OpenMoko In Person

Published on June 29, 2007 under Tech Blog

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of meeting up with some of the OpenMoko guys. You've seen me write a little bit about this project, but meeting them and actually getting to play with a device was quite enlightening. Most foreigners in Taipei take taxis, but not I. ... Read more.

Computex 2007 Review

Published on June 14, 2007 under Tech Blog

The buzz of Computex is finally wearing off, so I'll finally scribe my account of the event. Yan-Shih was kind enough to go with me, we actually called it a date. The scene was quite similar to the trade shows we ... Read more.

Liferea RSS in Liferea

Published on June 14, 2007 under Tech Blog

Today on Linux.com, Liferea was mentioned I find this particularly because I've been using Liferea for quite a few months, and haven't been able to find anything that better suits my needs. It sits quietly in the corner until a new RSS is available, and slightly changes color. Plus, ... Read more.

Another Amazon Phishing Attempt

Published on June 4, 2007 under Tech Blog

46 hours ago I received an email from Amazon. Things looked somewhat official, although my tech "sixth sense" told me it was a phishing attempt. Maybe it was the poor grammar, yet still not particularly obvious when I skimmed quickly through the email. Naturally I ... Read more.

I Hate GeoIP Advertising

Published on March 15, 2007 under Tech Blog

Preface to this rant: I am currently an expat living abroad. However, having most of my interests in Western culture, sometimes amusing things happen. This is the quick story of one of them. Remember, I'm in a coffee shop? GeoIPized Girls = have ... Read more.

Darn You HiNet

Published on Jan. 24, 2007 under Tech Blog

As you may know by now, I'm in Taiwan.  Live is pretty good here, especially the internet -- I'm sitting on a pretty decent 12M/1M connection.  But the company I have my internet through seems pretty laid back about network usage -- which for me isn't good.  Their ... Read more.

Lightweight Detection

Published on Jan. 23, 2007 under Tech Blog

I love my Snort, I really do.  But sometimes, I just don't need all the extra overhead -- sometimes the resources on a server are somewhat, limited.  Looking for a solution I stumbled upon PSAD , a way to detect port scans.  Since port scans are often one of ... Read more.

S3's Super Backups

Published on Jan. 22, 2007 under Tech Blog

My buddy Ian  mentioned Amazon's S3 service, and the potential for using it for fun webapps.  While utilizing it for webapps will have to wait a few months, I was able to use it as a cheap backup for my home server (pictures, documents, etc,.) -- and my server ... Read more.

HTML Validification Browser-Side

Published on Oct. 9, 2006 under Tech Blog

I like most standards, I can't deny it. One thing that I find too humorous is the amount of sites that are not valid, even sites that claim they are. One tool in my box is HTML Validator, an extensioni for Firefox. A nice little icon appears in the ... Read more.

Hunt the Anomaly

Published on Sept. 1, 2006 under Tech Blog

Information is power, or so many of us think. As an I.T. administrator, no matter what the level, it is of my opinion that knowing what your network is doing is important. This includes regular operation, what it could do in the event of a disaster, or when it is ... Read more.

Cisco IPSec Tutorial

Published on April 5, 2006 under Tech Blog

The following sites might be helpful to configure IPSec again, or on a more complex basis: http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/iaabu/pix/pix_60/ipsec/conipsec.htm http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/overload_private.shtml Read more.

Hamachi

Published on Jan. 23, 2006 under Tech Blog

My friend Ian told me about this originally, but my pen-testing cousin just send me the link as well. p2p VPN, w00t. Hamachi is a VPN alternative that does not have the normal router problems associated with IPSEC and PPTP vpns. That is good because of firewalls and nat ... Read more.

Another VPN Node

Published on Sept. 8, 2006 under Projects

Status: After consulting several vendors in Kuala Lumpur, I was able to get the right Cisco with the right IOS. One of their technicians came and installed it, and that night I hooked it up to our VPN. Besides the fact that the internet distribution is ... Read more.

Monitoring Traffic Usage

Published on Aug. 29, 2006 under Projects

Status: One of the greatest benefits, in my opinion, of Cisco routers is the ability to generate netflows. In a lot of ways, I would prefer to do this than implement some appliance (say, using ntop). The ability to analyse the amount of traffic becomes extremely ... Read more.

LDAP Backend

Published on July 7, 2006 under Projects

Status: Users don't like to remember passwords, heck, I don't like to remember to use passwords. I decided to upgrade all the webapps to authenticate off the domain, welcome a start to SSO. To do this I implemented the adldap php class to control authentication ... Read more.

An Upgrade in China

Published on June 2, 2006 under Projects

Status: Time has come to bring another network on the VPN, and perform some more upgrades. The usual by now, I guess. -Get China on VPN -Limit access to other locations -Update all systems -Perform security audits -Upgrade wifi -Setup video ... Read more.

Quickie Backups

Published on Feb. 1, 2006 under Projects

Status: All is well for some disasters, but what happens if our entire office burns down? SSH+rsync to the rescue, again. I first setup the PDC and webapp server to backup to the file server on a regular basis (PDC: incremental every day, full on Saturday). ... Read more.

Network Upgrade

Published on Nov. 14, 2005 under Projects

Status: A network upgrade is in order, since we are depending more and more on our internet connectivity. Historically we have been using D-Link "Business Grade" equipment over DSL lines (decent bandwidth, but not 100% reliable, plus latency that is a little high). Time for an ... Read more.

A Division in 30 Days

Published on June 30, 2005 under Projects

Status: On a Friday I was told we might purchase a division from another company. Monday I heard that we purchased the division, and that we needed to have a website taking orders and a call center, capable of handling 500+/day (and not short calls); by ... Read more.

Setting up Windows 2003 as an NTP Client

Published on April 29, 2008 under Notes and Tutorials

I have had to search for the commands to setup a Windows 2003 box as an ntp client a few times now, so have decided to finally write them down here for my own good measure. Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure there are three ways to setup a 2003 ... Read more.

Tunneling over SSH

Published on June 7, 2007 under Notes and Tutorials

As a rule, whenever I'm online I'm logged into my server back in the States. I'm also usually wireless, which we all know is beyond insecure -- I've found it especially useful to tunnel firefox over SSH. I try my best to tunnel stuff over SSH back, and if you ... Read more.

Lighttpd+Rewrite+OpenSEF+Joomla

Published on Oct. 14, 2006 under Notes and Tutorials

For those of you not needing Apache and the whole kitchen sink, [insert reason here], Lighttpd is a very attractive contender. For me, it has a small memory footprint, which is highly appealing. However, getting SEO urls to work (i.e. utilizing rewrite), isn't too straightforward. Tada! A little research ... Read more.