* Yes, once again I have re-worked the layout of the site. After all it has been what? at least four or five months since the last re-design. Did you think I was just going to let you get all comfortable-like looking at the same old layout??? Hah! not me, buddy. Gotta shake things up every once in a while, you know! That being said, whatcha’ think? (be nice, boys and girls!) Constructive criticism is always welcome!
Code — entered at 12:48PM
Comments…
Your RSS feed has gone a little goofy, though. http://feeds.archive.org/validator/check?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xionic.net%2F%7Ejkp%2Findex.xmlPosted Sat Aug 16 11:08:04 CDT 2003
From: Charles Sebold http://www.livingtorah.org/journal/
Oh, sorry. That was suposed to be ‘ramblings’Posted Fri Aug 15 20:02:21 CDT 2003
From: Paul Brahler
I have to second the complaint about your comment input box not being wide enough. Then again, I have yet to find a comment input box that is wide enough for all of my remblings..Posted Thu Aug 14 00:26:56 CDT 2003
From: Paul Brahler http://briefcase.yahoo.com/paul.brahler@sbcglobal.net
The thing that bothers me most about your new design is the white #, It drives me crazy because my background default is set to a gray color. So it stands out. and you comment input box isn’t wide enough. Otherwise great design.Posted Wed Aug 13 08:15:24 CDT 2003
From: Christopher Mayfield www.ap0.org
I do like this new layout. It is much easier on the eyes if I can say that.Posted Tue Aug 12 23:14:03 CDT 2003
From: Paul Brahler http://briefcase.yahoo.com/paul.brahler@sbcglobal.net
Sorry, not yet. I haven’t implemented any sorting routines, although it is a possibility for the future.Posted Tue Aug 12 20:30:54 CDT 2003
From: Jeff
so can you sort/search by catagories?Posted Tue Aug 12 17:19:22 CDT 2003
From: Christopher Mayfield www.ap0.org
* In my last entry, I mentioned that I was configuring a wireless access point (actually the piece of equipment is a wireless “router”, but I’ve configured it as an access point) to be able to roam about the house with my laptop still connected (albeit wirelessly) to the network. What’s the first thing anybody does when they get their wireless connection working? Right! I ran around the house with my laptop in hand, checking my signal strength. (okay, I didn’t exactly run, more like I walked quite cautiously with the laptop) I was a bit surprised to see how well the signal propagated throughout the house. Not a single dead spot! The signal was excellent even out on the back porch. Now, I have not positioned the access point to optimally broadcast a full lobe in all directions, in fact it is in the basement against a concrete wall, situated about five feet below ground level. At this point I figured it might be a good time to see just how far the signal propagated at a level that allowed network connectivity. I quickly configured the laptop and wireless card to monitor the entire range of spectrum covered by the 802.11b range (with the help of some excellent -and widely available open source tools). I set the laptop on the passenger seat of the van and drove around the neighborhood. At this point I was truly shocked to see that my signal was available from as far as five houses away. The other thing that I found quite suprising was the number of other access points I was able to locate merely by driving a few blocks.
Several of these other access points were still set to their default configurations, and thereby allowing just about anyone to utilize their internet connection. So, as an FYI, here are a couple of recommendations that every wireless access point user needs to remember:
o Change the SSID, but don’t change it to personal information like say, your address or your last name.
o Enable WEP to encrypt your connection, but don’t rely on it to protect you, because it won’t. If you buy your sweetie a gift over the web, and you use your credit card, that number can very easily be grabbed, and the level of encryption utilized by most wireless routers is quite easy to defeat.
o Disable DHCP. This is the mechanism that allows the router to indiscriminately hand out connections to just about anyone who wants one. Including encrypted connections. Choose a non-standard sub-net and assign a static IP to your laptop or desktop. Sure, DHCP makes connecting easier, but not just easier for you, easier for anyone driving by.
o Last, but not least, enable MAC address filtering. This tells the router to only accept connections from a specific network card (each card has a unique, identifying address that is seperate from the assigned IP). The drawback is that if your network card goes bad, and it needs to be replaced, you need to have an alternate method of connecting to the router to change the list of acceptable MAC addresses.
Like everything else, even a MAC address can be faked, so take this all with a grain of salt… These steps will NOT, I repeat WILL NOT guarantee that your network won’t be compromised, but these steps will make it more difficult for your assets to be abused. Comments? Corrections? Please add them below!
Entered at 16:54PM
Time for a few updates before the weekend is over…
Lets start off with the laptop… Of course I couldn’t just leave well enough alone, I had to make some ::ahem:: adjustments. The system comes stock with WindowsXP Home, so the first thing I did was re-partition the 40GB drive and re-installed XP on a little 8GB slice. I split the rest into three chunks, 15GB for Debian Linux, 15GB for FreeBSD 5.0 and the rest for swap space. (overkill on the swap, I’m sure…) I found a nifty little procedure on how to get the ghosted WinXP rescue disks to allow me to repartition the drive and reinstall the image on the newly resized slice. You can read the originals here. After that, the linux and bsd installs were pretty much no-brainers. I installed linux first, then FreeBSD, and ended up going back into the Debian install to reconfigure LILO to recognize all three O/S’es.
Ahhh… A triple-boot system!!! Life is good!! (Now if I could only get OS/X to run on it….)
I picked up a Linksys Wireless router and pcmcia card to start messing around with 802.11b. It took about thirty minutes to get things set up w/ encryption and such. (not that I trust it, mind you) I will say that I am quite surprised at how well the signal propagates from the back corner of my basement. I haven’t done any drive-by’s of the house yet to map the footprint, but I intend to do just that later this week.
So the unveiling of the new website was originally scheduled for this weekend. I have decided to push it back a few more days (perhaps another week) to tie together a few loose details…
Entered at 22:25PM
That penguin is showing up everywhere!!!
* Noticed over the weekend that my pages do not render very nicely at all with the Safari web browser. I have been slowly removing all of my old crufty bits from the site-code and trying to make it both CSS compliant as well as XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant. My stylesheet does in fact validate, but there are a couple of warnings that need to be cleaned up. As far as the XHTML validation, well, let’s just say that although I’ve removed a great deal, I still have a very long way to go.
Entered at 12:52PM
* I have finally made a purchase of a new laptop, specifically a Toshiba 1905-S301 ( P4 2.0Ghz, 256mb, 40GB, DVD/CD-RW) It’s not a model listed on the linux for laptops site, but I hope to remedy that. With what you might ask? Well, with Debian, of course! I am pretty much a total convert thanks to apt-get! I still use the BSDs in server situations, (firewalls, etc) but I am beginning to favor Debian for my main workstation more and more (I’m composing this email on an Ultrasparc I running Debian Woody with a stock 2.4.18 kernel (I keep breaking strange things when I recompile the 2.4.18 or 19 sources…)
Entered at 20:30PM
Comments
I have been shopping for a new laptop for a few weeks, stopping in at the Apple store about once a week. I was absolutely thrilled with Jobs’ keynote and the announcement of the 12″ powerbook. What an awesome little machine! Unfortunately, even with the amazing prices, I find my capital budget for hardware to be somewhat less than what is necessary to properly fund an Apple purchase at this point. I did play with the iBooks as well, and although they were well within my budget, the lack of power presented by the G3 was quite noticeable. I judged this merely by the time it took to load and/or switch between apps. (one of which was Safari) So, while I had Safari running, I pulled up my site and was less than thrilled with its rendering. I know my code isn’t the cleanest, especially with me re-writing things all the time, but sheesh, even IE renders the site pretty well. Posted Mon Feb 3 20:30:35 CST 2003
From: Jeff
How do you know that they don’t render well with Safari? Did you get a Power Mac?Posted Mon Feb 3 19:39:17 CST 2003
From: Charlie Sebold http://www.livingtorah.org/journal/
STS-107 has broken up over Texas, just after re-entry for a scheduled landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Details are available at NASA and CNN
* Playing with the colors again! Still not on the new server yet. I reinstalled the O/S three times over the weekend and I think I will do it once more tonight just so I get it just right. I also need to finish building my SGI Indy, which will most likely end up being my main workstation at home and may end up being our data server as well. (yes, it was running for a while, then I reinstalled the O/S on it a couple of times, and I think once more should get it just right ::grin::)
* I have finally decided that NetBSD/Sparc just isn’t up to the challenge of running Apache, PHP and/or Zope. I have been twisting and massaging the installs into every conceivable permutation (and a few inconcievable ones as well). Different versions, different configs, stock configs, you name it, I tried it. The closest I got was Apache 2.0.39 with PHP 4.1. Unfortunately, the server occasionally refused connections, refused to parse some of the php code, just to name a few of the issues. So now I go back to my home turf. I will be installing Solaris on the box sometime this weekend. I have a great deal of confidence that this configuration will work correctly with Apache and PHP, and with a bit of luck, even Zope may work.
* Now, don’t get me wrong about NetBSD- It has proven to be a most capable O/S on my firewall/nat box at home ( a little sparc classicX with a 4gig drive and about 60meg of ram, named Grendel). I have been very pleased with the way the O/S installed, configured and has been performing. Even with the network loaded, I have yet to see the little 50Mhz processor utilize more than about 8 percent of its capabilities.
* As Faith was going through some paperwork from Logan’s school, she came across another standardized test result. I have mentioned this before, but the school administers this test to assess the students reading level and comprehension. Logan always scores a couple of grades higher than his actual grade level. This year, however is a bit different. His score placed him in the 99th percentile (this is normal for him) of his peers and it rated his level and comprehension equal to the average twelfth grader after eight months. Wow! Quite wonderful news, eh? Then as I kept reading the report, it goes on to also list a suggested reading level for Logan to aim for. This year it suggested that he should read between 5th and 11th grade material. It seems the school thinks he should slow down and let the rest of the kids catch up. This is yet another example that reinforces our decision to home-school. Oh, if you are wondering what he is currently reading, besides his school work, he has started on Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, and so far, he seems to be enjoying it quite a bit!
* In other home school news, I should note that Logan’s home-schooling began on July 1. So far we have been covering the very fundamental aspects of his education, focusing on finding any deficits and quantifying his abilities. So far the deficits have been nearly non-existent. In addition to the standards of math, science, history, grammar and reading, in the evening we are also learning sign language and latin.
* Live in the Northern Hemisphere? Check out a crescent sunset next monday night! (remember, don’t look directly at it, use a special solar filter or better yet, a pinhole camera)
* Look’s like we’re going to find out just how right “Uncle Albert” really was… click here
* hehehe… (OK, so the first time I came out as a Sith Lord, I figured I’d better try again…)
*
:: how jedi are you? ::
* Well, so much for the broadband access increasing my time spent working on this journal! Between family, school, work (and working on my BSD firewall) I just can’t seem to devote as much time as I would like to this journal at the moment. I suppose that I could convert it to a weblog (that does seem to be the trend) and that would help, but for now, it’s just turtles, all the way down.
* For a long time now Faith and I have had an ongoing discourse on the deficits of public education. I think we both speak with some authority on the subject, since we are products of the public school system. After trying to work with the system to get Logan the education he needs and deserves, we have finally made a decision that should have been made long ago. Last week was Logan’s last week of public education. At least for the next few years. We have made the decision to home-school. We both feel that this is his best chance for a good education. Too many times we have spoken with teachers that are just overwhelmed by the number of children they teach, or seem to have some sort of power trip thing going on. Mostly it has been the quality and quantity of the material presented. Logan has now spent the last three years on addition and subtraction. It was not until the last two months of class that they finally progressed to fractions. Mind you, Logan, Faith and I all have had discussions with his teachers in an attempt to accelerate his learning material and nothing ever happened. Not that I blame the teachers themselves necessarily, Logan has had the benefit of one or two of the best teachers I have come across, it just seems that there hands are tied by the system that requires that the children pass state-wide standardized tests. Therefore, that is the curriculum they teach regardless of what a child’s individual needs may be. And my children’s individual needs will be best met at home.
* Just for grins, I went ahead and took the BeliefNet’s Belief-O-Matic quiz that purports to categorize what your spiritual beliefs are. It appears that Charlie was close, as both Unitarian and Taoism appear in my top ten.
Here are the top ten (out of the twenty-seven that I was categorized
as):
1. Mahayana Buddhism (100%)
2. New Age (90%)
3. Liberal Quakers (89%)
4. Neo-Pagan (88%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (87%)
6. Theravada Buddhism (86%)
7. Taoism (80%)
8. Bah�’� Faith (72%)
9. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (71%)
10. Orthodox Quaker (69%)
(also of interest are the last six entries)
22. Orthodox Judaism (35%)
23. Islam (33%)
24. Seventh Day Adventist (33%)
25. Jehovah’s Witness (26%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (20%)
27. Roman Catholic (20%)
Kind of a curious mix, don’t you think?
Jeff, Journal | Jeff | 
August 11, 2003 11:26 pm | 
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