WillErwin.com

I received this in an email today and thought it was funny enough to share. This should have been a super bowl commercial. See it after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has announced that it will begin updating the Dashboard for the Xbox 360 beginning on December 4th at 2AM PST. This update contains something which I’ve been hoping for since I realized I could stream video from the PC to my Xbox 360 and have my videos play on the big screen - DivX and XviD support!

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, let me take a minute to explain. DivX and XviD are compression technologies which allow you to take a normal video file that is, say 2 GB in raw format, and compress it down to say, 700 MB. However, when you compress it, you also need the information to be able to de-compress it - the DivX and XviD codecs.

I’m really excited about this feature because I’ve been using a 3rd party tool, TVersity Media Server, to stream TV shows and/or movies, which are compressed with either DivX or XviD to my Xbox 360. Microsoft has, for once, just made my life a little easier!

[Via Engadget]

From time to time I receive information from the Department of Homeland Security or Secret Service regarding aspects of Internet security. As a network administrator for several networks, I’m tasked with the responsibility of taking every measure possible to mitigate possible threats. These reports help me in doing so. I’ve been given permission to share this report with you.

Attached is a report (CIIN-07-332-01 US CERT Cyber Incidents Impacting Private Sector) distributed by U.S. CERT. CERT has identified sophisticated attempts to compromise private sector networks, including critical infrastructures. CERT has requested that we distribute this report to our N-TEC partners. This information will be helpful for those who are responsible for network security. Please fill free to forward this e-mail to other companies not listed on this distribution list. CERT has provided an email link to report any validated incidents involving this activity and assistance.

So, I should be able to share it, according to the email I received. Attached is a report (CIIN-07-332-01) distributed by U.S. CERT. CERT has identified sophisticated attempts to compromise private sector networks, including critical infrastructures. This information will be helpful for those who are responsible for network security.

Update: Due to US-CERT contacting me and wanting me to remove the article, which under DCMA rules I’m required to due to so I don’t get into trouble, whether I don’t know if they have that actual authority, I’ve gone ahead and removed the article from my webhost. However, you can find the report on several bittorrent sites:
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1026753

Read the rest of this entry »

I just got back from Las Vegas and needless to say, it was amazing. It was one of the better trips that I’ve been on. We flew first class, had a limousine drive us around the whole time, while sipping on champagne and staying at the Bellagio. High roller, baby.
I left with a few hundred dollars won and a total of <6 hours of sleep, so I’m exhausted. The house does not always win!

My latest web site design is complete. It was for Red Haute Designs.

Red Haute Designs was established in 2006 and provides high quality, fashionable accessories at affordable prices for women and children of all ages. Their current offerings include a wide array of earrings, necklaces, bracelets and jewelry sets as well as specialty bridal, children, and exclusive collegiate lines. Their jewelry products are manufactured from the finest materials with a particular emphasis in freshwater pearls.

A few challenges were faced with designing this website. The first stemmed from finding an open source solution that contained a shopping cart. A few solutions (with full templates designed :/) were tried but were not up to the task of being a full shopping cart. I needed more than just a simple implementation - one that I could customize the interface, change the back-end code (open source), and one that was easy for the client to use. Many solutions required paying a fee for their software and I wanted to avoid this. I tried several different setups, including Wordpress with WP e-Commerce, Joomla with VirtueMart, Zen Cart and osCommerce.

Each of those solutions contained what I believed to be a fatal flaw. The Wordpress plugin hardly worked at all and development was slim to null, VirtueMart wasn’t up to date with the latest version of Joomla or fully compatible with the server settings I was using, osCommerce hasn’t been updated in ages, although development is still apparently happening, and Zen Cart was really the same. I continued searching and came upon a relatively new project called OpenCart.

OpenCart seemed to fit my needs and although it is being developed by a one-man team (I guess 2 now since I plan to submit some code fixes and changes that I’ve made while working on Red Haute Designs) it worked well, was being actively developed, worked with the server I was using and it was VERY easy for the client to use. If you’ve used other products such as osCommerce, the back-end can be very confusing; not the case with OpenCart. I’ll quote the client from Red Haute Designs - “…I have been able to easily add our products!” and “That is awesome that it was a free program as it is sooo easy to use!”.

There are a few flaws in the program that I’ve had to change up the PHP or make adjustments to fix - such as file permissions for user uploaded product images. This was fixed with a crontab chmodding the images in the upload directory. However, job well done and the client seems pleased. I’ll be adding some code changes and additions to OpenCart in the near future. I think this project has great potential to become a widely used open source shopping cart.

You can see OpenCart in live action at Red Haute Designs.

Hilarious video that’s been circulating the Internet. It was on top of YouTube for a while. See it after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today has been quite a day on the Internet. Actually this week has in general. I’ll highlight over a few areas that I feel are important.

Firefox 2.0.0.9 has been released. It basically contains some small bug fixes. I suspect this will be the last release before Firefox 3 comes out, unless a major security issue is found.

mIRC 6.31 has been released, along with a long time overdue website update. It addresses various issues reported in the previous release, along with over 50 changes. It’s nice to see mIRC get a real Windows Vista feel with it’s smooth design and icons. However, I’m still able to crash this version.
Also since I’m mentioning mIRC, I’ll also mention that the mIRC script that I use, NoNameScript, has also been going through some changes lately - bug fixing and bringing compatibility up to par for mIRC 6.30. Version 4.2 should be released before years end.

Trillian Astra gets a new build today. I’ve been alpha testing this program since the beginning (Yes, I do know people that get me access to unreleased products such as this and when Gmail was launched as invitation only in April 2004. I’ll comment more about Gmail in a moment). I’ve reported several bugs to the Cerulean Studios development team, one of which has been fixed in the upcoming build 61, so I’m pleased to see that. It’s been very exciting being able to see a product from it’s base inception to turning into a full product, and also having an actual say in what gets changed.

What is being dubbed as ‘Gmail 2.0‘ has begun being rolled out to Gmail users. Although most people have yet to see the changes, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. I’m predicting a full web-based chat support system for multiple IM networks in the future. Storage has also hit around 4.5 GB’s per account.

Last, but certainly not least, is that Comcast has had an official complaint filed against it to the FCC. I can confirm that Comcast has been “delaying” BitTorrent traffic over the past several months, as I’ve experienced it myself. I’ve actually taken action because of Comcast doing this. I’ve been using up close to 95% of my Internet connection by having something download and upload constantly - whether downloading/uploading on BitTorrent (using header encryption) or helping out the Tor network - I’m keeping the data flowing, which in turn costs Comcast money. I’ll be setting up some monthly bandwidth graphs via SNMP to see how much bandwidth I’m actually using.

Contrary to the popular belief that I’ve been sitting around Houston doing nothing, that hasn’t been the case. I’m always learning or doing something new - whether it be getting my real estate license or getting Cisco certified. To further development of my skills, and to give me a project to do, I’m going to fully re-design this website. Here is a list of features that I’m going to base the upcoming design off of.

Code:
- Standards based upon XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.1
- Consider additional “light” design based on XHTML Mobile 1.1 and CSS Mobile Profile 2.0
- Framework based on PHP 5.2, MySQL 5.0, and Prototype Javascript 1.6
- Dynamically generated and updated sitemap based upon 0.9 schema.

Design:
- Web 2.0 Design
- Use of AJAX with “Unique URLs” Nixed idea due to SEO
- Tags along with dynamic Tag Cloud
- Feeds published using both RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0
- Favicon

Posts:
- Online bookmarks submission (eg: Digg, del.icio.us, etc.)
- Individual (separate) META tags for each post - to be defined dynamically. Include post tags into META data.

*More coming when I get one of my brilliant ideas. If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comment section of this post. It doesn’t even have to be something you’ve seen before.

It appears that Google is working on integrating IMAP into Gmail. Although Google has not released the official word confirming the update via The Official Gmail Blog, the help documents have been posted onto the Gmail site.

This is exciting seeing that Google is indeed starting to rollout updates to Gmail, as a major upgrade has been confirmed for a few months, but the general public (if you’re not a Google Trusted Tester [cached]) have yet to see these upgrades. I reckon that the IMAP upgrade is only the tip of the iceberg of what we’ll see before year’s end.

update: Google did release the official word on IMAP the next day.

Just a small update. For those (intelligent) individuals who run Firefox, an update is available. The release notes show that this release just contains security fixes, two of which are critical. Anything in the Firefox 2.x series should contain just small fixes. The next version will be Firefox 3.

The auto updater in Firefox should be firing soon. If you are like me and don’t want to wait, you can download the release directly.