I’m selling a Chaintech Volari V3 128 MB 8x AGP video card. It is brand new and has never been used. I recently purchased it for my new server, but my motherboard has the wrong type of slot for the card. I didn’t realize it until after I bought it. On my new motherboard, I have a PCI-Express slot and the card is AGP. So I’m selling it now. So anyone who wants it, just contact me here. Later.
Category: Technology
Well I folded. I finally created a MySpace account, and to my surprise, I found people I haven’t talked to in years. It’s been so awesome to see what friends of mine from the past are doing nowadays. Well, that’s all for now …
For those of you who utilize my websites on a frequent basis, if you don’t know this already, I run all my sites off of my home DSL connection. Well, within the past several months, for whatever reason, the connection has been highly unstable. I have called SBC over and over, and have learned to just have them transfer me to the line department. Even though I’ve had the line department check out the connection, they seem to always find an issue and fix it, but it only lasts about a week, two tops. I wanted to let everyone know because sometimes my site maybe down, and that’s why. I’ve attempted to get SBC to fix it, but they seem to be totally unwilling. At this point, I’m waiting for a new ISP service to be released sometime this year: BPL (Broadband over Power Line). TXU has teamed up with Current Communications to offer High Speed internet service to over 2 million customers in the DFW area at very competitive prices (Dallas-Fort Worth Earns BPL Clout). I heard a rumor (haven’t actually read this anywhere), but apparently they are going to be offering speeds of 3 mbps down / 3 up! Oh man. This will basically give DSL and cable internet providers a run for their money. But this competition will actually be good in the long-run for the consumer, 1) because we will benefit as far as prices are concerned, and 2) we will benefit from increased bandwidth (mainly because DSL providers will soon be offering ADSL2+ connectivity (~20 mbps down / 3 – 5 up) over existing phonelines and cable providers will be offering DOCSIS 3.0 connectivity (10 mbps down / 3 up)). I say bring it on, but hurry up, this instability is killing me!
Update: 1/12/2009
A much better firmware now exists for this router called Tomato. Check it: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
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A friend of mine has a Linksys WRT54G v4, and there is some new hacked firmware out for it (hacked in a benevolent, legal way :). So we decided to upload this hacked firmware and give it a whirl. It worked with no problems and you can now boost the transmit power up to 251 mw (my WAP54G with hacked firmware goes up to 84 mw and I still get a connection from 6 houses down if that tells you anything). Theoretically, without any electronic interference between the router and your wireless card, you should be able to connect from quite a far distance (not sure exactly how far though as I have not tested it). This firmware will work for v1-v4 and seems to be really stable from what I can tell. So check it out and download it from here …
I installed the new AIM today and I am not impressed at all. First of all, it won’t even let you download the actuall install file. Rather, you download an executable that downloads it for you, and then runs the install. The download seems rather bulky as well and took way too long to download because of its size. Once I launched the application after a rather lengthy install, I came to see how much has been changed. For one, they took away the ability to add SSL certificates to encrypt your conversations. But the most annoying they they’ve done is made it to where AIM installs the AIM Toolbar install Internet Explorer without asking you, and changes your homepage to www.aimtoday.com. That really ticked me off, so I removed it went back to the version right before this latest one. I am not impressed at all. I don’t like the new layout, it’s bulky, they took away features and added newer, more annoying one’s. AOL, GoogleTalk is looking better everyday.
After having almost completed school (2 weeks, booya!), after taking Project Management in particular, and most importantly having dealt with it personally in the professional world, I’m seeing the necessity of proper planning and foresight on major projects, otherwise the results can be disasterous, and in some cases catastrophic. I mean you can hear that over and over, but when you experience the catastrophe yourself, it takes on a whole new meaning. Within the IT field, end-users become accustomed to using applications, websites, and certain functions on a daily basis. They just want it to work, and they don’t want it to change. It’s hard enough for many end-users that aren’t computer-savvy to begin with to remember where to go and what to do, but then changing the things they do know makes it even worse for them. And when you take the rug out from under them by introducing a new system, upgrade, or “improvement” to a smoothly functioning application or system, it really rocks their world. This is where proper planning comes into play. It’s really a very basic, fundamental concept that should be employed within a professional corporate environment that seems to go overlooked many times. If you get a system that works fine, I say stick with it, unless there are major security holes. But if you do have to upgrade to a newer system or application, try with the best of your ability to make the changeover seamless, otherwise you throw your end-users for a loop. Within a corporate environment, it can mean the difference between gaining or losing net profit. It can also mean the difference in your total operating costs increasing or decreasing for either having to repair all the screw-ups in the system due to improper planning and getting other people involved that shouldn’t be initially, or spending that extra time you might use repairing broken links with planning out your project at the very beginning. That’s my rant for the day …
Well, I’ve finally changed up my website architecture using Apache 2.0.55 to where it essentially looks like this: client browser connects to HTTP port 80 (or HTTPS port 443) through the internet to the outside of my firewall > the firewall NATs the connection to the web proxy ports (undisclosed) > the web proxy connects to one of several internal web servers I’ve specified it to connect to > the queried web server then renders the page back through the web proxy and then back to the client through the internet. Basically, with this new design in place, I can offload SSL processes to the web proxy (separate server) and it will take the encryption load off of my web servers (thus making it much more efficient on processing). I can also proxy any internal network appliance web interface (such as SHOUTCast servers, webcam servers, wireless access point servers, etc.) through the web proxy, and on top of that I can encrypt it all using AES-256 (when using Firefox), as well as password out specific sites at the Apache web server level. Some really sweet technology …
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Well, I’m experimenting with a new radio channel, “westerfunk.net >>> radio.” Check it out on westerfunk.net/radio. I don’t have it listed on any Shoutcast servers, mainly because I don’t want a ton of traffic (or RIAA and/or the FCC to come beat down my door). I mainly wanted to set it up to play with Shoutcast and learn how to setup this amazing free audio/video streaming server. I have most of my favorite bands, DJ mixes, and other various stuff playing on there now, so feel free to check it out from the links above. It’s broadcasting on TCP ports 8000 and 8002 (Lo-Fi and Hi-Fi, respectively) so you may not be able to get to it through certain firewall setups (such as a work environment), but give it a shot anyway and shoot me an email and tell me what you think.
I downloaded GoogleTalk (www.google.com/talk) last night and did some experimenting. I am very impressed. The VoIP function is one of the more impressive aspects about it mainly because it seems to have some rather intelligent networking algorithms within it. I’ll explain. I setup GoogleTalk on my laptop as well as one of my servers just to test out its functionality. I then called my server from my laptop and when I picked up the call on my server, it connected through my local area network instead of proxying through the internet to google’s server and then back to my server. In addition, today when I connected to my home network via my VPN connection from a remote location, I performed the same action (calling my server from my laptop) and it even connected through the VPN tunnel! For those of you that don’t understand why this is important, basically an entire voice conversation can be encrypted, meaning if someone wants to snoop my connection to possibly listen in on my communication, all the data is scrambled. The program seems to work about 10x better than AIM or MSN and the install is super-smooth. Pretty sweet …
I downloaded the latest version of Knoppix, ver. 4.0 (Live Linux Operating System CD, meaning you can boot-up straight to a Linux desktop off of the CD) and I have to say I’m very impressed. I currently have version 3.7 and it is really awesome. But not only is this new version faster and more efficient in its execution of the applications, they’ve also packed in a lot more sweet open-source programs to where you basically have everything you need right at your finger tips without having to install anything. In addition, it picked up every single one of my devices without me having to install a single driver. Although the Linux community has shot itself in the foot by keeping much of the functionality within the operating system rather cryptic, Linux is well on its way to becoming more user-friendly in my opinion. At the present time, you still need to know some of the basic commands to install many applications, connect network devices, and other various things, but hopefully in the future, they will make it all “point-and-click” (GUI) based so that it will catch on more with the non-nerd and non-IT people.