The Random Stuff page is just for everything that does not fit in with the main page. This may include things like reviews of things, blog posts by us, random talk about bananas and things that we think are neat.

Saturday
May082010

Mac Questions by Non-geeks 

DateSaturday, May 8, 2010 at 8:33PM

This is part of the Questions by Non-geeks series.

In this article we answer some common questions that non-geeks ask us about the Mac computing platform.

What are Macs?

Macs are computers that are made by Apple Inc. Mac's come in all shapes and sizes from the little Mac mini, the all in one iMac, the laptop range (MacBook or MacBook Pro) and to the all powerful Mac Pro. By default Macs come with OSX preinstalled rather than Windows like most PCs do and they also come with a suite of software called iLife. This software allows you to manage photos, create DVD's, create websites and much more.

What do you use Macs for?

Macs are great for general computer use such as browsing the web, checking email, listening to music, watching videos etc as well as for more specialist roles such as Computer Aided Design and media creation. Media creation is where the Mac really stands out, as said previously Mac's come with iLife by default and is great for people who want to manage their photos and create movies and music. There are also some fantastic, professional grade tools for the Mac, these include Final Cut, Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Logic Studio.

Click to read more ...

AuthorI.T Massive | CommentPost a Comment | | | Print ArticlePrint Article
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Saturday
Aug152009

PC Mag's Top 100 Websites

DateSaturday, August 15, 2009 at 10:08PM

I found a really cool article on PC Mag today which is their list of their top 100 websites, it's cool how they have done it too, one half is the "Classic" websites, basically these are sites that should be on every top website list, the other half of the list is "Undiscovered" websites which I have to admit is pretty cool. There were some sites missing of course Graham's website and The I.T Massive website, maybe next year eh? Check out their list here.

 

AuthorI.T Massive | CommentPost a Comment | | | Print ArticlePrint Article
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Thursday
Jul092009

Werid pfSense Fault

DateThursday, July 9, 2009 at 2:13PM

In my recent play time with the pfSense captive portal I came across a strange fault. Basically when the HTTPS (SSL) option for login is enabled on the captive portal it uses the HTTPS server name that is set in the config to check against the Common Name on the SSL certificate so it doesn't produces a name mismatch error.

In my testing I changed the HTTPS server name a few times then back to the original that was on the certificate. After having done this and connecting to the captive portal I would get a generic DNS can't connect error... not good. I had just added a new restrictive rule set to the captive portal interface and I thought that was dropping packets.

I remembered about the Diagnostics: Packet Capture tool that is included in the UI (which is really cool btw). This tool helped me debug the problem by capturing the failed connection attempt to a capture file which I then downloaded and loaded it into Wireshark for analysis.

For some strange reason the original system name (pfsense.local, not the same as the hostname) that worked before, now would not resolve the name. I didn't have time to mess about with it further so I just added the name to the Services: DNS forwarder as shown above.

That solved my problem, an ugly hack workaround but I don't care. I may look into it further if I get the time and if anyone knows about this let me know.

 
AuthorGraham | CommentPost a Comment | | | Print ArticlePrint Article
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Wednesday
Jul012009

Graham's Favourite Free Apps

DateWednesday, July 1, 2009 at 5:34PM

These are some of my favourite applications for Linux/BSD, Mac and Windows. All these applications are free of charge, some are open source projects. I've also included what operating systems I used these programs in brackets for ones that aren't obvious.

Terminal Stuff

Favourite in category: Terminator (Gnome)

This is a cool little program that is very handy if you use a lot of command terminals. You can split the screen into as many terminal windows as you want, you can have multiple tabs with different groups of windows and you can maximise and zoom a single terminal window to full screen which is useful when doing demonstrations. More screenshots can be found on the project website.

Runners Up:

Guake (Gnome) / Yakuake (KDE)

Screen (Terminal Multiplexer App)
OpenSSH / PuTTY (Windows)

Dedicated Distributions

Favourite in category: pfSense

This Disribution is a FreeBSD based dedicated firewall/router device that is used on commodity hardware. I started using pfSense after I was left unsatisfied with the configurable options on Smoothwall Express and I was blown away too see all the advanced features in pfSense. pfSense is based on m0n0wall which is also a good firewall if not a little on the simple side for me.

Runners Up:

Click to read more ...

AuthorGraham | CommentPost a Comment | | | Print ArticlePrint Article
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Wednesday
Jul012009

Fun with sed and domain blacklists

DateWednesday, July 1, 2009 at 10:32AM

Well I couldn't sleep one night and a friend sent me a DNS blacklist of domain names. I needed it to be in the windows hosts file format to install on to an old computer, the format looks a little like this:

127.0.0.1 somedomainxxxxxxxxxxxxx.ru
127.0.0.1 someotherurlyyyy.com

However the list had several thousand lines and cut and paste will only get you so far. I used the program sed on my mac to change all these lines quickly.

$ sed "s/^/127.0.0.1\ /" InPutFile >> OutPutFile

fun times :)

Disclaimer: I'm by no means a command line wizard so there is probably a better way of doing this. Security gained by loopback hosts files is also questionable.

AuthorGraham | CommentPost a Comment | | | Print ArticlePrint Article
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