random neuron misfires

I’ve been using i2p for a few things, including browsing and keeping my online research for new business ventures out of the prying eyes of my local Internet providers.

Typically this means using a web browser of some sort to access content on the i2p networks (information that certain restrictive governments would prefer not be made available to the public at large), but it could also mean using an IM client, irc, or other tools to get to resources across the Internet in a secure fashion as well.

You can configure your browser manually to use the i2p proxy settings (127.0.0.1:4444 by default), or if you’re using FireFox, you can use an add-on by Eric Jung called FoxyProxy to configure those URLs for you.

Here’s how! (click the images below for full-size versions)

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I have been an American Express customer for many years. I have an AMEX card that gives me points, miles and is honored by Delta Airlines for free flights for Seryn when she flies with me.

My payment history on this card is what American Express themselves calls “stellar” in their own records. Every 3 months, I call American Express and ask them to either:

1. Raise by credit limit (careful, a high credit limit can be harmful too), or
2. Lower the APR on the card

So far, they’ve done both in every case, granting me a higher credit limit and a nice, low APR.

I also check my credit scores every month online using “My FICO” and they are clean and pristine. Everything that was ever a mark on my credit has been removed and/or resolved. My credit score is rated as “Excellent”, and there are no faults at all on my history at this point.

So as a result of me being a good borrower, American Express decided to slash my credit limit by 30% (!!), the exactly amount of credit limit I wasn’t using on the card.

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My work machine constantly locks me out of my two corporate accounts there, depending on which resource or website I’m accessing while connected via the VPN.

When I access the parent company’s web infrastructure, my ML corporate ID is locked out. When I access some of the ML sites and resources, my BAC corporate ID is locked out. I must unlock my account 5-6 times a day, every day.

It’s frustrating, and kills my productivity. It happens so often, I added a speed-dial entry to my phone to call the Help Desk and navigate through the automated phone menu to unlock my account without human intervention. I needed to find a better way!

Digging around in the Windows developer documentation, I found it, and just in the nick of time…

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If you use Putty to SSH or telnet around from your Windows machine(s) to your UNIX or Linux machines, you’ve probably yearned for some added functionality.

One of the biggest requests from anyone using Putty, is tabs!

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I’ve been looking around for a GOOD case for my BlackBerry Bold 9000 and 9700, and ran across a few that were pretty durable. I like the cases at Seidio and they’ve never done me wrong for my Palm OS devices, batteries and accessories.

Then I found… the Fuel and the (new) Fuel Lite, from Case-Mate. It looked like exactly what I was after to protect the BlackBerry and give it an extra little boost of battery life, with the integrated battery and charging circuit.

Do you see the big problem with these two cases? The screen faces out!!

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The folks at Remember the Milk have finally come out of beta on their “MilkSync for Outlook” plugin (only for Pro users, sorry to all you non-subscribing users, but you can upgrade to a Pro account).

It does exactly what it claims to do, and does it well. I highly recommend installing it, if you’re a Pro user (I am!).

Remember to adhere to the precautions: Backup, backup, backup!

I only use Microsoft Outlook 2010 in a VMware Workstation VM, so I rarely keep it loaded all the time, but for those desktop users who spend a lot of time in Microsoft Outlook, this is going to help!

Now here’s why I can’t use it: It requires running Microsoft Outlook. Since I use a BlackBerry device, and carry that with me all the time. I have it set to sync every hour, with the RTM servers.

If I move to MilkSync for Outlook, I lose that functionality, and the only place I can create Tasks that sync to RTM, is inside Outlook running inside that VM, running on a laptop/desktop machine. That doesn’t fit my “always on, always connected” methodology, but it might be perfect for everyone else!

I also run Linux, and the only access I’d have would be by virtualizing Windows + Outlook in that host environment.

Give it a try, and see if you like it. They love feedback, so let them know!

I’ve been using TweetDeck for quite some time on Linux, after I managed to get getting Twhirl working on Linux under 64-bit Adobe Air.

TweetDeck is a lovely app, graceful and very useful. It has its minor visual and UI bugs, but it’s the best I’ve seen out of the other hundreds of Twitter apps out there… and it’s 100% free.

I have 3 laptops I use on a regular basis running both Windows and Linux. I’m not always on the Linux laptop, but I wanted to make sure that my TweetDeck settings on my Windows laptops were identical to the ones on my Linux laptop, including all of my searches, columns and other settings. I plug one of my Windows laptops into my television, so I can use the larger screen as my monitor (see below).

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I’ve been running an Apache server for over a decade, serving up hundreds of websites over the years, and one thing remains constant: abusers attacking Apache, looking for a way in, or a way to DDoS attack your server so others can’t get to the content you’re providing.

We don’t call these people ‘hackers‘, ‘crackers’ nor do we even call them ‘criminals’. They’re just idiots, and they’re easily stopped.

The rest of this post will show quite a few ways to slow or stop these attackers from taking down your Apache web server or abusing it in any way.

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This problem is discussed at great length on many forums, but almost every solution proposed does not work as described. Let me explain…

The Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N as shipped from Buffalo Wireless comes shipped with a Buffalo-specific, modified version of the Open Source dd-wrt project. Their version of the firmware has some advanced features not available in the public community version of dd-wrt.

The Buffalo dd-wrt firmware image is also encrypted, so you can’t directly flash it to the WHR if you’ve already flashed your Buffalo router with the community version of dd-wrt or OpenWRT. You can’t even use the stock Buffalo CD installer to “reset” the router back to the stock firmware. That doesn’t work.

Once you flash off the Buffalo-supplied firmware, you’re stuck without it.

Until now…

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After testing several different methods, I finally managed to get around the 5-client restriction on the Novatel MiFi 2372 I recently purchased from Amazon.

First, some background information:

The Novatel 2372 I purchased had “some minor issues“, and I was looking for a way to get at the firmware, or updated versions of the firmware, so I could address and hopefully fix these. I was more than happy to start rolling my own firmware, to put onto the device if necessary.

If you search the Interweb, there are hundreds of posts, blogs and webpages out there on how to tweak the MiFi device by making changes to the exported config.xml file and re-import it. Some of these work, some (even after making the changes), do not. One of them is the hard-coded limit on incoming device (client) connections on the MiFi itself… this is hard-locked at 5 connections, no matter how you modify the config.xml to support more.

You can however, update the number of DHCP addresses the DHCP server on the MiFi will give out, just not the number of incoming connections to the MiFi.

But I figured out a better way to solve this in a very clean and elegant way. Unfortunately, it involves a second router… but one with a LOT more functionality. This can probably be reproduced by a smaller router, but I used what I already had in my personal lab to create this working proof of concept.

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