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Paul's Time Sink

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Raid in single drive bay

Paul Westbrook | 30 September, 2004 12:37

IO Data RAIDEngadget has a post on a interesting Raid1 solution. IO Data Device has a hardware raid that fits 2 2.5 inch hard drives and a Raid controller into a standard 3.5" drive bay. Since this is a hardware based solution, it should work on any hardware and OS that supports IDE drives.

They are pretty expensive: 40, 60, and 80GB models are around $800 USD, $1000 USD, and $1300 USD respectively. Maybe this makes sense for a computer case that has only one drive bay.

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Enabling InnoDB for SpamAssassin Bayes database

Paul Westbrook | 29 September, 2004 13:05

Here are the steps that I used to upgrade the SpamAssassin mysql database from MyISAM to InnoDB.

Since mysql in Fedora Core 1 comes with version 3.23.58 of mysql wirth InnoDB support configured, all that was needed was to enable it in the configuration file. Using the instructions I found on this page, I added the following lines to the [mysqld] section of my my.cnf file:

# You can write your other MySQL server options here
# ...
# Data files must be able to hold your data and indexes.
# Make sure that you have enough free disk space.
innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend
#
# Set buffer pool size to 50-80% of your computer's memory
set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=70M
set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=10M
#
# Set the log file size to about 25% of the buffer pool size
set-variable = innodb_log_file_size=20M
set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=8M
#
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1

  1. Stop Amavisd - "/etc/init.d/amavisd stop"
  2. Flush the bayes database - "sa-learn --sync"
  3. Backup the database - "sa-learn --backup > backup.txt"
  4. For each of the tables, run the sql commands:
    ALTER TABLE <table name> TYPE=InnoDB;
    ANALYZE TABLE <table name>;
  5. Start Amavisd - "/etc/init.d/amavisd start"

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Alpine KCA-420i review

Paul Westbrook | 27 September, 2004 12:40

Playlistmag.com has a review of the Alpine KCA-420i, which is Alpine's adapter so the iPod can be used with their Ai-NET head units. The reviewer states that the interface is not what he expected, but it is still the best way to connect the iPod to a car stereo.

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Wireless broadband

Paul Westbrook | 24 September, 2004 14:24

Previously, I had talked about the problems that I have had with SBC. We are going to try going with Etheric Networks. They have a wireless plan that has a guaranteed up/download rate of 1Mbps and a burst rate up to 4Mpbs. Their SOHO Broadband package includes 2 - 8 ip address, and they permit users to share bandwidth and host servers. This with Vonage for phone service will be roughly the same price as SBC for our business phone line with business DSL.

Here are the reviews of Etheric Networks on BroadbandReports.com

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Gateway Connected DVD Player

Paul Westbrook | 23 September, 2004 19:44

Gateway Connected DVD PlayerGateway has a progressive-scan DVD player that streams content from a PC. It streams music, photos and video from a PC with built-in 802.11g. It looks like it supports MPEG and DivX video files.

PVRblog has a review of this player. The DVD player has a price of $119 on gateway.com.

One downside of this DVD player for me is that there isn't Mac OS X or Linux server software for it.

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SpamAssassin 3.0

Paul Westbrook | 23 September, 2004 05:58

Last night I upgraded our server to SpamAssassin 3.0, from 2.6x. There are some new featres that should help reduce the amount of spam that gets through.

  1. Built-in support for URI Blacklists like SURBL - This allows SpamAssassin to mark messages as spam, if they have urls that are in a lot of reported spam messages. Previously this was a plugin for the older SpamAssassin, which had to be installed separately. Here is my post where I described it.
  2. Built-in support for Sender Policy Framework - This helps SpamAssassin determine when messages may have a forged sender. Here is my post were I talked about SPF.
  3. Support to have the Bayesian databases put into a mysql database. - This one really interst me for two reasons:
    1. To allow backup mail hosts to have the same bayesian database for spam checking. Most people who have a backup mail server only have the up to date bayesian database on their primary mail server.
    2. To have the potential to have a some centralized bayesian database server. Imagine if everyone running SpamAssassin send their bayesian tokens to this centralized server. Then everyone could benefit from this large corpus of spam and ham data
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Finding similar blogs

Paul Westbrook | 22 September, 2004 18:50

I am interested in finding blogs that are similar to the ones that I already read. I found two web sites that offer to do this.


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Free Gmail accounts

Paul Westbrook | 22 September, 2004 13:33

Get Firefox!

The Spread Firefox team is giving away over 2,000 Gmail invites. Here are the rules:

  1. The site must have a Firefox button, logo or banner linking to the Firefox project either through sfx or directly.
  2. The person must not already have Gmail.
  3. The site must be publicly viewable with some content.
  4. The site must not consist mostly of advertising.
  5. The site must not contain any adult content.


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Password generator

Paul Westbrook | 19 September, 2004 18:01

Here is a page that has a bookmarklet that will generate a password for websites, given a master password. This is how it works:

It gets the hostname from the page's URL and mixes it together with your personal master password using a little cryptographic magic we call MD5. It will always get the same result if given that hostname and master password, but will never get that result if either changes. (Well, once in a few billion times it might.)

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Essential Mac OS X Software

Paul Westbrook | 19 September, 2004 12:35

On 43 Folders, there is a post that is collecting a list of essential OS X software. Here is my list:
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Checklist for securing ssh

Paul Westbrook | 17 September, 2004 19:19

On the Kasia in a nutshell blog, there is a good post about how to make an ssh server as secure as possible, while still allowing connections from external networks.

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XM Audio Component

Paul Westbrook | 17 September, 2004 18:26

Polk XM
I was looking into getting a component XM Radio, and I only found one. Polk is coming out with their XRt12 tuner, wich is an A/V component that plays XM radio. This is advertised as a high end device.

I am not sure that this is worth the $329.95 price. I am not sure about how good the quality will be, especially since the source audio is inherently low quality (MPEG). This would just the same a playing an MP3 on a high end audio system.
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Another benefit of A9

Paul Westbrook | 16 September, 2004 20:28

A9

If you log into A9, Amazon will give you a π/2% (1.57%) discount on purchases on Amazon.com. This is a great way to get people to use A9.com

Paul Westbrook, since you've been using A9.com recently, virtually everything at Amazon.com is automatically an additional π/2% (1.57%) off for you. Collecting this discount is zero effort on your part. It will be applied automatically at checkout (it will happen whether you use the shopping cart or our 1-Click Shopping®). You don't need to do anything to get this discount except keep using A9.com as your regular search engine.


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Description of RSS support in Firefox

Paul Westbrook | 16 September, 2004 13:46

Get Firefox!

Phil Windley posted Firebird Support for RSS, which is a good description of Firefox's support for RSS feeds

The latest version of the Firebird browser autodiscovers the RSS feeds of sites that you visit and puts an RSS badge in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Clicking on the badge let's you add the feed to your bookmarks folder. Then, clicking on the bookmark folder gives a list of the most recent posts on that site. At this point, I'd say "good start." Here's why:

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Dropping SBC

Paul Westbrook | 16 September, 2004 13:20

I need to find a different ISP. SBC screwed up our DSL again today. When we woke up, I noticed that our Vonage line didn't have a dial tone. The phone line that has the DSL also didn't have any dial tone. So I called them up, and their automated system recognized the problem and stated that a technition would come out to fix the problem by 6pm.

Around 2pm, I checked the line and the problem had not been resolved. So, I called SBC to check on the status of it. The automated system still stated that the problem would be fixed by 6pm, but I wanted to see if I could get the time that the technicion would be here, so I could make sure that I was here, so I pressed 0 to talk to an person. The person that I talked to said that a cable had been cut and the problem would be fixed by Saturday at 8pm.
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