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interesting

cool places / interesting / me / olympics — 1 Comment
26
Aug 08

USSR is Winning Olympics 2008

USSR National EmblemI was born and pretty much raised in USSR (Ukraine), and therefore when it comes to sports – not war/politics and definitely not nationalism/silly Soviet patriotism, it makes me feel happy when any of the 15 USSR (former) republics athletes achieve gold/silver/bronze or just a good notable performance.

As a kid, I went to Children’s Olympic Reserve School doing sport gymnastics for several years, where I could see how high our standards were and just how important the role of sport was on the grand scale of things in the country.

So I was looking at “Overall Medal Standings” at the end of 2008 Olympics and came to an interesting conclusion:

NOC Name Total Gold Total Medals
Russia 23 72
Ukraine 7 27
Belarus 4 19
Georgia 3 6
Kazakhstan 2 13
Azerbaijan 1 7
Uzbekistan 1 6
Latvia 1 3
Estonia 1 2
Lithuania 0 5
Kyrgyzstan 0 2
Tajikistan 0 2
Armenia 0 6
Moldova 0 1
Total: 43 171

As the table above shows the (formerly :) ) strong USSR could have taken 43 gold medals, which is 7 medals ahead of US, but still leaves USSR at the second “gold” place after China, however it would take 171 total medals which would make it a 2008 Olympics winner by the total medal count!

One “the very true” argument could be “foo get abour it, USSR is no more” – true. But I was mentally flipping pages through the history, combining the medals of Roman Empire, Osman Empire, and even Delian League, but their medal count did not come even close the third place. (“Persian Empire” came pretty close actually :) )

Just wanted to bounce it against people of www ;)

hardware / howto / interesting / linux / linuxmce / software / technology / tutorials / ubuntu — 5 Comments
15
Jul 08

Forward VNC through SSH

linuxmce screenshotFrequently I need to access my LinuxMCE machine over VNC, due to different reasons (when I am not home, when my Wii Remote batteries died, etc..). Usually SSH solves most of my needs, but sometimes it is very nice to control my linuxMCE box over VNC.

Here I will show you several very easy steps on how to configure your server/client to be able to tunnel VNC traffic through SSH, and be able to control your server in the GUI way :) This approach will work on most systems (not LinuxMCE specific) although here I chose Ubuntu as an “example OS”.

Before we begin, I would assume that:

  • The server already has ssh server installed, if not: 
    sudo apt-get install openssh-server
  • If connecting from the outside (like from work to home box), your router’s firewall forwards port 22 to your server’s IP

Here is how it is done:

Server Side Configuration

1. Installing VNC server, here I chose to install x11vnc, but it could be pretty much any VNC server of your choice (TightVNC, etc..):

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

2. Now let’s finish :) our server configuration by running the VNC server:

x11vnc

by default it is going to run without a password, and on port 5900

Client Side Configuration

1. In order to connect to the VNC server, we need to have a VNC viewer installed:

sudo apt-get install xvncviewer

* again, it can be pretty much any VNC viewer of your choice

2. Now the most interesting part of this whole process – enter this command:

ssh -L 5900:127.0.0.1:5900 yourusername@yourserver.com

this tells your system to tunnel all the traffic from the port 5900 on “yourserver.com” to the local (client’s) port 5900 via SSH. Simple, and yet very powerful – a “magic one-liner” :)

3. Fire up another shell on the client side and enter:

xvncviewer 127.0.0.1

do you see a cute colorful square screen? Do you recognize your server’s Desktop?

Done :)

P.S. For LinuxMCE specifically, you should also add a couple firewall rules:

– Go to the LinuxMCE web admin
– From the upper menu, go to “Advanced -> Network -> Firewall rules”

add this three rules:

tcp  	5900 to 5900  	5900  	192.168.80.1             port_forward
tcp 	5900 to 5900 	0 	0                        core_input
tcp  	22 to 22  	0  	0                        core_input

– The first rule allows external network (Internet) to access the VNC server on the Core (LinuxMCE server)
– The second rule allows anybody inside the home network ( since it is not wise to open 5900 port on your router to the whole world ) to have their 5900 port to be forwarded to the Core.
– The third rule (I think you already have it) allows anybody to access LinuxMCE server via port 22 (SSH)

Be careful about the rules above, as I assume that your LinuxMCE server is behind another firewall, cause you really do not want to open 5900 port to the public

hardware / interesting / linux / software / technology — 3 Comments
16
Jun 08

SplashTop Linux On HP and Dell Notebooks

linux inside dell and hpSometime ago ASUS rebranded some of their motherboards as “Express Gate”.

What is unique about these “new wave” motherboards is that they come with SplashTop Linux installed in 512MB flash memory that is embedded on these motherboards.

What does it mean? It means that essential applications (e.g. web browser, instant message client, e-mail client, etc.) that come with SplashTop Linux can be started within 5 seconds after PC/Notebook is powered on – cool huh? Well Hewlett-Packard and Dell also thought it is “cool huh?” and decided to act upon it.

This week Hewlett-Packard announced the HP Envy 133 as its competition to Apple’s ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook. Like the MacBook Air, the Envy 133 runs off an Intel CPU. With the HP Envy 133 they are also shipping an “instant-on Linux” they’ve called Voodoo IOS (Instant-on Operating System).

In addition to the instant-on Linux excitement this week for the HP Envy 133, Dell is apparently working on a similar Linux solution. Engadget has shared details surrounding the Dell E and E Slim. These notebooks are direct competition to the very popular ASUS Eee PCs. These Dell E and E Slim notebooks will use Intel’s Diamondville processors and come with a similar set of features to the Eee PC and potentially at a better price. The E and E Slim also ship with what Dell is calling “BlackTop” for providing an instant-on Linux solution.

For a few months now DeviceVM (SplashTop creators) has had a version of SplashTop that comes equipped with the Pidgin (formerly GAIM) instant messenger and other cool apps.

from wikipedia:

Distinct from most Linux distributions, Splashtop is intended to be integrated on a read-only device and shipped with the hardware, rather than installed by the user. The user can install another operating system but always has this one ready to boot, in case the other one is broken, or in case web browsing and chatting is enough. It boots in about 5 seconds.[5] It is thus marketed as “instant-on.”

An “instant-on” operating system offers many advantages over a traditional operating system:

  • It boots much faster.
  • It is less vulnerable to malware as the system is mostly read-only.
  • It allows for diskless computers.
  • It is lighter but sufficient for running a web desktop and web applications.

sources: phoronix

google / interesting / music / technology — 5 Comments
21
Apr 08

Free Music Search

free music search

Here is the tool that helped us to find lots of music to download that was not that easy to find before.

We have already posted about musgle.com when it came out about a couple months ago, but this time we’d like share the user experience and confirm that it is indeed a powerful music search tool – well it has Google underneath, so there is no surprise after all :), and it does really have a very simple user interface.

One gotcha with search for free downloadable items is broken/false links that either do not work (any longer) or some websites make it seem like files can be freely downloaded (pretend to be FTP sites) where they are really not. But musgle (via Google) gives such a variety of links most of the time, then if it is not the first link that works (although it is almost always the first), then the second, third as max, will be it.

And yes, there are several other similar services out there in www, but musgle seems to have a much simpler interface, and more relevant search results, that it gets through Google, which we find more effective and appealing.

google / interesting / technology / web 2.0 — 5 Comments
4
Apr 08

Gmail is a Little Devil

Ok, so I travel a lot. Sometimes to places where when you say “Internet” people believe in it and bow, but as in any other religion, they have never seen the subject of believing…

So today I finally got to my Gmail, after a long and exotic trip. Logged in, and what do I see? Instead of: “Hey Buddy, welcome back!”, it says you have 666 lucky e-mails in your inbox:

gmail 666 - a little devil

Did not really know if that is a good thing or a sign that I should not go through my mail :)
Well, do not worry, dear puzzled reader, this story has a Hollywoodish happy ending – I went through pretty much all my mail, fell in love with it and we lived happily ever after…

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