Reinke Faces Life

It recycles my yim. Whatelse does it do? Why?

Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) is a winner!

http://www.technologyrescue.com/welcome.html

Obsolete computers anchored by a Linux server is a cost effective winner.

http://mobile.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/09/1727256&from=rss

Quote:

Asterisk is free software that lets you create a fully functional, easily customizable, private branch exchange (PBX). Businesses like Asterisk because they can save money by using it, and because it is open source, they can add functionality to it easily and inexpensively. Asterisk is also becoming popular with home office users — so much so that it spawned a new project called Asterisk@Home, which released its 1.0 version last year. Now there’s even a version of Asterisk that runs on OpenWrt, a Linux distribution designed to run on your wireless router (see “OpenWrt nears prime time”). I found it to be worthwhile, but I wouldn’t depend on it for my home office.

Now that doesn’t inspire confidence. I’m not that much of a hero to risk failure. Additionally, I really want Asterix for the great PBX features. Maybe I need to go for a big implementation of Asterix on a spare box.

Hmmm?!?!

http://allwaysync.com/

Well, despite the advertisement that says “free for personal use”, I find that there is an interesting definition of “personal” use. My loveable luggable needs to disgourge its secrets each night to my home desktop via the wireless lan. Being the typical lazy guy, and after missing a few files, I thought let me consider a free utility for this duty. Google popped AllWaySync, so I looked at it first. It appeared to work ok. Although it did arm wrestle with outlook over who culd lock the pst file. It’s huge. And, it was the reason, I really got religion about backups when I had to spend the better part of a day kowtowing to redmond and reinputting all my email settings manually into LookOut when it barfed them into the bit bucket. I’m not sure I really ever really recovered from that episode. It convinces me more to leave the microsoft fold when vista comes along. Any way, allwaysync has a limit to the number of files and number of bytes you use for free. It says somehting nasty like you’re not a personal user. I am too. So off to the bit bucket with it and one to Karen’s Replicator.

http://www.rnmap.com/smack-the-penguin.php

Sometimes you just feel like whacking something!

My objectives are to get a running wiki up on my luggable and my worktop.

Both have to be true wikis even though they may not be always online since I’ll be hosting them on notebooks.

I have to also remember that I have all sort of obsolete hardware that might be able to be brought up in support. The problem is that wireless router at home and the firewalls at work.

Assuming that I could get the PERSPECTIVE running “right”, (It works; the problems are mine.) then something might appear to be “do-able”.

Following up my failed test, attempting to have Frenchy in NC access and update the wiki, I figured I try again on the same subnet. Addressing it as http://192.168.1.100 from 101 works. Hmm. On the morrow, I’ll repeat the test at work and see if it works across the dirty and clean networks. If that works or doesn’t work, put the luggable up on the VWBBie and try again. If both work, I’m befuddled. If either works, I’m befuddle. If neither works, then at least it’s consistent results. Arghh!

A wiki is the essence of collaboration. If I put all my thinking in a wiki and I give others access to it, then together we can build on it. You would enter your comments or unique pages. Over time, it becomes the logical addition of all our collaborations.

The idea of a wiki has many implementations. Some free; some pay. Most on Linux; a few on Windoze; one on Mac; a couple that are platform agonistic. My goal is to have a free wiki running here at home to allow collaboration on
my projects. If I can do it, it becomes one of my marketable skills!

Thanks for the help. It really did work from my desk at work; the same setup as we tried! And, of course, it works from home here, but that’s not a real test because it was on the same subnet. It’s only usefull if it can be hosted to the internet globally.

Test results
1) For whatever reason, I couldn’t have a GTalk conversation riding on the Verizon Wireless BroadBand. Not to convict VWBB, but is the new thing in the equation.

2) You couldn’t “see” http://reinkefj.shancknet.nu but then neither could I from where it should have resolved to. Interesting? Since I did it at work one day, I suspect the DynDns Dynamic DNS service shacknet.nu. It’s free so I can complain too much.

3) Frustrating when you can not see what is happening. 

Amazing how many useful ones there are out there.

WIKIs on the Internet

• The Free Encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• The Free Dictionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page
• The Free Library of Books http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
• The Free News Wiki http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
• The Free compendium of quotations http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page

The Clearinghouse http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Now you’d think since I got it on my personal notebook, this would be trivial. Wrong. Several bumps. Right now I’m stuck trying to add antoehr user. Sigh. Nothing’s every easy.

http://home.comcast.net/~v2y2r0n27rhj6y/TURKEY/index.htm

It required me to recognize that I couldn’t make microsoft publisher publish turkey directly to the web. So … … I published to the luggable and filezillaed to the site.

One of the advantages of a home lan COULD be that you can automagically back up all the data on your primary machine to an old machine. In my case, my primary is this dell luggable, not loveable, and my “old” machine is in my garage. A free directory synchronizer like AllWaySync (http://allwaysync.com) or Karen’s Replicator (http://www.karenware.com), both FREE, can sync your primary machine to the secondary.

p.s., Because I am a belt and suspenders guy, I do make a monthly copy of my data on cd, put it on top of my mom’s refridgerator, and I still worry! 

Following up on my idea of an “annualized” directory structure, I want to have the underlying directory structure built quickly and easily. SO … … going back to my old batch days it’s real easy to create a batch file in the root that does all the md’s (make directory) you need. “md x md y md z” I’m going to use the topcial as lower case and the people ones with the letter z. The the topics will sort to the top and the people to the bottom.

My latest thinking on directory organization is by “year” and then by topic. I reserve the year “0000” for the things that will never change and always be necessary to keep around. So, for example the scan of my drivers license in stored under \000\FJR and so I’ll always be able to find it when I need my DL number for all the dumb forms. It goes along with my concept of scanning everything. I am buried in paper and it’s a way of fighting back.

Well time to bite the bullet. My favorite podcasters (http://www.freetalklive.com) have completely lost their technical mind imho and are now producing one fat, but still free, podcast for each three hour show. Now, you may or may not know but to fast forward my rca lyra mp3 player is a pia. Soooo, I have to bite the bullet and figure out how to split their mp3 into fragments. Argh. Cheaply and easily goes without saying. I wonder if that music player software I bought in moment of weakenss can do this. Hmmm.

… … to stop phishing, to track results, and to authenticate correspondents.

I was moved to write to a national technology figure about phishing. She was recommending a tool to authenticate websites and prevent phishing. I think I came up with a way to handle it awhile ago. Zero cost , of course. And easy to implement. Here’s my note, which I then put on a job search site I like.

WRT: Phishing

A while ago, before Yahoo came up with Address Guard, before GMAIL made extra email addresses commonplace, I focused on the idea of using different email addresses for different purposes. One specific email address for financial traffic, another for orders, and others for topical use. Thus when phishes came in on ANY of the non-financial email, they were so obvious there was no doubt.

Now with Address Guard, a yahoo subscriber can assign each correspondent their “own” email address. For free, a GMAIL user can accomplish the same thing with either multiple free gmail accounts or that new plus feature. So for a user at any level to be phished now days is kind of hard to believe.

In fact, it is so easy to assign different email address to different correspondents, that I have been doing it for other purposes. When you throw in the ability to manage email traffic by rules in most email packages, it really serves to “authenticate” email traffic is “good” stuff.

It even helps with plain old spam. For example, if some things comes in on a non-assigned email address, it stands a high probability of being spam.

Until we get to ipv6 and absolutely authentic email verification, this can serve to minimize the risk of being fooled.

It is a neat tool. I have started to use it for collecting my thoughts and organizing multi-step projects.

Well, it is exciting. I actually figured out how to logon to my wiki. Create another user. Write a document, but haven’t figured out how to link it or put it anywhere but the sand box. But I’m getting there. So ends today’s 30 minute creativity session.

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page 

FreeMind is a FREE mind-mapping program. A mind map is a diagram used for linking ideas to a central key idea. It is used to visualize, classify, structure, and generate ideas, as well as an aid in study, problem solving, and in making decisions.

http://www.high-beyond.com/perspective.aspx?action=view&page=perspective.Welcome

I have been fascinated with hypertext since I first played with it in the 70s. The wiki is in my mind the logical follow on to that. Deploying one that is wholy contained on my notebook is just neat. This will allow me to demonstrate it. And, use it. From a technology perspective it was a little ugly. I spent a few hours punding on the keyboard to make it work. But, by following the docs, I did it.

Today for fun, I actually figured out how to serve webpages from my notebook. Now it really only works when I am not behind protective walls. So, my Verizon Wireless Broadband is such a situation. So, I went over to DynDns and signed up for one of their free dynamic dns entries. That gives you a “domain name” hung off their main domain name. And, it has a little client that updates from time to time as necessary. So bingo, pop that name into a webpage, and it resioves to the webpage on my notebook.

Now I don’t know why I’ll need it. But, I have the capability should I figure out how to exploit it. Ask if you have questions.