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The latest version of VMWare Fusion lets you run virtual machines in headless mode. The strange thing is that it’s not enabled by default. To enable it you need to run the following on your console:

defaults write com.vmware.fusion fluxCapacitor -bool YES


“All My Regex’s Live in Texas”

• iPhone app development in full swing
• Finished up a couple of web apps for Cisco
• Updating Mac app for Sharp Labs, deployment imminent
• I has new stove. Bertazzoni. DOPE
• Renewing my love for Ant. And yes I use it for PHP, JS, etc..

So I did buy a house, which is why I have not posted anything in over a month! Hectic! On the work front, I am working on a few miscellaneous projects for Cisco, which is pretty cool. It also looks like I’ll be doing some updates to some of my existing software over at Sharp Labs. In between that, Ruth and I are hard at work at casa Wardy, with a kitchen remodel (doing the work ourselves) and trying to get settled in.

Hillarious:

http://globalnerdy.com/2008/05/29/geek-gang-signs/

I took the digital cable box down to Comcast today and told them to kill my cable and just give me the cheapest thing they had (which is not much other than local channels). My response to the “why ?” that came from the Comcast agent was simple, there’s nothing on that I’m interested in watching.

Sometimes I am amazed at the negligence of a public web server (or any server, really) that has all sorts of TCP ports open to the public. If the server is only serving HTTP content, then why on earth do anything other than port 80 and 443 need to be open? If 3306 is open, fire your IT staff/web developer. They might try to claim that MySQL is locked down tighter than Jack’s hat strap. This is nothing short of a lame excuse. If you are reading this BECAUSE port 3306 is open, here’s what to do:
Most likely you use SSH. Most likely SSH is open on the external interface so you can actually use it. Let’s start there. Don’t run it on port 22. Simply change the sshd config to another port that is available (let’s say 88). This makes running SSH on a public server a little harder to hack simply because it’s not standard and any automated bots looking to pound port 22 with a brute force attack won’t get anywhere. This does not however keep a good TCP/IP hound from figuring out what port 88 actually is, but it helps A LOT. If you don’t believe me just try it out for a couple of weeks and monitor your ssh logs. Now for that MySQL need. First, configure mydqld to only listen on 127.0.0.1. Next, use an SSH tunnel. I won’t go into the details of what it does and how it works, but using a command similar to this:

ssh -N -p 88 user@someserver.com -L 3306/127.0.0.1/3306

Enter your password when prompted.

Now all you need to do to connect your fancy MySQL client to the remote server is connect to 127.0.0.1:3306 as if MySQL was running on your local machine. You can do this for ANY TCP/IP based service.

I’ve been a pretty hardcore cyclist since the mid-80’s, pretty much from the first time I saw the Tour de France on TV in 1985. As part of seeing that race unfold I was completely in awe by the television footage showing these massive snow capped mountains in the Alps. I my time in the saddle, I have always been a good climber and love to hit the mountains. The harder, steeper, longer, the better. A lot of it has to do with my size and weight (eh, at least when I’m in shape!). So the 2008 Giro ‘d Italia is starts this weekend, and this picture pretty much sums it up, as well as makes me drool for some serious climbing….

Wow. I was going through a box of old (REALLY OLD) computer parts that I’ve been hording for quite some time. In particular I came across a 250MB hard drive that came out of the first computer I bought (1991 I think). I plugged it in to an available IDE channel on my PC, and found all sorts of hillarious stuff. Like DOS and Windows 3.11. Good lord. What’s even more comical, and in this day and age probably a lost art: a list of BBS servers I used to use frequently. Even I had forgotten all about the good old days of BBS servers. I mean, can you imagine? In the days before the Internet, I would dial into to these local BBS servers using a terminal, and use their archaic navigation to find what I was looking for (mostly CAD related things at the time, but also a lot of very early freeware/shareware). Thinking back on that compared to the Internet today made me realize how nice and simple things were then: no spammers, no ads, no BS. Just enthusiasts, discussions, and files-o-plenty… if you could deal with the UI. I wonder how many people even know what I’m talking about…