May 12, 2009

Quest Taken, Google Issues

Short post today, I think. First off, I have picked out a gadget I am going to steadily pool money towards. I want to buy a Nokia N810 because that would significantly assist me in my future goal of integrating a server into my car. At least it would provide a device capable of easily controlling it from a wireless connection. They aren't cheap, but I should be able to grab one in a few months or so since most of my funds get spent on bills that I can't push back in the slightest. Yay economy right?

I noticed earlier I was having issues reaching Google, at first I thought it was something to do with my internet. I was wrong in that assumption. Turns out it was an OpenDNS issue. Not sure exactly what was going wrong, but Google was unreachable for several hours for some people it seems. I switched to my ISP default DNS servers and Google loaded right up with not issues. As of now, the OpenDNS problems seem to be fixed so OpenDNS users no longer need to pull hair out in frustration.

~Update~
Seems OpenDNS had issues with their Chicago server in the form of a bug, they've reported it has been fixed now and are currently looking into a few other things. Here is a link to the update sent directly to me: OpenDNS' Response

May 5, 2009

To The Lands Of Bash Scripting And Back To The Shores Of Lordaeron

For those who don't know, Warcraft reference.

I've had an eventful last week or so. Stumbled across some bash scripting tutorials and that spurred me to rewrite my old installer script that I use to recover my software and any minor tweaks after a re-install of Ubuntu. I test some experimental stuff so occasionally I end up nuking the install. Or I just feel like redoing it and seing if I can figure out a better process of going about a set of optimizations that work better or even more seamlessly.

Two days after my bump into the tutorials on the Net, I had what could be considered an alpha release of Shade_Install. That is the name my script will go by for future reference. The original design was focused (and hard coded) for various things specific to my computer so I never needed any user interaction beyond the type in root password deal. The alpha branches away from that, it implements a menu system and has a few different options. The one I have been using on it at least once or twice a week is the option to install the latest Aircrack-ng suite from the svn source code. Granted the script has to download the full svn source each time thanks to the use of a temporary directory, but that is a very small price to pay to avoid unnecessary clutter. Besides, I have a second script that is just the Aircrack-ng updating portion if I really only feel like doing that.

Now to explain why I mention Lordaeron. I just finished playing the Human campaign on Warcraft III about thirty minutes before this post. Thanks to my manager, I now have three legit cd key sets for Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne to use on my laptop and any other computer on my network. I smell a LAN party if a friend drops by anytime soon. I had forgotten the game could be that much fun, although I am the equivilient of a noob on it due to my long absence. Ah well, there will be time to relearn all the strategies but for now I will just make my way through the Undead campaign before any serious poking about in VS human matches.

As an after thought, no I never received that old desktop PC so it looks like my old one is going to get repurposed. Possibly today if I can find a working hard drive to slap a Linux server install onto.