&ot Journeys' End: September 2006

Journeys' End

We walk many paths, many roads
Till death halts our steps.
Every day a new adventure,
A new journey of self discovery.

20060925

Back at home

They finally got sick of me in hospital and let me go :-) Time to play with my new toys and see if I can get ADSL2 @ home. Cheers, Steve

posted by steve @ 10:07 PM  

20060918

Fever

Time to go back. >:(

posted by steve @ 5:27 PM  

20060914

www.shuningbian.net

Thats us now! A proper domain name for this blog :-) Got another domain too, check out www.dailydiscovery.org too! Cheers, Steve

posted by steve @ 11:43 PM  

20060913

Setting up proxy.pac with apache2

Introduction This guide will briefly take you through the process of setting up a automatic proxy configuration file hosted on debian server running apache2 so your client machines can configure themselves to use whatever proxies you might have. Writing a proxy.pac proxy.pac is the de-facto name for the proxy configuration file and is essentially a file containing the function definition for FindProxyForURL. This function is called by the browser when it attempts to connect to a URL in order to determine how it should do so. At the very least the file must contain:
function FindProxyForURL(url, host) { return "PROXY <your.proxy.server>:<port>"; }
Naturally you can do a lot more with this function, but that is beyond the scope of this article. Setting up apache2 Now that you have a proxy.pac, you need to put it somewhere where clients can access it, and it must have a mime-type of application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig otherwise it won't work. One way to do this is to create a .htaccess file in the same directory and place in it the following line:
AddType application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig .pac
In order for apache2 to read .htaccess you need the AllowOverride option in the proper <directory></directory> directive to be All or sufficiently permissive, for example:
<Directory /> Options +FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All </Directory>
And we are done Once all that is setup, just point your clients to http://where.proxy.pac.is.hosted/proxy.pac and tell them to use that for automatic proxy configuration. And viola! Well it worked for me anyways... Cheers, Steve

posted by steve @ 5:25 PM  

20060912

Home again

Can't say how good it is to be home again. It really rocks, internet connection not withstanding :P

posted by steve @ 11:44 PM  

20060911

Why the NDS is a better than PSP

Nintendo DS is better than a PSP for gamers. The reason is simple really, the NDS offers developers much more game-space due to its unique hardware combination of dual screens and a random access control in the form of a touch screen. Let me explain what I mean by game-space: fundamentally any human-computer interaction is limited by the interface available to the user. In this regard the PSP offers very traditional combination of interfaces - a few buttons, an analogue joy stick and a microphone. This means that games for the PSP will have to work with these limitations, the corollary of which is that developers will only have so much room to work with when it comes to making games. Thus the range of games possible on the PSP is restricted by its controls, and this is what I mean by game-space. The NDS on the other hand expands the traditional console game-space significantly by introducing not only an extra screen but also a random access control in terms of a touch screen. A random access control is one where there is no analogue movement from point A to point B such as that seen when controlling a cursor with a joystick for example. The advantage of this should be immediate to any PC gamer - its the console version of a mouse. Many games require the use of a random access control to be enjoyable, most noticeably first person shooters and real time strategy games. Whilst the PSP can do some pretty funky things out of the box, like play UMD video, NDS offers gamers the chance to play games that well, has never been seen before while PSP will offer the same formula of games over and over because it can never be free of the shackles of its limited controls. Those games might be great, but they won't be new and great - there is only so much you can do with buttons and joysticks! Now if the next iteration of NDS came with motion sensors, then boy are we talking whole new realm of gaming experience! Cheers, Steve

posted by steve @ 4:32 PM  

20060910

Rise of the white cells

3.4 wcc count today with a neutrophil count of 2.8 yesterday. It means I am engrafted and the new bone marrow is working away at producing a working immune system for me, yay! Still no platelets though, which is keeping me in hospital. But hopefully they will pick up soon and I can go home! Everything otherwise is going well. I am enjoying my NDS Lite and consider it an excellent purchase. Will write up an article later on why it is better than the PSP ;-) Cheers, Steve

posted by steve @ 4:31 PM  

20060902

Mr 0.7

White cell count is 0.7, horrah! Lets hope things keep looking up so I can go home and possibly head to ruxcon06. All is rather well, still a bit crooked, but much improved now. Cheers, Steve

posted by steve @ 8:51 PM