remote proxy over ssh without proxy software

I just came across a way to make any host where you can ssh to act as
an exit point for your browsing sessions.

ssh -D 12345 <yourserver>

For example in firefox, remove all your proxy settings and just fill
in the SOCKS part:
host:yourserver port:12345

Happy browsing.

vi mode additions

Just for the people who don't like to bother and go lookup things,
here's a short list of things you can do (esc before) :
^ beginning of line
$ end of line
w next word
b prev word
dd delete line
cw change word at cursor
\ filename complete
k prev line
j next line
h cursor left
l cursor right

...

Enjoy.

set -o vi

I recently came into an environment where all we had was ksh.
No bash, at first view no easy file name completion, no arrow up, no arrow down.
Most of my co-workers were using vi mode.

Since some of my friends told me vi mode was the way to go before and
I never listened before, I decided to give it another try.

After a couple of weeks of using it, I converted all my .profiles to
include "set -o vi".
Try it, once you get used to it, you don't want to let go.
^e, ^a is cool, but using vi key bindings is intuitive when you want
to move a word, esc k or esc j to go up or down, dd to remove your
line and / to find one of the previous commands.

vi mode rocks!

Mac Book Pro grievances

It's been a while since I've posted and lots has happened since then.

Lost my job again in the mean time, management issues.

But it led me to finally buy a Mac Book Pro!
I was doubting between the 15" and 17" and if you're looking to take
it with you a lot and work from it in a hammock, buy the 15".
The 17" is a bit big, and when you put it on your lap with your legs
up, the screen closes (gravity).

Also for the first time in long I'm using Mac OS X instead of Linux.
It's a beautiful experience with some minor discomforts.
Everything is integrated, you can drag and drop everything that's nice.

Sometimes it hangs and then your preferences might get corrupted. Had
it a couple of times already. Sucks. So back them up.

Also when you copy your firefox directory from Linux to Mac you might
get some problems with downloads. Things get downloaded allright but
when you try to open for example a dmg (disk image) you will get
"codec overrun" or "no images found" or something along those lines.

That was solved by creating a clean profile and installing all your
extensions and copying the bookmarks and signons.txt and key3.db and
such.

Once you get used to Tab Mix Plus you cannot really use Safari or Camino.

For Office you can use a forked version of Open Office called Neo Office.

If you want to play around with some unix utilities you can install fink which let's you do
apt-get install and such.
Easy to get Xdarwin running.

I'm still discovering and it looks pretty good.
If you want to start coding go to developer.apple.com and get Xcode.

I'm still looking for utils to play with my satellite receiver from the mac.

We'll find them or write them!

Blogger Wiki

At least this blogger should allow you to post stuff as in a wiki.
With certain tags to make text bold, link to other blogs, blah blah blah.

Screw blogs!

A random post

Yo folks,

Just a random post because I felt like it.

Been working all weekend in my garden, been stressing (so it seems) the last couple of weeks.
The company I worked for had some problems. They guy who's supposed to manage me lost it and wasted my time.
I've bought some land thousands of miles away.

These things start working on your nerves, even if you're trying to do what's right and attempting to keep the Buddha nature in mind.

So anyway, that's what's happened.

In the mean time, work, or so I call it, has been keeping my mind occupied.
I've been looking into Electronics, Handworks like putting up a fence, and of course the standard passtime, fucking around with linux and stuff.

Let me give you some final things:
- Ubuntu is a good linux distribution.
- For basic electronics tutorials, go to epanorama.
- Do some physical work but don't overdo it. It's good to use your body.

Stay well.

Hotbird and Astra on a monoblock LNB finally working

It's been a long struggle to get the monoblock LNB to see both Astra
19.2 and Hotbird 13 E.

When I first bought the kit, it looked simple, point it to one, and it
will see the other.
After experimenting it was never showing me both at the same time.

I either pointed it at Hotbird or at Astra.
Just now it came to me through a forum somewhere, I felt I needed to
look for it again.
A friend told me to look for certain info about a cam and go to this forum.
When I entered the forum, couldn't see anything, registered and there
it was: how to see both Astra and Hotbird with a monoblock LNB.

Here's the stuff you need to be aware of.
Point it to Hotbird, the other part (when you're behind the dish, the
LNB on the lefthandside should be in the middle of the dish, the one
on the righthand side should be right, not in the bracket) will
automatically point more or less to Astra.

And here's the trick:

Go to your settings of your LNB, choose Univeral for the type of it.
Make sure you have Astra 19.2 and Hotbird in the list (well, Hotbird
should have worked if want this to work).
Go to DiSEqC Port when Hotbird is selected and assign it, in my case, Mini A.
Then select Astra 19.2 and assign it Mini B.

That's it, it worked.

My pointing must have been pretty good.

HTH (hope this helps)

PIC programming

Finally got myself a PIC programming board.
It's not working from within linux yet so that's a pain.
The thing is a k8048 from Velleman. You can put 4 different sizes of
PICs on it and that's it.
I'm starting to get the point what you can do with a PIC, basically
program a chip, put it in a circuit and let it do what you programmed
it to do as in, check a value, act on it, repeat it, blah, stuff you
do with a computer without all the overhead of having a computer which
takes 200+- watts in 0.5 watts.
Cool stuff when you get the circuit up and running.

The only thing that I'm still missing is how to integrate everything
so I can control my house with it. :)
Let's see where I get next time.

DVB-s and linux (watching Satellite TV with linux)

This is just a small update, more as a reminder for myself.

The best would be to have a DVB-s card which has a CIM slot so you can
access at least one decryption card and maybe even copy it to hard
disk or flash.

So this model might do it:
TechniSat
Skystar 1 CI;.
And here's a link to some more info about linux and DVB-s stuff :
DVB_English

Another site, but mostly in german is at http://www.dvbshop.net which
has a shopping area and a forum (as I said mostly in german :/)

That's it.