Friday, September 26, 2003

There's been a Chronicles of George Wikipedia entry on and off for a few months now. I only became aware of it within the last few weeks, but I've been following its progress with great interest--the current debate (it's a tiny debate, but it's still a debate) is over whether or not the CoG is appropriate for Wikipedia, which, if you don't know, is almost like an open source encyclopedia. I posted my thoughts about the CoG's worthiness (or lack of) on the talk page, and we'll see if it stays listed. Wikipedia is cool, and the gents posting previously bring up some good points. I heartily recommend a visit. Pop by and add your fuel to the fire!

Posted by Keeper @ 05:46 PM CST [Link]

Saturday, September 20, 2003

You know what I like best about Astaro? Cool-ass graphs.

I was forced to buy a new 80GB hard drive and re-install Windows because of Tron. The brainiac programmers over at Monolith decided to have Tron use MP3 files for all digital sound, and decided that those MP3 files would be played with some ancient crappy Windows media drivers, or something. This screws over most people who have installed codec packs--if you've been doing any diddling with your sound codecs, you don't get any digital sound. There are about four million threads on the Tron 2.0 forums full of irate people who would like to play the game, but have no sound.

I was overdue for a Windows reload anyway, so I said fsck it and bit the bullet. Unfortunately, both my 80GB drives were at 95% capacity. Rather than clean them up, I again said fsck it and bought another 80GB hdd, so that I could install Windows on THAT, and then play musical chairs with my data.

Lovely. Unfortunately, Tron 2.0 wasn't really worth all the effort. It made for a nice diversion for a couple of days, but I ran through it like crap through a goose. I remember, years ago, when games actually took months to play.

Those days, apparently, are dead.

Posted by Keeper @ 12:34 PM CST [Link]

Monday, September 1, 2003

Ha. The solution to the bandwidth problem turned out to be simple--return the network cards and buy two new ones. Once this was done, a quick re-install and reconfigure of Astaro gifted me with perfect Internet access. w00t!

Let it now be said--I LIKE ASTARO. This product is smooth. It really is an enterprise-grade solution, and there are more options than I would ever be able to use. You organize ports and protocol combinations into service groups (and all the common ones are pre-configured), and then you organize network ranges into network groups, and then you arrange them all with packet filters--allow or disallow this kind of service group traffic to pass from this network group to this other network group. It's UBER-configurable, and at the same time it's extremely easy to set up and get going. The install takes about ten minutes, after that, from the time you first visit the web interface to the time you're fully configured and browsing the web from behind an extremely secure firewall, only about forty-five more seconds have elapsed.

There's also the standard stuff like proxies, remote access enablement, vpn support, and just about any other feature you can imagine a stateful firewall having. I love it. And the MRTG-style reporting is damned cool, too! There's an incredibly cool demo of the web interface available on-line. It looks and smells exactly like the real thing, with all the options live. Tres cool.

Labor day today here in the states. This means no work and barbeque with friends. KK and I will be taking off in a couple of hours to head over to my buddy Steve's house, where we will also meet up with the F&SN Critic and his wife for a dinner of flame-grilled hamburgers with flame-grilled onions and lots of horseradish mustard. Mmmmm, horseradish mustard. Drooool.

Posted by Keeper @ 01:51 PM CST [Link]