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, my website, Graham's website and of course The I.T Massive website, maybe next year eh? Check out their list here.

To read more of Andreios' Geeky Stuff Blog, just click here.

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.

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:

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.

I do admit that my first impressions of PC-BSD was not favorable, this was mainly due to the use of KDE 4 which I had a few issues with. However the whole BSD/KDE combo is growing on me with easy access to FreeBSD technologies like jails on a desktop.

 Read the Full Text on Graham's Blog.

Ok let's start off with the search aspect, Twitter's search is not too bad and the # tagging has helped with this too. Thing is with Google the search would become even more powerful than it is now. Imagine if the built in search could be much more detailed. What if you could search for tweets from people in California who are Java developers and what they think of a possible Sun buyout? I know I would love to be able to see that amount of detail. What if there was a Google search page that allowed you to see real a real time Twitter feed along side your normal search results. 

I think the biggest thing that could be brought to the table is Google's ad network. There could be several ways Twitter could uses this network to generate money. An example of this is on the Twitter profile or home page. This area does have a small box mainly for twitter tips and advertisements of Twitter applications, what if they used Google to analyze your bio, the trending topics, your recent tweets and the most recent tweets you have received and targeted ads at you. So if you mainly tweet about gadgets then gadget stores and blogs could go there, this could also work for people that visit your profile page too since it is assumed that they would be interested in what your interested in. 

Letting Go

Pointers

Online Package Tracking

Substitute

Sudo Sandwich

Misusing Slang

Map of the Internet

The Problem with Wikipedia

Nintendo Surgeon

Random Number

Cat Proximity

The Difference

These are the products that I used:

ALIX 2D3 System Board - LX800 / 256MB RAM / 3 LAN / mini-PCI / USB + CASE
Installed with PFSense.

Pros

• Low power usage.
• No operating noise.
• Small boxed size.
• Very stable (99 days uptime at time of writing).
• Can be upgraded with wireless via mini-PCI.

Cons

What do you use Linux for?
I use Linux as a system that is basically a utility tool belt to do things that I need to do. I love the flexibility of Linux for example it can be used as a system (Live CD) to recover files from a broken install of windows or a quick tool to check computer hardware is functional without changing the Windows install in any way.

I also have used Linux as a platform to run a few services and to build an Intrusion Detection System security net. I've used Linux since about 2002 and Ubuntu since the initial release in 2004 and loved it until about Ubuntu 8.04 when upgrades started breaking things like sound.

I DON'T use Linux as an everyday desktop anymore as I found just about everything I wanted to do needed to be configured by hand to get to work. I found I spend more time fixing and setting up things than I did using it.

What do you like about Linux?

Introduction

Fable 2 takes place 500 years after Fable in the world of Albion. You play as the hero in the game who is referred to as Sparrow. A series of events leads to the character's realisation that they descend from a great hero and that's it's up to them to save the world from Lord Lucien's grasp. Fable 2 is only available for the Xbox 360.

Graham's bit

The game has great simplicity, the controls are nice and easy there are no insanely long combos to learn which makes this game easy to pick up and play. Navigation is simple too, you have a nice trail that you can follow to show you where to go which is a nice touch, it does make the game impossible to navigate without it mind you. There is one problem with the navigation though the maps lacked detail and there is no world map so it's difficult to understand where you are in the game world. The game should have had difficulty levels, the level of difficulty by default is too easy. The co-op play was also disappointing, it wasn't immersive and you couldn't bring your character across.