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Cisco PIX Configuration

Posted at September 21, 2008 2:32 pm | In Networking | By Ben Woodruff

I have a Cisco PIX 501 that I’m trying to setup. I have a fairly basic network configuration (relatively) and I have everything working except remote access VPN. I want to be able to VPN home on my iPod Touch from work and school. I’m trying to do everything from the CLI rather than the PDM GUI. PAT, SSH, etc are all working so if I get the VPN going I might buy it, even though it’s an end of life device. It’s still a really nice firewall. I’ll post the config if I get it working. Otherwise, expect to see it on eBay ($200 ballpark).

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Free Drobo

Posted at August 28, 2008 9:30 pm | In Technology | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: whore yourself out for gear

Enter to win a free Drobo!
All you have to do is link to http://aperturenatureworkshops.com apparently. See http://f64.com/ for details.

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Using PGP

Posted at August 25, 2008 10:54 pm | In Technology | By Ben Woodruff

If you want to send me PGP encrypted mail, my key ID is 5C57DB86 and my fingerprint is 5363 A428 7C22 803D A4F3 D242 E551 C3C3 5C57 DB (I use pgp.mit.edu)

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Lock 1Password revised - screen locking added

Posted at August 19, 2008 7:40 pm | In Technology | By Ben Woodruff

I wrote here about a cool way to lock your 1Password keychain, but I haven’t really personally been thrilled with that solution. I decided to delve into Xcode and write my first application.

The first beta of version 1 is available here: Lock_Screen_1.0_BETA.zip

Please let me know about any bugs you encounter. (more…)

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Uninterruptible Power Supplies

Posted at August 18, 2008 12:11 pm | In Technology | By Ben Woodruff

Lately we’ve been having a ton of power outages in the greater Rochester area, which is very frustrating for someone like me who lives their life in front of electronics.

I decided it was time to buy some UPSs (Uninteruprible Power Supplies). THE brand name for UPS equipment is APC. In fact it’s so popular it’s become one of those “diluted” brands like Kleenex. “APC” has come to mean any brand UPS much the same as “Kleenex” has come to mean any brand tissue. (more…)

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Do you know your email address?

Posted at August 10, 2008 8:30 am | In Technology | By Ben Woodruff

Apparently some people don’t. A Beverly, a Brittany and an Elizabeth (Beth) Woodruff keep signing up for things, telling their friends, and even buying things with my email address. I could understand and by sympathetic if this were a one-off typo, but for me to continue getting your family newsletter from Aunt Rita and your Collective Soul tickets from Ticketmaster….

So far I’ve tried to be nice and alert the senders that I’m not Beverly / Brittany / Beth and asking them to please get in touch with them to get the correct email address. Next time I think I’ll be going to a free Collective Souls concert. (more…)

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Making fun of Dvorak

Posted at July 16, 2008 10:21 pm | In Technology | By Ben Woodruff

Jason Calicanas was hillarious on the last TWiT he was on, he poked fun at John C. Dvorak.

Click the button below to listen.

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Lock the 1Password Keychain with a QuickSilver Trigger

Posted at June 4, 2008 12:58 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Apple/Mac, Research, Software, Technology

Earlier today I was looking for a way to lock the 1Password keychain using a keyboard shortcut. The easiest way I could think of doing this is with QuickSilver (namely, a QuickSilver trigger). I found this forum post that describes a terminal command that can be used to lock keychains. I put together the attached script so that this can easily be setup as a QuickSilver trigger. It’s a really simple script, only one line of code:
security lock-keychain 1Password.keychain (more…)

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My Experience With Time Machine

Posted at May 28, 2008 3:56 pm | In Software | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Apple/Mac, Research, Software, Technology

Last night I ended up having to do a full restore of my MacBook Pro using Time Machine. I was trying to uninstall libusb, SANE, and some other utilities that do not have proper uninstallers. I wrote a shell script that got a list of all the files added by the installer (using the lsbom command line utility) and deleted them. Unfortunately it somehow also deleted my entire /Applications folder, and who knows what else. My bad.

Luckily for me, Time Machine had just finished a backup before I started. I didn’t have much confidence / hope that it would do a good job of doing the restore, but it did much better than I expected.

I booted from the OS X Leopard install DVD and chose Restore System from Time Machine Backup from the Utilities menu. It found my My Book hard drive that is attached to my AirPort Extreme (and has my Time Machine backup on it). Logging into the drive and starting the restore was very easy and straight forward.

The restore took about 3 - 4 hours (over 100Mb ethernet). Everything looked good when I started the laptop. I logged in as usual and everything seemed to be OK. I only ran into a couple of issues. (more…)

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