AG's Blog

AT&T Petitions to Slash Alabama Telephone Directories

2010-03-08T10:13:40Z

Perhaps that most meaningful request to originate from the so-called leaner AT&T. I would venture to guess many people across the country no longer use phone books. I have witnessed the real-time shrinkage of the Yellow Pages content in S.E Mich. The once monstrous Yellow Pages and White Pages are now condensed into one publication, roughly 1/3 of the size.

Moreover, it would seem that the overwhelming popularity of cellular phones, online phone directories, and search engines have marginalized the utility of hard copy phone listings. Hell, I have not used a POTS line in my home since 2002. Strictly cellular and VoIP in my household.

If AT&T wishes to be truly lean, it should probably stop printing these books. However, it appears that they are mandated local Public Service Commissions.

Bob Frankston has a very interesting assessment of the pickle AT&T has found themselves. He isn't all too sympathetic either :-) See his excerpt below.

This sounds like a great deal. If ATT wants to hand over their copper physical plant to communities to use as a resource I would take them up on their offer immediately.
The communities can then hire companies to "light" it up as DSL using 2010 electronics (100Mbps per pair or higher). This is divestiture II done right.

And without being shackled by the 19th century telegraphy idea of charging services we'd be able to achieve Ambient Connectivity (http://rmf.vc/?n=IAC) with or without wires!

He raises some valid points about the greed associated with PSTN and the general disdain that AT&T now has for all of its copper networks. What are they to do with the millions of copper lines running across the US?
Allowing municipalities to purchase the copper lines would be one method of disrupting the stranglehold that wireless carriers have on consumers. Imagine what would happen if there was added competition? True free market model at its best, not a simple oligarchy of a few dominant wireless carriers as we have today.

Though I often worry about the new GOOG, they seem to looking off into the future and strongly considering muni-fiber networks.
*Aside* - AT&T also owns its fair share of dark fiber too, perhaps they'll suffocate on the vast stretches of fiber before they figure out how to really benefit from it. It does appear that the venerable MaBell wants to get out of the telephony infrastructure business and leap into the VoIP service arena. It would seem that there is much more profits to be made offering services for the next growth market. POTS is dying a slow death, and any left holding onto a service level agreement that is laden with PSTN is plain foolish. IP vs. Dark Fiber is another topic for another

I have long been a proponent of muni-fiber (citizen owned fiber networks) efforts. Sadly, there just are not enough viable muni-fiber projects in this country.

I long for the day that FTTH is commonplace and de-regulated so that people could have choice.
At this point, greed and arrogance is very pervasive in the leadership ranks of the wireless carriers, that innovation is essentially stifled in this country. The other issue is that most Americans are not really familiar with the technology or their rights for access. So-called developing nations (ie China and South Africa) have more infrastructure problems but have far better connectivity (albeit prohibitively expensive in certain areas). The point here is that the US must figure out a means to totally disrupt the existing data delivery model paradigm. It really takes courage and money.

Mobile Open Source: Better lucky than smart

2010-03-01T05:02:08Z

Image via Wikipedia

Every so often I get inspired by a random blog entry, and Fabrisio post gave me pause. Firstly, I have admired the Funumbol project and its very slick syncml application. Anytime you can have the ability to sync your smartphone to the server that _you_ own without any proprietary middleware, I must simply rejoice.

I have been pseudo-ranting about the state of Linux based smartphones. Most of my angst comes from the lack of competition in this space. I don't happen to be an Android fanboi, as I struggle with the tracking that GOOG has deployed in their default software stack. Sure, I know that most of the stuff can be disabled at the shell level, but I'm paranoid. He highlighted an alliance of sorts with Intel and Nokia - MeeGo project. I will have to learn about more about this MeeGo project, perhaps it could be something that bares watching. At least from the stand point of challenging the GOOG, people that profess to love free markets should be grinning from ear-to-ear. Geez, just 3-5 years the mobile OS market was quite stagnant. You had Symbian, PalmOS and crappy Windows Mobile. I suppose some might argue outside of iPhone's BSD with thin layers of proprietary paint and Android not much has changed. Well I suppose you might be correct if you were just looking at smartphones. The entire world of MIDs has really taken a leap forward in the last 3-5yrs. Outside of Apple Newton (device that few folks understood) which was peaked much too soon, and Palm devices there was not much innovation on tablets.

Somehow, I wish that Palm ALP could seriously challenge Android and offer consumers more choice. Perhaps this is just wishful thinking. I suppose time will tell.

FOSS Mobile - Better Lucky Than Smart

Foray into MythTV

2010-02-26T10:37:06Z

Image via Wikipedia

At this point it is probably worthwhile to admit that I am guilty of "paralysis of analysis" in a big way. I suppose that having this problem can be detrimental when dealing with technology. This is particularly true when talking about multimedia hardware. In 2006, I purchased a throw away components with the intent of building my own mythTV PVR. I did nothing with hardware setup, I didn't spend much time configuring the software (Knoppmyth R5). In truth, the catalyst that drew me to the project in the first place was the dreaded "broadcast flag" that cable companies used to threaten consumers in an effort to appease Hollywood. I ran out an purchased the pcHDTV HD3000 for ~$185.00, as it was the only DVB that was oblivious to the broadcast flag. It would happily grab OTA digital content so that it could be viewed later.

I was so amped to get started with this project.. Life got in the way, and I realized that I don't watch that much TV. So, the hardware aged and the technology train left without me. The box was constructed of Intel Motherboard (i815 chipset), 512MB onboard RAM, 2 analog tuner cards Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350. The analog tuners are virtually useless now as most cable networks have killed their analog spectrum in favor of the gov't mandated digital spectrum.

*Sigh* Paralysis of analysis, I curse thee ;-) My mythTV box is functioning as a frontend/backend combo. It contains a modest set of ATA hard disks. There is a 250GB HD which contains the Arch Linux Distro (LinHES R6.01). There is also 350GB disk for additional storage. The myth box also mounts the NFS share from the household inexpensive NAS the Promise NS4300N. As stated in a previous entry, the NS4300N contains 4 - 1TB Seagate drives running RAID5. Approximately 3TB of usable storage.

Anyway, I still have the HD-3000, which will help me capture the unencrypted content on Comcast network. At this point I still need to tune the card so that I can use the appropriate frequency. I'm getting some channel frequency errors generated from the HD-3000.
DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 959000000 out of range (44000000..958000000)
dtvscan[9374]: segfault at 0 ip 0804bf04 sp bfc85540 error 4 in dtvscan[8048000+
5000]

Running "dtvsignal" a script provided by the folks at PCHDTV

dtvsignal -q
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
setting frontend to QAM cable
tuning to 57000000 Hz
video pid 0x0021, audio pid 0x0024
dtvsignal ver 1.0.7 - by Jack Kelliher (c) 2002-2007
channel = 2 freq = 57000000Hz table 57
channel = 2 freq = 57000000Hz
30db 0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Signal: | . : . | ._____:_____._____|

So here are the mythTV challenges -

Setting up the HD-3000 as the primary or default capture card

Tuning the HD-3000 to the appropriate frequency for Comcast

Setup lvm to easily handle storage growth

Obviously, I want to have access to the encrypted HD content so, I'll likely need to purchase the Hauppage HD-PVR (1212). Thus I'd be able to record two channels and also watch live TV.
At present, the current setup will allow me to record and watch live TV. I'd like to remove the analog tuners (PVR-350). This would free up space on the motherboard so that I could then retire the very old AGP NVidia 6000x graphics card with a PCI compliant NVidia 8000x capable of VDPAU.

Hopefully, I can resolve these issues over the next couple of weeks. Ultimately, the myth box will leave the lab and become the centerpiece of our entertainment system. There is still much to do before it can be wife tested :-)

Benefits of hacking

2010-02-23T12:44:55Z

Allow me to reflect a moment. I am constantly reminded that hacking is a good thing. People often get it twisted because many of us watch too much tel-lie-vision (aka TV). Hacking has little to do with someone taking your credit card information and selling it for a very modest fee on the wilds of the Interweb. Hacking has more to do with the curiosity of problem solving.
Truth be told you don't have to be an engineer to enjoy hacking. As a home owner, I'm often faced with problems that appear to be difficult and beyond my scope of knowledge. Perfect opportunity to open the wallet and hire a smarter person, right? Wrong answer.

A hacker would seize the opportunity to learn something new. For instance, when I purchased my home several years ago, roughly 6months later I discovered the refrigerator compartment was not cold enough. In contrast, the freezer compartment was quite cold. Strange huh... You can bet your last dollar that I wasn't going to buy a new appliance. Instead, I began reading about "How Stuff Works" and re-introducing myself to basic HVAC. After peeling the onion, I discovered that the condenser fan had overheated and seized with some very gross gummy substance. Simply replaced the condenser fan ($35.00) and voila.. Good as new.

More recently, I ran into another HVAC concern. My furnace began making an unusual rumbling sound which is usually nothing good. Yet another opportunity to call in the pros, right? Wrong again. I walk downstairs and survey the situation. Because heat is actually coming from the ducts in the home, I know that the ignitors are working. The problem is that the amount of heat is minimal. Hmmm. I have a forced draft blow furnace. So, it must be blower motor issue. I remove the cover and I recognize that the blower motor pulleys do not have a belt on them. Wow, interesting.. The belt was deteriorated and stretched to the point it had simply fallen off the pulleys. Luckily, I was able to find a HVAC shop that had a 4L-400 belt in stock on Saturday. Pure nirvana :-) A bit of sweat equity can go a long way. The belt cost me $22.00 and a little skin off my knuckle. Worthwhile investment indeed.

Everyone has the ability to think logically and reason. The issue is that many folks are lazy or simply not interested in solving problems. Sure, you may argue that I'm the most frugal man on the face of the earth (you wouldn't be too far off). Nonetheless, I enjoy learning immensely and if the by-product of that curiosity is cost savings so be it. Discover your own curiosities.. You can become a hacker too!!

RIM outshines Palm but fails to dispel all doubts

2010-02-20T10:31:24Z

Image via Wikipedia

Though, I am not a Crackberry aficionado, I do find it interesting that RIM is now fighting for relevancy in the smartphone market. Palm continues to disappoint despite it use of Open Source Software. The LIMO and ALP projects are very interesting, but I can't seem to understand why there aren't more devices in the mainstream. Perhaps the mind share of the average developer is becoming more Android and iPhone.

Though I have never owned a RIM product, I did notice that it took quite awhile for them to market a device where you could actually use "touch" to manipulate the GUI. Palm devices have had this feature for at least 6yrs. Additionally the proprietary enterprise server that had been a something of a cash cow, competitive advantage (albeit ridiculously expensive) for corporate users is now being given away. When you have free software tools (ie IMAPD and OpenLDAP) it really does not make much sense to continue spending a huge monthly fees to support always on email. Besides methinks the huge corporate accounts are dwindling in this economic downturn. If RIM is to grow inside the SMB market, they will need to deliver more malleable tools to the end-user.

I'm not going to berate Palm anymore in this space, as I continue to use my trusty Treo650. Eventually, I'm going to have to migrate to a more robust platform that provides me with a somewhat real-time network (3G perhaps) and a few more social networking options. I do not need my entire smartphone experience to be laden with Twitter and Facebook. I'm more interested in running ssh, VNC and openvpn or irc client when the time arises.

RIM Surprises the Street - Battles Opens Source Offerings from Palm and Google

OpenEMR - At a glance

2010-02-12T05:21:44Z

This will be a short summary of my first encounter with OpenEMR software package. I wish that I could say that I simply stumbled across OpenEMR, but in fact I had been supporting a joint business venture. At the time, the principal was actually resigned to use a turn-key or shrink wrapped electronic medical record. The rationale was that it would far easier to use a program that was specifically suited for their industry. There were a few pre-requisites, client scheduling, therapy notes, syncing calendars smartphones.

We immediately discovered that the shrink wrapped software, while quite polished and sexy looking did not afford us the ability to customize or provide the key features we were seeking. The idea of having the application share its data across applications was out of the question. Enter OpenEMR. I suppose it would be meaningful to explain the term electronic medical record. If you've been listening to the rhetoric that has been uttered by politicians and news media alike, the conversation of EMRs must have been discussed. In a nutshell, EMRs provide a unique to share, track and manage patient medical history. Perhaps most importantly, EMRs help empower the patient to actually manage their own medical history.
IMHO, EMRs help de-mystify the practice of primary care clinicians. Allow me to share a scenario... I decide to go skiing in Aspen. While on the ski trip, I suffer an awkward fall and brake my collar bone (not too far from the realm of possibility) and do not have access to my primary care physician. I get rushed off to the emergency room in CO. I get there and nobody can talk to me because I am unconscious and my wallet has been stolen. Wow, what a mess..

So, let's imagine for a second that I have USB flash drive or some other digital repository on my person. Additionally, the hospital or clinic has a electronic patient registry that contains information which would link my personal health record with that of my local physician. I know that this sounds futuristic and highly improbable, but this scenario is roughly the blueprint for the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PC-MH). The aforementioned link includes a short shockwave video clip that does a very good job of explaining the concept of PC-MH. At ~2.30min of the clip it mentioned electronic medical records (EMR). Anyway now that I've digressed, let's get back to OpenEMR shall we?

]]> At a high level OpenEMR is built atop a LAMP> stack. ~~I'm not sure if~~ OpenEMR is platform agnostic, so if you don't have a LAMP stack no reason to despair ;-) At its core, there are several scripts which interface with phpgacl and mySQL database. If you're security conscious like me, running apache in chroot environment is not a bad idea. For those who are not as paranoid as I, simply running apache with limited privileges will suffice. There are also a collection of perl scripts which help for backing up your OpenEMR environment. There are PHP scripts that can behave as SMS email reminders for physicians who are constantly late for patient appointments. Perhaps the most used feature of this software is the scheduling tool. Previously, we were using the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) web based application. Though it works well for sharing group calendars and email organization, we experienced problems with scheduling. Somehow dates would get double-booked or would simply not get scheduled at all. Very perplexing and annoying. So, after I introduced the team to OpenEMR, the admins quickly noticed a difference in the scheduling package. Each clinician can either schedule their own patient encounters or simply allow the admin to manage their encounters. I do believe that you can push these calendars or schedules down to any mobile device, but at this point we have not yet configured OpenEMR to perform this task.

I would be remiss if I did not state that to customize certain features of OpenEMR, you will need to understand PHP. The administration of OpenEMR can largely be maintained from the web browser interface; however, for daily backups I chose to build my own ssh/rsync scripts in the shell environment. At the outset there was much acrimony (read I caught hell) because the interface wasn't "pretty", that is since the package was shrink wrapped with beautiful polish.. Most FOSS packages aren't pretty and that is fine with me. My utmost concern is security and functionality, the aesthetics can be worked out at a later date. Moreover, since the package runs on our Intranet, nobody but the staff will ever see it, so the point is rather moot. I like to think of free and open software as malleable. It comes raw, much like the earth from whence we came. You can shape the software as you are so inclined.

To date the package experiences heavy usage from all staff members. Methinks everyone is quite happy with the software which cost very little. OpenEMR is licensed under the GPL v2. One day soon I hope to give something back to this project because it really saved my butt. One of the more active developers, Rod Roark was very helpful in explaining the inner workings of the install and proper initial configuration.

I will share more as I discover more exciting aspects of OpenEMR.

How can we help our gov't?

2010-02-10T05:21:44Z

Image by Mark Sardella via Flickr

I was inspired by a recent post by my pseudo buddy Anil. He's right Apple doesn't give a shit about poor people. Moreover, its latest product (which is the 100lb gorilla) has seem to have zealots frothing at the mouth. That's all I will say about that Cupertino company in this entry.

What I found most interesting about the aforementioned post, is the cajoling or exhorting that Dash delivered. Yes, our gov't really needs the energy and passion of its citizens to help deliver solutions. This is particularly true since there are so many problems. Health Care(I have provided very precise solutions for the health care problem in previous entries), Wall Street, Home Land Security, Education. The list seems endless. Yet some are mesmerized by the most insignificant dust under our feet. Very sad indeed.

Sure, we can't boil the ocean. You can argue that our gov't is too big to get out of its own way. However, it would seem that most people do not realize that massive trade deficit and an inept domestic policy has forced the hand of the POTUS. While I do not agree with the method by which the banking industry has raped the American public, I can unequivocally state that Obama has not been asleep at the switch. You can berate the administration for being to ambitious, but the alternative of doing nothing would be far worse.

Now, I do recall the urging of the administration to help raise the level of innovation and creativity amongst its people. Because I am an engineer with a keen interest in computing, I would propose organizing guilds or training programs which seek to increase the number technically competent youth and young adults. Although, I do understand the America is rapidly becoming a service economy due to the dearth of engineers and scientists, I cannot lose hope that our children can help the greater collective return to prominence.

I say "collective" because while people can point to the GOOG, Social Network software, and cloud computing as shining examples of American innovation... These are still small victories in the huge landscape that is the fabric of the American people. What about the under represented people? If the forthcoming new majority will make a mark the technical acumen will certainly have to be increased two-fold. Graduation from consumers to producers and keen interest in innovation. I have spoken about this in this space many times previously. Yes, I truly believe embracing "knowledge worker" activities will help turn the tide in this country. If not us, then whom? If not now, when?

Free Publicity Who Do We Help?

links for 2010-02-08

2010-02-09T07:01:28Z

ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP)

linux based smartphones and MIDs. Seminal view of Palm-Pre

(tags: linux palm documentation)
Meet OpenVPN

Very high level primer on openvpn

(tags: security freesoftware linux opensource howto)
BlogFish: Improving OpenVPN's security

Chroot openvpn for added security on xBSD and *nix

(tags: hacking security freesoftware)
YaCy Distributed Web Search

Java based web crawler

(tags: freesoftware opensource)

Blog Disclaimer As Per The New FTC Guidelines

2010-02-07T05:40:41Z

Hmmm. I wonder how many folks will actually honor this edict. Personally, I know of several folks who only blog in an attempt to steer people to ads. Call me altruistic, but blogging is hard work. Nonetheless, I have always enjoyed it immensely. Methinks that micro-blogging and other forms of social networking are over estimated in terms of their contribution to the so-called erosion of traditional blogging.

As I've stated previously in this space, long after Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networking tools disappear the blogosphere will remain strong. This is particular true due to the fact that people wish to share their own form of journalism to keep mainstream news media honest. Although, there are countless crap blogs that resemble road kill (ie Blogspot), there are still countless others that provide useful information. Don't get me wrong, I don't knock folks hustling to get page views and people that love to see GOOG get richer with their ad revenue. I simply do not believe that there is any longevity in this model. Eventually this sort of revenue model drys out, and it really does not scale very well.

The following article is interesting, but I would call it a rule that cannot be enforced. I think the blogosphere will likely police itself. Garbage blogs eventually wither on the vines anyway. Remember blogging is hard work. Putting out relevant content discourages people that are looking for page views and ad revenue.
FTC Blog Disclaimer Guidelines

It's Seminar Time Again - Tang Soo ! (Revisited)

2010-01-27T07:34:21Z

Our semi-annual seminar took place in October, but I simply couldn't find the time to discuss it in any detail. Each time I attend seminar, I have to take stock in the messages I receive from Grandmaster Saul Kim. He usually begins each workout with some pithy philosophical teachings. After seminar I asked him about the example and he indicated that these are classical Chinese Dao philosophy
I was particularly struck by the "cat and mouse" reference. He suggested that we must choose a life role. Obviously these were not his exact words, but merely my interpretation of the message.

Some people will chose to play the cat, that is one who seeks to be the aggressor or pushes the issue. Skillful, cunning, and very often fraught with peril. These Cats are very adventurous but are not always rewarded with a meal as a by-product of risk. On the hand, if you choose to play the role of a mouse... Well life is very different. Taking no risks, the mouse must always watch its back for it could easily become the meal of an aggressive cat.

The mouse is also very hungry but typically never gets enough to eat because it is forever nervous and fearful of death. Actually, there is another position which is even more precarious than that of the mouse or cat. This would be those that take no position or simply play the fence. Why is this so dangerous and careless? Well, consider the fact that indecisiveness never tends to advance any cause. In many cases people become unrecognizable or simply dismissed because they skate through live not willing to establish a role for themselves. Hell at least a mouse understands its direction or stage in life :-)

Yes, I really enjoyed this lesson. Once this brief lesson was shared we spent the next 1.5 - 2hrs working on hand techniques. Lots of punches, ridge hand strikes and sudos. We emphasized hip rotation and using the elbow for reverse strikes while the lead fist attacks. There was also much instruction in striking will stepping backwards. Tang Soo Do is a system of no retreat, but deception is quite advantageous.

2.5hrs into the seminar, I realized that I should begin taping my feet as I never seem to be able to avoid aggravating blisters on the balls of my feet. The carpet in the dojang is not very forgiving..

Well the next seminar will take place in March or April. I expect to have more to share.

Retiring the Smoothie

2010-01-22T12:41:51Z

Image via Wikipedia

After many years of firewall happiness, I finally was forced to retire my smoothwall DIY firewall. I built this box during the time when it was sexy to create a firewall from scratch using a throw away beige box. In fact, the box had been powered by the venerable AMD K5 CPU (133Mhz).. It ran flawlessly since 2000. Well why retire it now? I simply need to reduce the thermal footprint in the lab. Secondly, I realized that the squid proxy seemed to be causing me some issues. Now that I run a managed switch Linksys SRW224P and Linksys VPN/Router RV082, I didn't see the point in running two firewalls.

Oh well, I can re-deploy the box for another purpose. It was cool to drop two NICs in the box and have complete control over the behavior of the packet filtering. The box matriculated from ipchains to iptables. How sweet it was ;-)

Book of Eli

2010-01-19T05:47:06Z

I really haven't had the time to discuss some of the better films or at least those that I've reached into my pockets to support. I still contend that it is probably better to get the torrent for most flicks. Anyway I digress. There have been some real jewels. This film is perhaps best in class for 2K10.
In an effort not to give away the plot, I would call it a holy crusade based in an apocalypse.
Subplots abound in this flick, ultimate faith, and conviction. Though I must say it is not Denzell Washington's best project, he did a great job with a very plausible character.

I'm not the religious fanatic, but I could see where stereotypes could be drawn and proliferated with the conversation throughout. Nuff said.

Analog Hole Musings

2010-01-14T12:26:17Z

Image via Wikipedia

When Comcast decided to convert its services to digital, there were several channels that I could no longer view. This problem was due to the fact that I did not have a cable set-top box. Most of the HD digital content is encrypted and can only be viewed via cable box. The move eventually forced me into trying out the AT&T U-Verse program. The U-Verse price seemed to be very good for the value, thus I participated in the trial promotion. I grabbed the U-200 pkg. Immediately I realized that you get a far better picture with IPTV. Besides having a really great picture, I also noticed that my local PEG channels had disappeared. Eventually, the anger wore off and I didn't think much about it.

Once I finally discovered the Neuros OSD, I began to record baseball games from FOX. I simply used the component video connections on the TV to captured standard definition and OTH HD (Fox, ESPN, etc). After doing this for roughly 3 - 5 months, one day component video data capturing stopped working. Very weird. I then resorted to using S-Video connection on the U-Verse DVB, but that was less than optimal. The audio was clipped and the quality of the video was horrible. Lastly, I'd horror stories of folks attempting to use MythTV with U-Verse service. Somehow you had to get two U-Verse gateways and essentially sniff the DSLAM packets and spoof an IP address. Though it sounded quite intriguing, I love a challenge. My wife would likely have a fit. Too much work for me these days. So I quickly got rid of U-Verse.

So it really is the lesser of two evils. Fool with AT&T U-Verse or Comcast. I don't believe Comcast spends too much time encrypting the data leaving it's set top boxes. I would imagine they probably use QAM, but never try to discourage folks for manipulating the analog hole.

To date, I've upgraded the Comcast set top box from the DCT-5100 to the DCX-3400 DVR QAM. I noticed the older DCT-5100 had a disabled IEEE-1394 (Firewire) port and that would be illegal.

So, once I finally get MythTV setup appropriately, I'll have commercial flagging goodness and total control over recording and channel line-up.

Foray into DOCSIS 3.0 - Weirdness of DNS Caching

2010-01-09T17:02:49Z

Image via Wikipedia

I recently upgraded to a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem - Motorola Surfboard SB6120. After sharing the MAC address and product S/N, the unit was provisioned by Comcast. All of the LAN clients were able to ping out and resolve FQDNs without issue. However, I have one rogue winxp client that seems to be caching some weird Comcast maintenance site. It was the only box that was not using our local proxy (TOR/Privoxy). Once I setup the client to use our pseudo-local proxy the problem went away. However, this was not an elegant solution due to the decreased speed of sending traffic through TOR. Personally, I don't have a problem using TOR. Works well for me. I suppose that I could have offered foxyproxy to this particular user. However the owner of that winxp box isn't really interested in using proxies. Go figure :-)

Anyway the weird cached maintenance site can be seen here.

After a bit of head scratching I realized that I had a DNS problem. For whatever reason, none of the clients could resolve a FQDN.

Most of the time spent on the phone with Comcast help desk/support was useless. Some of the excuses were, "the cable modem was too new", "your router/firewall is the culprit".. The simple troubleshooting script for the average one-eyed droid was exhausted after I presented my problem. In fairness to Comcast, there was one tech who seemed interested. He shared all possible DNS server IPs, both public and Comcast specific. Nothing solved the issue. We even tried GOOGs public DNS servers (obviously not ideal), but did not solve the issue.

I spent a few days fooling around and eventually reverted back to my tried and true Linksys Cable modem BEFCMU010 (DOCSIS 1.0).

Some things I checked during my trouble shooting effort:

Rebooted both firewall (Smoothwall 2.0) and 1GB network switch
Rebooted with Ativa wireless G WAP
Rebooted Cable Modem
grepped through the squid access logs on Smoothwall 2.0.box

Below are snippets from my squid proxy access log. I use squid as a cheap caching server. Judging from the logs, it seems that the some sites are being re-directed others are being authorized. Not sure why.

192.168.0.2 - - [07/Jan/2010:11:35:46 -0500] "GET http://actsvr.comcastonline.com/landing_filter.html? HTTP/1.0" 200 473 TCP_MISS:DIRECT
192.168.0.2 - - [07/Jan/2010:11:37:09 -0500] "GET http://actsvr.comcastonline.com/landing_filter.html? HTTP/1.0" 200 473 TCP_MISS:DIRECT
192.168.0.2 - - [07/Jan/2010:11:37:52 -0500] "GET http://actsvr.comcastonline.com/landing_filter.html? HTTP/1.0" 200 473 TCP_MISS:DIRECT

192.168.0.20 - - [03/Jan/2010:18:05:16 -0500] "GET http://toolbarqueries.google.
com/search? HTTP/1.1" 302 500 TCP_MISS:DIRECT
192.168.0.20 - - [03/Jan/2010:18:05:39 -0500] "GET http://pong1.clientapps.yahoo.com/csver/1_1 HTTP/1.1" 200 484 TCP_HIT:NONE
192.168.0.20 - - [03/Jan/2010:18:06:37 -0500] "POST http://bwhome.logitech.com/B21466 HTTP/1.1" 0 0 TCP_MISS:DIRECT
192.168.0.20 - - [03/Jan/2010:18:08:13 -0500] "GET http://linkhelp.clients.google.com/tbproxy/lh/fixurl? HTTP/1.1" 302 526 TCP_MISS:DIRECT

Here are some of the things I learned in this failed attempt:

Onion Routers are terrific - I was able to circumvent the Comcast caching issue using TOR and Privoxy
Never buy newly released modems without understanding how they work with various ISPs
Don't expect provisioning to be a simple evolution
DOCSIS 3.0 has some real potential once it becomes mainstream and all ISPs begin to use it.

Wonder if other people have had any success with these newer cable modems...
I will likely re-visit this experiment once I return the SB6120 back to "Worst Buy"..
Perhaps I will have a better experience next time.

Related Entries in Movable Type

2010-01-03T13:02:09Z

Image via CrunchBase

If you have been a frequent reader of this blog, you might notice that I am now listing top 4 entries that could possibly be related to that particular entry. At this point a strategically placed small font header which reads "Possibly Related" would likely help my readers. When I made changes to my individual entry archive template, I neglected to add this useful header. Will get to this sometime this week. *Sigh* I digress.

Anyway, I am not using any special plug-in aside from the Brad Choate's venerable mtsql plug-in, which simply creates a means to extract or parse data from a mySQL relational database. Sorry postgres folks, I've not seen plug-in for anything but mySQL. Though, I imagine it would be possible to do the same.

Basically, you must setup a full text index within your movabletype relational database. Chad Everett also wrote a very helpful blog entry on this topic. In fact my index query was similar to this one..

ALTER TABLE mt_entry ADD FULLTEXT ( entry_title, entry_text, entry_text_more );

The MT mark-up language allows you to essentially data mine your previous entries and display them under the body of all new blog entry. That is provided that you modify the appropriate movabletype design templates. Apparently, I'll need to modify additional main index template in addition to the individual entry archive.

Because I have been blogging for nearly 7yrs, I have amassed quite a bit of content.
It is not easy to search for entries of interest. So, why not aid the reader in this process?
When I rebuilt my blog early last year, I removed several of the helpful stuff from the my main index template (ie netcast/podcast RSS Feeds, Flickr URL, and much of the other social network links) and in retrospect it probably was a mistake. So, this too will be restored quite soon.

Unfortunately, as I peruse my archives I see that the results are all over the map. Not sure why the quality of these so-called related entries are not consistently relevant.
My relational database full-context query consisted of keywords, entry title, extended entry text, entry text. I will eventually discover a way to add the tags which I have been using for quite sometime. I'll need to peruse my MT database fields to determine how movable type references this "tags" field. I'm clear that this information should also be in my full text index too.