OstroHoopy

iPodlounge Forums - iPod-In-Car Solutions

Great tips on integrating your iPod into your car stereo system.

Installs of particular interest are: BlitzSafe-Install, Dock-in-Ashtray, With-Phone-Mute

Now I must get an iPod Mini… Come on, Apple.ca!

Game Daily is a huge game site for all sorts of game information and demos. The best part is that you don’t have to log in and I consistently get >200KBps!

Bolo is a classic real-time strategy game being revived by the internet community. Historically, it was a Mac game, but WinBolo is a fantastic port of the game for Windows users.

BlackBerry Games - Magmic Online

We hosted our first online game tournament this week at the WES show in Chicago. The game was Texas Hold’em King and it was a huge success! The show was abuzz with talk of the game and two lucky winners walked away with shiny new iPods.

Using port forwarding through an SSH connection can easily secure a Windows XP Remote Desktop Connection. It’s simpler than using a blanket VPN connection and can also be set up for connecting to your home machine from work securely.

The work to home solution is what I’m going to outline here:

1. Set up an SSH server on the home machine.

• Follow these instructions using Cygwin and OpenSSH.

2. If you use a router or gateway, forward port 22 to the machine running the SSH server.

• Follow the instructors for your router. Probably done in the web config.

3. Forward port 3386 locally ( not remote desktop ) to 3389 on your home machine

• eg. ssh -L 3386:HomeMachineName:3389 loginName@homeDomainName
• You will need an SSH client on your local machine to do this. Use Cygwin or Putty.

4. Connect your Remote Desktop Client to localhost:3386

• This connects remote desktop through your ssh tunnel to your home machine. All data for the connection is secured by the tunnel.
• Note: If you are running the Remote Desktop Client from XP, it will not let you connect to localhost, no matter what port you use, so you have to employ a workaround:
  • Have the SSH client listen to 127.0.0.2 instead of localhost, and connect Remote Desktop to 127.0.0.2. See this page for more details on how to do this.
  • Run Remote Desktop in Windows 98 compatibility mode by moving mstsc.exe and mstscax.dll to another directory; right-click mstsc.exe, select Properties->Compatibility and select Windows 98. Then it seems not to complain about connecting to localhost.

This technique can be used to connect from home to work as well, but you’ll need ssh access to an external server that gets you through your firewall to your work machine. Your network administrator can help you there.

In my one hour blitz test of blog posting software, I’m giving Zempt a thumb up and tossing SharpMT back into the ether.
(more…)

For the last few weeks I’ve been stifling my frustration that the edit buttons for posting to MovableType blogs don’t show up in Firefox, or probably any non-IE browsers. All I had to do was a Google search.

The code at kurcula.com with a tweak listed at Blogzilla fixed me up.

[Update: this link gets the same thing working in Bookmarklets]

This got me to thinking that perhaps I should use a desktop based tool for my main posting and save myself the trouble of using a decent, but clunky, web interface. My preliminary searches came up with SharpMT and Zempt. I’ll have to check them out and see what I think.

Porsche 911 Evolution is an excellent biography of the brilliant Porsche 911 sportscar.

One day… I must have one.

A roundup of software for blogging from a bunch of different devices, including Palm and phones.

Today I finally kicked a five year old monkey off my back!

In the summer of 1999 I finally got around to obtaining my motorcycle license. It was necessary in order to fulfill my Year 2000 goal of spending the summer motorcycling around Europe. Unfortunately for me, the province of Ontario had instituted a graduated licensing program which increased the beaurocracy, cost, and time consumption of the whole process.

Here is how graduated licensing works currently:

• Step 1: Get your M1 license. This requires a simple written test and lasts 90 days. Restrictions are: 0 blood alchohol level, daylight riding only, no highways with speed limit > 80km/h, and no passengers
• Step 2: Between 60 and 90 days, you must take an obstacle course ride test to graduate to an M2 license. This license lasts 5 years from the date of issue. Restrictions are: 0 blood alcohol level
• Step 3: Between 22 months and 5 years, you must take an on-road ride test to graduate to a full M license. Restrictions are: none (essentially meaning that you can now have a drink before riding!)

Taking a riding training course allows you to slightly fast-track this schedule, but more importantly, it teaches some extremely valuable riding skills that riders need outside of what you need to pass the test. I highly recommend that anyone interested in getting a motorcycle license take a certified rider training course in their area. Some starting points to find them are:

Ottawa Area: Ottawa Safety Council Motorcycle Rider Course
Ontario: Canada Safety Council Ontario
Canada: Canada Safety Council
United States: Motorcycle Safety Foundation

Anyway, since the M2 is essentially a full license, only requiring that you not consume alcoholic beverages before riding (which I wouldn’t dream of anyway), I never got around to doing my M2 Exit test. Until this spring when I received a letter indicating that my license was about to expire and failure to take the exit exam would result in my starting over with an M1 license!

So I quickly scheduled a ride test and scrambled to figure out what I needed to know in order to keep the examiners happy. As it happens, I ride pretty much by the book anyway and I just needed to focus on never breaking the speed limit (which, of course I never do…) and moving my head in a very exaggerated way to make sure they saw me checking my mirrors and blind spots.

Fortunately for me, I passed without any preparation. Perhaps that is indicative of the graduated program working properly. Lots of riding experience has given me the confidence and necessary skills to be a good rider. If I had developed some bad habits or wasn’t a very confident rider, I likely would not have passed the test. Compare this to the old system where a rider or driver learned the necessary techniques to pass the original test and was never tested again, no matter how good or bad a driver he or she may become.

I still haven’t decided whether I agree with the graduated program or not, but I’m sure my perspective would have been different if I had failed today.

I am glad that I am done with my driver testing forever more though! (knock on wood)