In case you weren’t aware of the exciting news, Wolfram Alpha just launched this evening. While quasi-geeks are typing up there comparisons of Alpha vs. Google (apple vs orange), I thought I would ask this new computational engine the most important question of all: What is the meaning of life?
I was pleased with the response.
Bravo Wolfram, Bravo.
Have you ever setup a VPN tunnel between two different brands of endpoints? It can be a fun challenge, and this time it proved to be no different.
Smoothwall Express is a free and easy to use open-source firewall solution. It’s designed to be so user friendly, that they sometimes don’t give access to customize certain features, such as VPN. Below is the VPN endpoint configuration.
They give you the basics for a connection, but they make the assumption that you’ll have a Smoothwall on the other side. As such, they don’t let you see or configure the vpn authentication, negotiation, identity, encryption, and other settings. To make matters worse, I couldn’t find the settings they use documented anywhere (let me know if you find them).
pfSense, on the other hand, gives you the freedom (and expects you) to determine the best settings for your needs.
This is where the problem comes in. Not knowing what Smoothwall’s expect for those settings, makes creating a VPN tunnel rather difficult. It means spending time trying and failing, and staring at logs to figure it out.
In the end, I got it working. Here are the pfSense settings I used to make it work:
Phase 1:
Phase 2:
If you end up with a pfSense firewall on one end, and SmoothWall on the other, I hope this is of help to you.
There are many useful and fun applications in the App Store. There are also many pointless apps that seem to catch public attention. While the list of available applications is long, there are two apps I am still waiting for. First, I am hopeful that Adium will release a chat client for the iPhone. Word on the street was that they would release one, but it seems apparent that was just a rumor for the time being. Second, I have wanted a way to remotely monitor my Mac server. This is easily the most important machine in my home network, and it provides many useful functions.
iStat widgets and menus have long been available for the Mac, and are a very popular suite of apps for many Mac users I know. The fact that they are free makes them an even better deal. If you like them, please donate. The one weakness is that these programs are focused on local monitoring, and don’t have a mechanism for remote monitoring. Read more…
Handbrake is a wonderful, open-source, utility for converting DVD movies to other formats. In my case, I use it to convert my DVD collection for use on my Apple TV. It works great.
Today, a new version (0.93) was released. It includes a long list of improvements from GUI updates to fixes for the lingering errors in 0.92. Among the list of changes was the news that Handbrake will no longer decrypt DVDs! This is no shock to Windows users, who are accustomed to using more than one application to rip a movie. For the rest of us, this is quite the change. I have never needed anything other than Handbrake.
Fortunately, it is an easily fixable issue, and the Handbrake developers include the solution. Simply install the VLC player. Handbrake will automatically leverage the necessary library to do the decryption, if needed.
What makes this news interesting to me is the “why” associated with this change. What was wrong with the built-in solution? Was it fear of some legal pressure? Is it based on a collaboration of those two teams? Is it assumed that the VLC team will continue to develop and manage the necessary library(ies) needed to keep this solution working? Is it possible that VLC is working to have Blu Ray decryption soon that Handbrake would now be able to leverage? In my dreams. 
The possibilities are both exciting, and slightly disconcerting, as this is a relatively important change for Handbrake users.
The more prominent change in their release, while not as interesting to me, was the addition of converting files and sources, other than DVD’s. This is similar in capability to the now open-sourced project VisualHub.
Well, maybe I should have titled this “Cleaning Your Laptop”, but this works on other things, including my iPhone.
I have many people ask me how to best clean their laptops, desktops, and other computer electronics. As you may know, there are many solutions sold at most gadget stores. Usually, these solutions are for cleaning LCDs, and contain isopropyl alcohol mixed with water.
However, many manufacturers do not recommend the use of chemicals. Read more…
It is no secret that Microsoft is struggling a bit to keep up with the competition. With the latest news coming out that they are even further behind on their release cycle for Windows 7, things are looking slightly bleak.
In a mobile PDA market that they once controlled, it seems that more competing solutions are released almost every week. So far, the only thing keeping them in the mix is Read more…
Android – the Google “Open Source” answer to smart phone software, doesn’t seem like it is really ready for primetime. I was surprised this week when T-Mobile and Google announced the new G1 phone and Android software. It was an event full of “It will probably” or “we imagine someone will…” promises to support how great their new platform is. Read more…
When I bought my first iPhone, and read the many reviews online, there was the occasional murmur from geeks wishing for a tethering solution for their iPhone.
Tethering is the process of linking your phone to your computer, and using the phones data connection on your laptop.
While i thought it would be kind of cool, I didn’t really care. The first gen iPhone is EDGE only. We all know that EDGE means SLOW. It’s fine for most iPhone tasks like checking email, getting RSS feeds, and mobile-formatted sites. Otherwise, it is slightly painful to use. That’s really not a good tethering solution.
Fast forward to today, we have the iPhone 3G now. If you are one of the lucky folks who have 3G in your area, tethering becomes a much more plausible thing. The problem is, AT&T still doesn’t have a solution for us iPhone users.
This past week I read an article about a new application in the iTunes App Store. It’s called NetShare – and it let’s you tether your iPhone. Read more…
Laptops are are a wonderful thing. They give us freedom from being tied to a desk, and nowadays they give us nearly the power of a desktop machine. While these technical wonders are great tools to have, they do come with a downside, and I don’t mean short battery life.
The downside is, it’s a portable machine, but has a hard drive made of moving parts. Hard drives don’t really like to be moved around while they are on. With 1 or 2 platters spinning at 5400 revolutions per minute(RPM), and the read/write heads floating barely off the platter surface, it is an opportunity for damage and data loss. Read more…
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Like most iPhone owners this weekend, I was having a blast with the new 2.0 software. Also as a .Mac user, I have watched the painful Mobile Me transition unfold (well, it still is). While waiting for the Mobile Me rollercoaster to stop, I spent a lot of time experimenting with or reading about many of the 500 applications now available for iPhone and iPod Touch users. Interestingly, I noticed one important application not on the list. Read more…
