Back from the United States after a 2.5 week trip

I just returned from a small 3 weeks trip to the United States, driving a rental car from Vegas to LA, not following the most logic routes.

California is a great place to visit, the weather was fantastic for winter, and the landscape has great autumn colors that never seem to get boring.

Funny fact #2993, I stayed at the hostel at Pigeon Point, a great place with a nice hot tub overlooking the ocean. The lighthouse there was featured in a great photograph, Pigeon Point Lighthouse, I didn't notice this until after my trip :)

I did this trip solo, which is a good thing sometimes, no need to argue where to go at least, but next time I will bring a friend since I got shit scared of getting stuck with my car in the middle of nowhere at 9000ft in the snow!

Changing the sendmail network interface

Mailing from a multi network interface system can be tricky. Sometimes you want to reroute mail from a different IP address than the default eth0 interface. Think of SPF or blacklist problems.

The solution can be tricky since there seems to be no option available to tell sendmail what interface to use.

With this IPtables rule you can change With this IPtables rule you can change the network interface for sending mail. (or rewrite it actually)

"iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -m multiport -p tcp -s SOURCE --ports 25 -j SNAT --to SPOOF:25"

Took a while to find out we didn't want to use DNAT but SNAT :P

FireFox 2.0 released

Not my favorite browser, but at least it does a good job on CSS rendering and it is still, by far, better than the oh-so-average IE7.

Have fun with the updated plugin and extensions. I'l stick with Opera for a while...

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Internet Explorer 7

Not my favorite browser, but just to let you poor sheep know that Internet Explorer 7 got released today. My experience with IE7RC2 were mixed, but overall it is a nice move in the right direction.

Make sure you download these browsers too;

• Opera
• Firefox

It will be a nice move for IE CSS Hackers to adjust there sites. Have fun with it :) And in the meantime check Details on our CSS changes for IE7!

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gaming addiction

Just a intresting read about gaming addiction; not by accident about World of Warcraft. For those who haven't seen "Make love not Warcraft" SouthPark episode.

WoW ruins life

ultraLAN time!

ultraLAN 28102006, the "waste-your-life-playing-games" edition, will soon be a fact. The weekend of 28 oktober 2006 will be the date. Event starts at 14:00 on saturday and will not finish until late (as in early).

A new thing this time will be the Xbox360 on the beamer, bring your X360 controller for that little bit of extra (social) fun. This is not a leech event and various protocols will be disabled, "/cry at your mamma" for that.

My XBOX360 Key

"10 15 90 E7 02 B6 DB 83 07 01 A1 5B 82 0C 49 82", thanks for keeping it in a safe place Google!

After several tries I got it right. The machine is working as intended! An compatible with a Asus DVD burner on cheap media too! :)

a brief history in gaming/computing

It all started when I loaded Turrican 1 on my rusty old C=64... That game totally rocked my world, I had sleeples nights about it :) Pretty nice job for an 8bit game with only 16 colours on screen! (Turrican is a classic Science Fiction game) Back at that time I was about 12/14 years old, I managed to download the original Transcom cracktro too :)

I'll create (someday hehe) a compilation of the best games that will always be in my memory, the games that made such a big impression on me... title like; 

Turrican, Creatures, Metal Gear Solid, Half Life, Unreal, Lionhearth, World of Warcraft, Golden Axe II, Starcraft and many more. All these titles are unforgetable, and definately worth archiving.

Watch this place for updates, there will be a lot of downloads and screenshots! And always remember.. Amiga RULES!

Opera 9 released!

Opera is a powerful tool that gives you more options when surfing the Web. It is faster, safer and easier to use than your current browser. We designed Opera to fit your life - whether you want to have more fun, get more done or express your style.

Why should I download Opera when I already have another browser?

If you use Internet Explorer you are more likely to be subjected to dangerous software such as viruses and spyware. Opera is more secure, and takes up less of your computer's memory. With its unique features Opera lets you browse the Web more efficiently and helps you stay more productive online. Opera also has an integrated e-mail program so you no longer need to use one program for browsing and another for e-mailing, unless you wish to do so.

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Site updates

Too bad this site doesn't receive any more updates isn't it? At the moment I just don't have the inspiration to write about things. Although I'm busy with some intresting projects like a LVS based hosting platform, and a major update to the server park at my work. Those operations are way below the surface of things, almost as if they don't exists... and I got to worry about them :)

VMware

The coolest thing related to my work has got to be VMware at the moment. I've managed to get a virtual snapshot of most of the servers I currently maintain so it's such a luxory to be able to perform complex tasks on a virtual snapshot based system! I can't explain enough how much time this saves me on average, snapshots ftw! You can download a free copy at the VMware site to try for yourself. Or try Xen, havent got it running yet but it's the same thing.

Linux Virtual Server

But there are more things virtual these days, take for example LVS, a really neat opensource system to boost performance and availability. Running under Linux and in combination with keepalived it is a great project to work on. (again thanks VMware)

LVS is kinda hard to figure out since you will moslty always have a weak point of failure in your system, keepalived will aid me I hope. Progress is slow and steep but that was the same on the "uber in my eyes" Qmail installation a few years ago :P

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After more than over a year of just working I decided it was time to go on holliday again. For some strange reason work is be coming more and more like an addiction once you just go auto pilot with it. A very annoying "feature" that becomes more and more an habit when you get older. Im glad I took the time to visit Marocco!

In 11 days me and my best friend, who speaks arabic, visited Marocco. Starting in Agadir we rented a car that would take us to Marrakech and back via the coast. I have been in Agadir before when my parernts got married for 20years, that was in december, but because of the language barrier this time it was totally different. The weather in the Netherlands was really crap with temperatures below 0 degrees, after some time it gets really boring and you just want to get rid of it all.

The highlites of the whole trip was the road between Agadir and Marrakech, we drove a simple car straight thru the Atlas mountains (a random header picture on this site appears sometimes). The Atlas mountains even have snow, we have reached about 3000m alt and were driving litteraly thru the snow in some times. Very nice experience to see the sun and the snow in one and the same day!

Once we reached Marrakech we got pulled over by (yet another) policeman that wanted money from us since we did nothing wrong :) In the end we talked to him explaining that it was bullshit and that we weren't going to pay him he agreed and offered us an appartment that his sister was renting, even explainging where to get cheap alcohol and where to go to have a good time :)

to be continued...

...what about another quick ULTRALAN? Just before we can say goodbye to all our bad habbits and addictions? In the end what is a new year without an addiction? Feed your person;

ULTRALAN :: 12/2005!

With pride I announce the next ULTRALAN! People can choose between the weekend of 10-12 or 17-12 in the year of 2005! Let's make this one big out-of-control event, so all come and join the fun!

• Xbox gaming on the beamer!
• World of the Gaylordz will be played most of the time
• Unreal and Stracraft events will be held!
• Movies and endless leeching all at the touch of a finger tip!
• Share fun and expectations...

We will make this the best LAN in 2005! Be part of this game or forever be lost in shame.

Funny comparison between LoTR (Lord of the Rings and WoW (World of Warcraft).

Als je maar lol hebt;

via tweakers.net: De Electronic Frontier Foundation of EFF heeft op haar site bekendgemaakt dat de code die veel kleurenlaserprinters op elke afdruk achterlaten, is ontcijferd. Het was al bekend dat deze code, die wordt opgebouwd uit voor het blote oog onzichtbare gele puntjes, kan worden ingezet om van elk geprint velletje de afdrukunit te bepalen. Naar nu blijkt wordt bij een afdrukje ook de datum en het tijdstip van printen vastgelegd. Volgens Xerox was alleen de Amerikaanse geheime dienst in staat om de code te ontcijferen. De Amerikaanse overheid heeft toegegeven dat van de code gebruik wordt gemaakt, maar dat zou alleen gebeuren om onderzoek naar valsemunters te kunnen doen.

ignorance is bliss

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Source version of DoD available

Since WoW takes all my time I rarly play any other games. But I have to say that DoD will be my second most played game ever. Since DoD v1.3b I got charmed by the gameplay and the nice samples. Back then there were many nice exploits since it was just a mod created by normal people.

A botox'ed version

Since DoD3.1 Day of Defeat went retail and officially supported by Valve (maker of Halflife). Some new maps were added and the game got that final retail look, most exploits were removed. It became part of the steam distribution too.

Source engine powered

Last week DoD:Source went live, after over a year of delays! Featuring all the eye candy the source engine can produce like HDR rendering and Positional 3d sounds. Sounding very great during the heat of battle! Initally the next version of the game was just not up to standards so Valve helped the original DoD team out.

The end result is awesome! Great sounds, great graphics and still that nice teamplay. The HDR rendering is absolutely brilliant, lights become almost blinding in some scenes, just like in the real world. I have never played a game with HDR but it looks close to real! In gameplay many old maps are totally renewed, new paths or objectives etc. Some new weapons were added, in general you can hardly compare it with previous versions. The only downside is the lack of maps at the moment, but that will soon change I think.

For only $19,90 this is a game worth buying! The teamplay and the new maps will make it last for at least another x years!

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Opera is now freeware!

Opera has removed the banners, found within the browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today's milestone an achievable goal.

The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera's groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat. And because we know that our users have different needs, you can customize the look and content of your Opera browser with a few clicks of the mouse.

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