What weekend? What sleep x_x?

Well... the weekend was great! Busy, but great! Most of it was spent at the CitiMen's conference at Citipointe Church Brisbane. Pastor Peter Pilt was the main speaker. I was rostered on multimedia for the Saturday sessions but still got a lot out of it. I'm going to see if I can get a copy of the recordings. Yes, I think it was that great. If you're a man and you're reading this, you should've been there! The theme of his messages was being the CEO of your life. C = Creativity, E = Enthusiasm, O = Organisation. Part of the creativity section was a challenge to make a list of things you want to do but instead of a list of 100 things to do before you die, it was a list of 50 things to do over the next 5 years. The list is supposed to be created in the space of a week. I thought it was a great idea so I've made my list of 50 things and am going to have it finalised by Friday night. What's on it? That's for me (and a few close friends) to know and you to find out when they're completed. Sunday was mainly at church which was a bit busy too but I'm out the other side and enjoyed the journey :P.

Unforunately I haven't been sleeping well the last few nights :( It's taken me ages to get to sleep and I wake up extremely early for no apparent reason. It finally got to me on Monday morning when I got up and didn't trust myself to drive to the bus stop without falling asleep behind the wheel... Hence, I skipped the day at TAFE. I've got no idea what's going on but if it doesn't stop soon I suspect I'll have to go see a doc or something...

bleurgh, great day and change of Linux distro

Let me first start off by saying that I really don't feel great. I had a rest this arvo, woke up tonight and now I just feel... x_x... very sore, I'll probably spend tomorrow in bed and sleep early tonight. Now, that covers bleurgh.

Great day

It's been a great day. First up it was pay day and now that I've got my Cert IV I'm pretty sure I get paid more. I have the moneys in my account but not sure how much I'm getting paid exactly because I had a load of extra hours to be paid from the holiday period.

After finding all that in my account, I headed off to TAFE for the day. When the bus arrived, the ticket machines were broken so everyone with 1o-trip saver cards (such as your truly) were just told to get on the bus and that was the end of it. FREE BUS TRIP ^_^!!

Next up, during my first TAFE class everyone in the class had to write something on the whiteboard that we would check if we couldn't access the network. Everyone had to have something different. After that we all had to pick one (other than our own), rub it off the board and explain it. The teacher's name was written on the board so I was considering rubbing that off then Kenny comes to me and tells me he'll buy me a drink if I do. So... I get up there, rub it off and explain that a lot of problems are user error :). She thought it was creative, allowed it and I got a free bottle of juice at lunch :D

I get the feeling I'm missing something but that's pretty good as it is! WAIT! School zones! On my way to and from TAFE today I managed to get home just outside of the school zone times. I checked my clock and the times were 6:59am and 1:59pm. School zone times are 7am - 9am and 2pm - 4pm. The result? +20km/h ^_^!!

Ok ok, change of Linux distro. I'd had enough of trying to get Gentoo Linux to work properly with the Linux drivers for ATI or nVidia. Both seemed to need recompiling of the kernel... So, STUFF THAT! I had a look at my Linux distro collection to pick another one to try. I was considering openSUSE 10.2 but was deterred a bit by the need for 6 CDs so I kept looking and noticed Ubuntu 7.04. I've heard a bit about Ubuntu. Mainly that it's easy to use and seems to be growing in popularity so I thought I'd give it a go. On to [a single] disc we go, boot up and install. Worked straight up with no issues! I installed it in under an hour but realised I'd forgotten to remove the old install first so I re-installed it again this afternoon removing all partitions and it's now up and running. I'm still yet to try to install the nVidia driver but things are looking up so far. At this very early stage, Ubuntu Linux definitely has me interested. I'll report back on future experiences.

TAFE work: Assigning IP addresses

I had to write this for TAFE so I figured seeing as I put all the effort into writing it, I might as well share it too. Feel free to correct anything that's wrong, I'm just going off what I know off the top of my head.

Share your knowledge it says... well, here we go!

Let me start by saying that I've mainly worked with reserved, private IPv4, addresses (192.168.x.x, 172.x.x.x and 10.x.x.x type addresses). The ranges for these address ranges are as follows:

10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255

Source: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1597

I've only just learnt that after a quick Google search so on to what I do know already. IP addresses can either be static (non-changing) or dynamic (changing) and apply to any computer with the TCP/IP protocol installed, regardless of the operating system installed. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers assign dynamic IP addresses to clients connected to the network.

Internet Connection Addresses

Most higher-end, home internet connections these days have a static IP address assigned by the Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are still some (like dialup, plans designed for light usage and older plans) that use dynamic IP addresses.

Microsoft Windows Workstation to Microsoft Windows Workstation

My first experience with assigning IP addresses was with static IP addresses. It involved a 'network' of 2 home computers with a crossover cable. This was shortly after Microsoft Windows XP was released so one machine had that installed (Professional) while the other had Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional. At that point I used the network wizard built-in to Microsoft Windows XP but had no success with it. I learnt the private IP address ranges from the settings the wizard setup then went and set them manually. It was not until during the process of messing around with manually assigned IP addresses that I realised nework protocols had to match on both computers. Computer 1's IP address was 192.168.0.1 and Computer 2's IP address was 192.168.0.2.

At a later stage I went back to look at the built-in networking wizard for internet connection sharing and actually got it working. This automatically assigns the computer sharing the internet connection a static IP address of 192.168.0.1 and starts a DHCP server service which sets the IP addresses of any other computers connected to the network. By this stage I had added another 2 computers to the network by means through a switch[ing hub].

Linux Gateway with Microsoft Windows Clients

As my network grew along with my interests in more advanced projects, I needed to reboot my computer more often so I could no longer use it to reliably share the internet connection (dialup at this stage). I had an older computer not doing anything and had heard of Linux distrobutions such as SmoothWall (http://www.smoothwall.org) and IPCop (http://www.ipcop.org) so decided to give it a go. These Linux distrobutions have a built-in DHCP server which took over the role of assigning addresses on my network. The IP address of the Linux Gateway was dynamic just as the computer sharing the internet connection had. This setup worked well and stayed on until broadband was acquired.

Router with Microsoft Windows Clients

When broadband replaced dialup a router was added. Routers for home networks have a built-in DHCP server (most commonly assigning IP addresses in the 192.168.1.x or 10.0.0.x ranges) so this removed the need for my Linux Gateway which was scrapped.

Dynamically Assigned IP Addresses

Now that there was an 'always-on' internet connection available, experimentation for other services (such as an in-house web server) was now possible. This required port-forwarding to be setup. Port-forwarding works by taking incoming requests from the internet and passing them on to an assigned IP address. This requires a static IP address as having a changing address would mean that incoming requests would be sent to the wrong place. DHCP Servers can have static dynamically assigned IP addresses meaning that the one network device will always receive the same IP address. These IP addresses are assigned by the Media Access Control (MAC) address of the device. These addresses are hard-coded into network hardware although they can be replicated easily. No 2 network devices will have the same MAC address.

Microsoft Windows Server with Microsoft Windows Clients

With the continuation of the growth of my network, a server powered by Microsoft Windows Server was added. This included an Active Directory structure which requires the DNS (Domain Name Server) address to point to the Microsoft Windows Server. Home routers often do not allow you to change the DNS address options for clients that connect to it as mine didn't so I activated the DHCP server service. This allows assigning of many other advanced options to be automatically assigned such as network time servers. If the DNS server is not set then the clients logging on to the Active Directory will have a whole host of problems. This includes (but is not limited to) extremely long logon times and group policy settings not being applied.

Non-Windows Server with Assorted Clients

Eventually my interest moved on to alternative products to Microsoft Windows. I started playing with Linux and BSD distributions. I settled on OpenBSD which has DHCP Daemon (DHCPD) like many other unix-based operating systems however it is not activated by default. DHCPD on OpenBSD is setup by a configuration file (/etc/dhcpd.conf). This allows for many options to be set too but is harder to configure than a Microsoft Windows server. The advantage to using this over a Microsoft Windows system is that it is not only much more stable but it seems to work much faster. Waiting for IP address assignment under a Microsoft Windows server usually took about half a minute (approx) whereas this setup takes a few seconds (also approx).

PXE Booting

Pre-eXecution Environment (PXE) booting is when a computer boots from a network server instead of a local drive. This usually involves Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) and BOOTP for which the settings are set by the DHCP server. This will be something that I will be looking at in the near future and was another one of the reasons that I changed to a unix-based OS running DHCPD as I want to boot Linux from my server for hard disk drive imaging or other tasks.

That's getting a bit off-topic now so that's all from me. Thoughts, comments and questions are welcome!

Gentoo: nVidia > ATI

I had enough of mucking around with trying to get the ATI driver to work on my Gentoo box so I swapped the card out for an nVidia card and whadda ya know! Bob's your Uncle Fanny's your Aunt, Fannie's your aunt, there you are with two ships, the makings of your very own fleet. If only... but the LiveCD did boot straight into a GUI. No mucking around with drivers or anything like that. So what have I learnt? Well, nVidia > ATI. I prefer nVidia nowadays anyway so I'm safe :-).

Brisbane to Warwick to Brisbane

Well, I've been and come back now. It was good fun :-)! I hate bumper-to-bumper traffic though... I'm not sure how my driving is since I got back but it seems to me that every time I drive out to Warwick and come back, my driving gets worse. By worse I mean I take off faster or take more risks or... something? Just doesn't seem as good. The open road does baaad things to me :-P. So, what'd I do while I was down there? I shall tell you.

Friday night I looked at computer stuffs at Kylie's place (which was the main reason I went down there). Fixed all that then spent some time on the internet before going to a park (that's right, at night) with Kylie, Cassandra and Ashley. It was cold but oh so fun! Was it worth it? FOR SURE! Somewhere between that and sleep at 4am, Cassandra and Ashley put makeup on Kylie which was... entertaining? I'll post pics sometime later when I get around to it... After sleep Kylie introduced me to a series called Allo Allo which seems pretty good. It was made a while ago but still very funny :-D. We also watched... I think it was Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (feel free to correct me if that's not a real movie :S). I thought it was hilarious :-). Following that was lunch with Amy (and Amanda and Matt) at her place. I seem to remember a lot of time playing with an inflatable beach ball with Kylie while I was there :P. Photos of that will come later too. Finally, before leaving, Kylie had a looksee at all my photos (and I mean ALL my photos) then I packed up and headed home.

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out once again that I HATE BUMPER-TO-BUMPER TRAFFIC!!! That is all.

20070720@TAFE

Thaaat's right ppls, I'm at TAFE. Daniel's shoulder-browsing as I write this :P but anywho... I still think 6am is far too early in the morning to be getting up. I'm supposed to be finishing up here today at 3pm then I'll head home, shove some stuff in the car and head out to Warwick.

I probably forgot to mention that yesterday... and the day before... and probably the day before that. I'm heading out to Warwick to do a tech support call :-)... and to get away a little bit I guess? I'll leave this arvo pretty much straight after TAFE then come back by Saturday night in time for sleep and church the next day. It'll be good fun! Maybe a lil expensive though but who cares :-P.


At the moment, I'm just listening to the teacher talk about CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Engineer Administrator [got mixed up with MCSE - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer]? I think...). Apparently we can do part of the CCNA as part of our course. It's all self-paced learning though. We're supposed to go lookup everything online, learn, etc... If it doesn't cost anything, I'll probably give it a go. Should be good... if I pass. There's 4 parts to it, I dunno how many we get to do though but it'd be better than nothing.

My install of the ATI drivers on my Gentoo Linux box kept me up a bit longer than I hoped last night. I had to wait for the thing to re-compile the whole kernel... By the look of it, I'll have to do it again too... I've got the driver installed but it can't find the device. From what I found from having a quick hunt around Google before bed, I'm thinking that it's a problem with the way the kernel's handling the connection to the card through the chipset :-(. I'll look at it more when I get back from Warwick though.

Time to wrap it up and get back to paying attention in-class :-P. BYE!

Another... day? thing...?

I spent the day at TAFE. By day, I mean, I got up at 6 like usual (who on earth invented 6am anyway??) got there, finished the first class after 1.5hrs instead of 3.5, went to the next one and finished that in 1.5 instead of 3.25. It was great :-D! Had a nice long lunch break, came home early, started looking at Gentoo Linux a bit more then decided sleep was in order :-P. I still haven't caught up on sleep yet actually... At the moment, I'm just installing the ATI drivers on my Gentoo Linux box. I got the install done (took a while to install all the packages so I left it over dinner). From what I understand, Gentoo Linux builds all the packages from source which it does seem to be doing. I guess that means it'll be optimised for the system it's being built on but it does sm to take a while. It might be an excuse to buy a new system! If I ever get myself out of debt from my TAFE fees and car... but that's another story which I don't really want to share. Back to it!

What have I gotten myself into??

Currently looking into the following things:

• Wikis
• LDAP (OpenLDAP on OpenBSD)
• Samba (in association with LDAP on OpenBSD)
• Gentoo Linux (as a desktop)
• VPN (OpenVPN on OpenBSD)

Today was mainly Gentoo Linux in my spare time at work. I'm looking at dual booting my work computer between MS WinXP Pro SP2 and Gentoo Linux 2007.0. I gave the live CD a shot but it didn't go so well. I booted the system and was met with no GUI and some error about GDM or X Server or something... Anyway, the short of it was that it's an issue with having an ATI graphics card. I need to use the ATI proprietary drivers to get it going but I didn't get time to finish that before leaving work nor did I get time to wipe my system and do a clean install of the system. I'm going to build up a test machine at home in a tick with an ATI graphics card and see if I can get it going. If you know anything about this, PLEASE TELL ME!!! Ta.

IS 5416

Sleep didn't happen... yet... I just remembered something I found earlier that I wanted to post:

Did You Know?
Agent Smith's license plate in Reloaded is IS 5416, a reference to Isaiah 54:16: 'Behold, I have created the smith who blows the coals in the fire, who brings forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the spoiler to destroy.'

Source: http://www.thematrix101.com

I thought that was pretty interesting anyway...

On the run run run!

Not so! I lie! Well sort of.. This is being posted on my phone not on a computer.. I just don't happen to be running. It'll be nice to see if this works!

Edit: Wow... it did work!! How good is that!?

ACTION!

Well... here goes! Another blog that may potentially end up by the wayside with a lot of the other projects I've started and got bored with. This one may last a little while though... I can e-mail to this and post. Seeing as I can e-mail from my phone, that means I can blog from anywhere! I gotta try that sometime when I'm out...

This blog is being started with the intention of recording tech experiences I have as well as any other random thoughts. We'll see which of the 2 wins out over time I guess.

There are a still a few things I want to do with this, the biggest being write my own template but for now this one will do. I also want to find some sort of photo to add and work out how to integrate this with other things such as Facebook, Picasa and anything else I can! I know Picasa has some sort of support for this which is what lead me here in the first place... I have to sort out Picasa at some point as well though... Chuck that on the ever-growing and hardly-ever-shrinking list of things to do! It's taken me a week or 2 to finally get around to kicking this off...

Work is happening in the morning so sleep should be happening in about... NOW!