information.

It now has all sorts of application possibilities on my quite active home network.

The RDC firmware version mentions wget access, however not accessible, so this port also probably has hidden abilities that one might find hacking the firmware binary.

NAS-BASIC48 can be found at this link: http://www.aroundmyroom.com/landisk found ON THIS blog post from the author at aroundmyroom.com.  You will love the background image!

[Technology] [Software] [Projects]
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peer to peer traffic limiting using Comcast as an ISP - FCC hearing with paid attendees making no room for concerned attendants

20 March, 2008 13:50

A public FCC hearing was held to discuss the accusations that Comcast was limiting bandwidth to file sharing peer to peer networks such as Bittorrent.

Documentation has arisen that Comcast has been sending reset packets to peers using these types of services.

It is claimed null personalities were paid to fill the seats of the FCC hearing, shutting out other interested parties and to applaud Comcast's positive remarks.

As recorded, one person admitted to this claim, and the response was: needed room for company executives.

Even National Public Radio (NPR) was having difficulty attending the hearing, amongst many other concerned citizens outside the walls of the room.

At the bottom of this post is audio with interviews of random attendees of the Comcast FCC hearing.  The source for this audio minutes:  http://www.freepress.net/node/35906

 

[Technology] [Software] [Bullshit]
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