-{ benkillin's web site }-

Epic failure.

Why? Because. Just because.

Anyway, I got a new laptop, the eeepc. I like it a lot and even though its really tiny and has a small ass screen I can use it to do daily things like blog and write papers and stuff like that.

I have several gripes with it, the main one is the number keys on the top of the keyboard are offset one key to the left because the tilde key is moved on the row with the function keys; so I have to re-learn the typing positions of the numbers because I am a touch typist.

I am almost done with this semester, only a few more weeks to go. I am going to do better than I did last semester. I have to do a computer science project which I was thinking about this morning. I have to implement the IEEE 754 standard for double precision floating point numbers on the Pep/8 arceticture by modifying the operating system. I have to modify the decimal output trap to output a floating point number in the proper format. I am going to do several test cases by hand and use that as a sort of unit testing framework to base my testing off of.

I also have to do a research paper for english and journal entries for both english and dance production class. I also must fit in doing my math homework and a takehome test due the 15th.

I dont care if none of you care about this information. Nobody reads this blog anyway, I have the web statistics.

I am going to upgrade my blog system to put links on the dates so you can link to specific archived blog posts.

I would also like to give a shoutout to lanshark, somebody I met on IRC. Take a look at several of his sites:
http://thepetsweb.com/–his blog
http://www.rareformservices.com/–his development company
http://www.cigarzilla.net.–his cigar forum site

On another subject, I figured out you can re-use those boxed wine things. You can take the bag out of the box once it is empty, and you can remove the nozzle from the bag, it just snaps in and out of place with some force. After you remove it, clean the bag and the nozzle well and fill it with water, and make sure there is no air left in the bag. Then you have 5 liters of water you could use to put into an emergency preparedness kit. Take a look at this website which gives you some good information about emergency water supplies

I finally got my ideal home network setup in place. I am quite pleased with it.

It is set up like this: [internet] OpenBSD Transparent Filtering Bridge [internal network]. I also have set up a 3rd network interface on it as a span port, where it copies all traffic on the bridge to it, but blocks all incoming packets. This is so I can use a crossover cable and hook it up to a secondary computer and run a Snort IDS on it. I have it set up like that instead of putting Snort on the transparent bridge directly because Snort can be used to infiltrate a network if the right packets are sent to the network that snort is on. This is because both the snort engine and the rules it uses are vulnerable to attack if the coding in those things were done poorly. Snort uses c language rule sets, which make them especially vulnerable to poor coding practices.

Once I got the initial bridge set up, before I got the span port working, which I just did today, I made a Custom OpenBSD Installer CD which includes many useful files right on the disk, which are not included with the official release iso that you can download from one of the official openbsd mirrors.

Until today, I was unsure if I could do that with the 3rd network interface. I asked this question to several people but they could not answer me, so I proposed that it would be possible: “is it possible to put a third network interface in my transparent bridge, and have that bridged to the other ports, but only as like a listen port so I can plug a box with 2 nics in it up to it and have no traffic go through it? I want to have a second box hooked directly up to my transparent bridge and run snort on that so thens nort isnt running on the network transport device so it poses less of a risk to be compromised; I also want the snort box to be hooked up behind my firewall on its second interface (the first will have no IP) with an IP so then I can access the internet from the box and tell linux to completly separate the two network cards and allow no traffic to pass between them?”

I solved my problem by thinking out loud: “I know how I could block traffic comming from the span port by setting a pf rule that says block quick in on $THIRD_INTERFACE all
then pass out quick on $THIRD_INTERFACE all
that solves the span port problem, the two interfaces would be separated by default on linux, so that wont be a problem, all I have to do for the no ip on linux is make it listen in promisc mode by giving it an ip of like 0.0.0.0 or something”

That solution did indeed work. I added the third network interface to the openbsd bridge in the /etc/bridgename.bridge0 file and set up a pf rule such that:

“#### Set up the span port
## block all incomming packets and pass everything out quick
## This is so we can have an IDS on the network that is not able to send
## out packets on the same interface it is listening on
block in quick on $spn_if all
pass out quick on $spn_if all”

Which solved the problem on the openbsd side. Then after hooking the two computers up with a crossover cable (because they are like devices, not one is a host and one is a router) I set up in linux:
“ifconfig eth1 promisc;
ifconfig eth1 up;”
Note: the interface was not configured to get an IP address at all.
After the interface was put into promisc mode and brought up, tcpdump -i eth1 showed the packets traveling to it from the bridge, and tcpdump -i sis0 showed teh same packets, which was expected. Then these iptables rules were put into place:
“# allow everything comming in over the eth1 interface because that is
# a network monitor port (default policy on input is drop)
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i eth1 -j ACCEPT
# dont allow source routing from incomming packets:
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -o eth1 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -o eth0 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth1 -j DROP”

and that was it. :-)

Well, it has been a while!

I made a move to this new server which was provided by a good friend of mine. It is an excellent server and if anybody is in the market for an excellent paid hosting provider, contact me using the “Contact me” link on the bottom of this page and I will get you in contact with the right person ASAP.

Life is treating me good. It is finals week at my school and I have my Computer Science test tomorrow, which I have a VERY good chance at getting above a 95% on because I have read the book.

I am working on a computer science project which is also doubling as my SciTe scholarship project. It is an image filtering lab, and I like it a lot; I did not do a majority of the work on it, I just made it work the way I wanted it to work. If you are interested, grab the latest version and test it out. I still have work to do on it.

I am no longer working at UVa so I am unsure how much longer my accounts will stay active. I am going to pull down the entire site to my HDD for a backup and start looking for another hosting provider. I like this site design because it is simple and it is easy for me to maintain it, so I don’t think I’ll change it much, if at all.

I am actually sort of relieved I am not working at UVa anymore because that leaves me more time to focus on school, and I can do the best I can now that I have more of my time focused on school.

To be able to talk and think coherently is something many people take for granted.

I’m just going to use this site. It has served me well so far and its not like anybody actually reads this crap with any sort of a regularity between visits.

I was keeping a journal on my computer, but I decided to try to write a java program to make writing entries to it easier and I enabled a line in the code too soon and it overwrote my journal with a blank file. So I’m going to use this site as my journal.

the website in my last blog post is no longer up, I don’t know when I’ll get the server set up right again.

Word press is too slow, so I’m going to stick with this blog system because I wrote it and I am proud of it. Also, this blog system is very fast.

I’m going to move this site over to http://www.b1towel.com/ because that is my web server that I own and I bought a domain name. I am going to use it for my blog and the informational content that I have up here plus anything else I decide to publish.

I’m also going to finish up this blog system and change the way it works so it uses XML stuff instead of plain-text stuff.

Okay, I’ve installed WordPress on this site and updated its template to look like my existing design with a few tweaks.

I am going to use it to post new blog entries because I like giving visitors to this site something to do, like post comments, because it just makes me feel good inside.

The new blog can be found by clicking the link for “Ben’s blog” on the main menu, or by going to http://www.people.virginia.edu/blog.

It’s supprising to me that some people have already made their way to the blog without me posting the link anywhere on this site. Then again it is a very simple and obvious URL so im not incredibly supprised.

Enjoy the new system!

I graduated from high school Tuesday. It feels great to finally be done with school (almost). I graduated with an Advanced Studies Diploma, and with honors (“Career and technical education” and “Acedemic Excellence”).

I signed a lease yesterday for my first apartment, I move in the 15th of this month. Tee total down payment was $1495, split 3 ways I had to pay $498.33 but my other room mate and I had to pay $600 because the other person could only get $300 out of the ATM.

It’s a nice house, it’s a 3 story town house with a deck and a finished basement. The next door neighbor has a jacuzzi, so Im going to become friends with them very fast ;-).

The other day I thought of a very simple, and very good recepe for a quick snack. I call thee “Unnamed Recepe #1”! (Origional, isn’t it? :-D)

Ingredients

• 1/4 inch slices of artisan or french bread
• Olive Oil
• Emeril’s Essence

Procedure

1. Put a small amount of olive oil each piece of bread.
2. Spread the oil around the bread with your finger or a butter knife so it evenly coats one side of the bread.
3. Sprinkle a small amount of Emeril’s Essence on the bread and spread that around so it’s an even coating just like the olive oil.
4. Place each piece of bread in a toaster or toaster oven and set the toaster/oven so it cooks for 3.5 minutes (or until golden brown). This should be just enough time to make them slightly crispy but not so hard that it’s uncomfortable to eat.

Tip: When making the Emeril’s Essance by following the Food Network directions, when you come to the part that says “Combine all ingredients thoroughly.” I find it’s best to use one of those electric coffee grinders.

I hope this recepe is helpful to you. it’s great for when you have a party and need to make small snacks.

Today was my graduation practice, which my attendance was required because I want to walk at my graduation (if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t be allowed to participate).

I’m so happy I graduate high school tommorow! It’s been a long 4 years!

It just dawned on me today that I would never have to go back to a public school ever again as part of my education; I was awed.

I got a haircut today for graduation. I got my hair cut shorter that I have been used to recently, but I always did get it cut short anyways.

BTW, I never told any of you what it is that I like. I might as well, because this blog is the only thing I am going to use my web site for anymore... I’ll probably install WordPress on here and replace my blog system because WP is more flexible than my current system.

First and foremost, I like the ladies ;-)
I like building and fixing things, be it a car or computer or anything else for that matter.
I like making things happen on a computer, sometimes I do some really complicated things just for fun, like setting up a Linux Domain Controller for a 2 computer Windows network.
I like cars and driving; I installed a sub-woofer that you would normally plug into the wall as part of a home entertainment system in my car for only $70 (as opposed to the $275+ you would spend on a [decent] car audio system) and it sounds great.
I like programming, which I can do in Shell scripts (windows and linux), Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic [6 and .net], C#, C, C++, and I can learn anything else fairly fast; its all just a matter of different syntax once you have the basic Computer Science principals down.
Additionally I like building and fixing computers, which I do for Computers 4 Kids on a regular basis (see http://www.computers4kids.net for more info). I built my own computer when I was 14 years old.
I like listening to music, anything that sounds good. I have a fondness of Pink Floyd, System Of A Down, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Green Day, Kanye West, Chamillionaire, The Game [ but NOT 10 Nickles... :P ], Bone Thugs and Harmony, and some Eminem. The generes of music I like are Techno, Rap, and Acid Rock.
I like messing around with chemicals and I love fireworks.
I enjoy launching model rockets and shooting guns.
My favorate sports to play are Paintball and Airsoft.
I think Repelling and Rock Climbing are fun as well.

I hope that’s enough info... :-)

Last week (25 May 2006)I went on my Senior Trip to 6 Flags in Maryland, which was fantastic! I went to prom last saturday (26 May 2006) with my Girlfriend, which was really the best night of my life. My school did an excelent job at organizing everything and the after party was just as good. The theme at the after party was “Ramblin’ ‘N Gamblin’”... In the lunchroom they had several poker tables set up at which you could play any card game you wanted. Once you ran out of the fake cash they gave you, you could hop in this inflatable booth in which they had a bunch of the fake money flying around and you had to grab it from the air.

I have some pictures which I will post later of my Prom and graduation.

Google released a new service for creating web pages, its called “Google Page Creator” <scarcasm>what a creative name!</scarcasm>. I tested it out and in 3 minutes I created a page.

It works well enough that I might consider using that as my blog instead of this system... BUT THEN WHAT WILL BECOME OF THIS SITE?!? You may ask, but I won’t tell.

I’ve put too much work into this site to let it be replaced by something I didn’t make, so this site is staying.

I plan on transitioning my blog from a file based system into an SQL based system for the reason that a database is much easier to manipulate than text files. However, the current system is much more light weight in terms of server resources consumed because the way the current system works is like this: The blog processor changes two HTML files, the main page and the “All Blog” page are simple HTML files which use SSI to get the contents of the two HTML files put to the requesting agent. When I turn the system to an SQL based application, the front page and the “All blog” page will need to be converted to PHP to allow for SQL functionality.

The reason I didn’t pick SQL to begin with is because I did not know my hosting solution (U.Va. ITC; Whom I happen to work for, if you haven’t figured that out already) offered SQL databases for personal accounts.

A lot has happened since my last post. I am going to move out soon; C4K moved to a new location; and I am doing phenomenal in school.

I am going to move out of my house and live with 3 other roommates in an apartment yet to be determined by me. The idea was presented by a friend of mine, David D, several weeks ago. So far we have picked two apartments to use, but both times they have already been taken before we could place an offer.

C4K moved to a commercial complex next to the local CBS station. I helped terminate all the Ethernet drops a week or so ago, which was a pretty cool learning experience for me. The new location is a lot better then the old location on Grove st. for several reasons, one being it looks much more professional than the old one.

This 9 weeks I got all straight As on my report card. This might not seem like anything special to some people, but it was special for me because that is the first time EVER that I have gotten a grade of A in all my classes.

I found an error in firefox, one which really pissed me off for the past two days. The error came about when I was working on ITCWeb. I was making a piece of javascript that enabled the user to change what part of U.Va. you wanted to search (ITCWeb, U.VA. Web, or just the staff directory). The solution I came up with is the one that you can see if you go the website on every page, when you click on the link which says what you are going to search, a hidden select box comes up to allow you to choose what you want to search.

Because U.Va. is a state funded organization, they have to comply with all state and federal accessibility regulations. For this reason I needed to make the search selector able to be used without the mouse at all. This half worked with the first version that I came up with, except you could not tab through the screen. The second version that I started on Wednesday worked much better, you could tab through the screen and make a selection using the arrow keys after pressing space or enter in firefox (IE will not display the box yet if you press enter, I'm still trying to fix that).

If you activated the selection box using your keyboard (or mouse) in firefox, changed the selected element using the arrow keys, then pressed the tab key instead of enter, firefox crashed.

I figured out the exact cause and solution today. The cause of the crash was if you explicitly changing the focused element on the page using javascript after hiding the select box. The solution was simple: instead of using the display: none CSS property to hide the box, use visibility: hidden property to hide the selection box.

I put an example up if anybody wants to test this out without making their own test page.

Update: this bug has been fixed sometime ago, I dont recall the exact version where it was fixed. (10 Feb. 2008)

ARGH, every day Microsoft seems to give me a new reason to hate Windows!

I do volunteer work for an organization called Computers 4 Kids and today they wanted me to install XP on a computer to test donated printers. Sounds simple, right?

Well I installed the base system, it restarts and goes to finish the installation in that cheezy "XP is the best thing in the world" installer. After 30 minutes the damned thing locks up, I restart and it starts FROM THE BEGINNING of the non-base-system installer and then after another 30 minutes, it locks up AGAIN.

I had to re-install the base system in the low level windows installer that takes forever to start up because instead of actually trying to detect what hardware you have in your system, it loads every possible driver for almost every piece of hardware under the sun.

Linux, on the other hand, doesn't do that. In fact it detects the hardware you have then installs the system with an installer that does the requested task and does nothing else, like have "pretty blue colors" and pointless text that tries to up-sell the operating system.

When will Microsoft get a clue?

I hate computers.

For the past two weeks I have been trying to set up a windows server with active directory so all my family members can use any computer in the house and all their personalization settings would be the same.

You would think that would be a simple process, but let me tell you it is not any where near simple. For some reason it is more complicated with windows then UNIX.

I origionally set up my server with windows server 2003. I set it up as a domain controller and tried setting users to use roaming profiles and to set a home drive when wey log in. For some reason my computer, which is located upstairs, could not login to the domain. My mom's computer, which is located downstairs, loged in fine but the home drive and roaming profiles would not work right. For some reason windows would also not allow me to edit the domain security policy, even though I was running as Administrator, no matter what I tried. The client computers would take forever to log in, and the server took 10 minutes just to start up. Then I tried adding some SCSI drives to the computer and then windows would hang when starting, the BSOD and restart automatically.

After all of this I decided to scrap windows and I installed Ubuntu linux 5.10 with Samba 3. I was able to configure it as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) within 30 minutes and I set up the home drives and roaming profiles with no trouble at all. Not only was it faster and more secure, but Ubuntu came with drivers for my SATA PCI card and my SCSI adapter card with no need to configure or install any drivers at all. WIth the Synaptic package manager that is built it, I can keep my server up to date by only typing two commands, as opposed to going to Windows update, waiting for the thing to scan, 50 percent of the time IE would crash, and the other half of the time the thing took forever just to do a simple task.

Not only is linux easier to set up as a PDC than windows, but it's more secure and just better in every way imaginable as a server than windows will ever be.

Do you want to know something amazing? I just figured something out.

That was amazing, no? I'm just kidding, what I figured out is not amazing, but interesting:

Have you ever noticed how on most television commercials the volume is louder, sometimes so loud that it's hard to talk over sometimes? Additionally, sometimes the broadcasting station has the volume of their program so low that you have to turn up the television to hear the words, so when the commercials that already have the volume increased on the broadcasting side are amplified even further through the television, which makes it near impossible to hear your own thoughts.

This is because the stations want to make as much money from their service. The stations get paid by companies to advertise their product/service. The more successful the business is, the more advertising it can buy. Thus making it so the television station make more money. Now, if the commercials are loud, in most cases it will create an environment in which it harder to talk amongst family or concentrate on other things aside from the commercials. If you are unable to concentrate on anything else but the commercial, it is more likely that the commercial will be successful in attaining patronage from viewers because they now know about the service/product and might use/buy it if they find it to their advantage or liking.

The stations make the volume lower on their programs because they want it to be difficult to do other stuff while trying to listen to the current program at the same time. This makes the viewer either turn the television's volume up or force them to focus all visual attention on the T.V. so the person can find out what the program is saying by looking at the people's lips or maybe close captioning. This is advantageous to the T.V. station because they could flash little mini-advertisements in the corners of the T.V. and it will be seen, re-enforcing the fact that was mentioned in the previous paragraph.

The bottom line is simply for everybody involved to make as much money as possible from their viewers. The companies that are involved in this process might tell you the reason that the commercials are louder is simply because they use "audio compression" on the commercial. I am unsure, but I think audio compression makes all the audio signals have normalized waveforms. The broadcasters probably use audio compression to make the commercial audio easier to understand because extreme peaks in the audio signal' s wave are removed (normalized to be the same as the rest of the other waves).

Be aware that I might be wrong about the audio compression thing.

I turned my English paper in today. Unfortunately when I got there, I realized that the works cited page had to list sources in alphabetical order. The teacher knows that mistakes like that happen and allowed me to turn it in later today so I had time to fix it.

If anyone is interested in reading the paper, use either the text message me feature, or the contact form, to tell me you want a copy. Be sure to include a return email address in the message.

I think I finally decided what I'm going to do with my life (at least for the next 4-6 years). After I get out of High School I am going to go to a local community college for two years, then transfer to U.Va. for an additional 2 years to get my bachelors degree, or 4 years and get my masters.

Unless something convinces me otherwise, I am going to major in software Computer Science. I might minor in psychology or business, and I know I will take at least one course in hardware computer science.

I will probably write the car how-to I talked about earlier soon.

I Designed This Site W/ Handheld Devices In Mind. If Your Agent Identifies Its Self As One Of The Many Devices I Took Into Account, You Will Get Served A Simplified Version Of This Site. I Am Using My Cell Phone To Write This Post, In Fact (thus The Odd Capitalization).

I really should be working on my English paper instead of writing this post, especially because, though I am unsure, this site does not get any visitors aside from me. It's really a waste of my time to be updating this site. But now with my blog processing script, it's a lot easier and faster to add blog posts.

I'll probably add a very simple system to allow users to add comments some time, all though probably not for several weeks/months.

I just finished making some semi-major changes to this site. I tweaked the style sheet some to make it easier to read. I added a "text message me" feature to the site, users can access it by clicking on the link on the bottom right of every page within this site. I added a "style selector" to change the style sheet served to users. To get to it, follow the link on the bottom left of every page on here. I will probably add a how-to about how to wire a cigarette lighter socket in to the trunk of a car.

I just finished coding phase 1 of my blog system. I am using it to write this post, which is basically a test post. The system only has the ability to create a new post, and nothing more. Before the script, I edited the HTML to add a post.

I am almost finished with the first semester of my senior year at Albemarle High School. I have a major English assignment due Monday, which I should probably be working on right now instead of writing this post.

I have not been able to play air-soft or paintball since the last time I talked about it because of school and my job. Those two reasons are also why I haven't updated this site in a long time.

Updates to the site will be extremely infrequent, due to my job at U. Va. and school starts again soon (the 22nd). I will add content only by one page at a time because of the amount of time that school and my job will take up and the fact that after working at U. Va. for the day, I am not really inclined to use a computer becuase I use one all day. I did add a how to, however.

Planet Fun closes permanently on the 28th, and I will get a month of severance pay. I am trying to put in more hours these last two weeks because they will use the hours worked this month to calculate how much my severance pay will be.

I am going to be playing less paint ball in favor of playing air soft, because it seems more fun to me now, I do not have to wear the face mask which is quite uncomfortable and hot, and air soft is much much cheaper. 2000 rounds of air soft ammo is $5, 2000 paint balls is $45. I plan on getting some more air soft guns my next paycheck to add to my collection of 2 guns. I currently have a glock-like pistol, and a pistol grip shotgun.

I still have not received my full order from ACP. I got the bolt, which does not even fit in my gun, so I will be selling that, and I have not received the trigger I ordered. I think I will cancel my order and them give me my money back.

I went paint balling sunday, I had a good time. However the new bolt I put into my gun (the ACP Blue Bolt) did not work, the back end of the bolt keeps expanding, no matter how much I sand it down. The front end is fine, which is odd because only the back end of the bolt expands.

I started my job at U. Va. on monday (the 18th) and I am really liking the job. Everyone here is nice and polite, it's just great. I am planning on going paint balling this sunday, it will be the first time in a long while.

I added some content to the site, one how-to and one widget.

Planet Fun decided to give me every sunday off to keep me as an employee. They need all the help they can get, so I am staying until they close, which is September first. I start my job at U. Va. tomorrow. Because I was already an "employee", it will be very easy to get all my stuff going again (accounts, key cards, computers...). I am very happy that I ended up getting a job at U. Va. because nobody can shut U. Va. down, so that's a lot of job security. Plus I am doing something I like doing, which is awesome.

I "finished" up all current tweaks to the site template. I added a DHTML menu, as you can see, and it stores the current state of the menu as a JS cookie so it keeps the current state across pages. I plan on adding some content next.

I decided to quit my job at Planet Fun today because I just got a better job making $2.50 more an hour, and it is a desk job doing something I like doing (working at the U. Va. ITC department). Although I gave Planet Fun my two weeks notice, I told them I would continue working under the condition that I didn't have to work sundays, because I like playing paint ball, and if I am working every weekend, I can't play paint ball.

I just finished touching up this site for the moment. I am going to add some real content now that I have the design part "done". This does not mean I won't tweak the design at any given moment, it just means I'm not going to make any huge changes any time soon. I plan on adding content in this order: Recipes, then Widgets, and then finally How-To's. It wail be a slow process, but It will get done.