Daily Archives: November 22, 2005

VPN solutions for a mixed client environment

Posted by on November 22, 2005 Comments Off on VPN solutions for a mixed client environment

I’ve been thinking it’s time to update my VPN solution so I’ve been poking around looking at current solutions that will work for me. I was excited by the OpenVPN SSL VPN server but I need to support PocketPC clients which they do not and it would be nice if I could avoid installing a client on Windows 2000/XP/2003 machines. Another SSL VPN solution is SSL Explorer.

Jacco has a great page demystifying the setup of Openswan IPSEC VPN servers for use with a variety of clients including PocketPC. Unless something changes or it becomes especially difficult to implement that’s probably the route I’ll go. Nate Carlson has another page about configuring openswan to work with IPSec and L2TP.

Serving DNS with a different twist

Posted by on November 22, 2005 Comments Off on Serving DNS with a different twist

I was bouncing around the web tonight and discovered MyDNS which is a DNS server that serves records out of a MySQL or PostgreSQL database instead of with zone files like the common BIND server uses. Interesting idea, I wonder if it scales as well.

PowerDNS is another DNS server application that can read from a SQL database, amongst other formats.

The popular djbdns can be fed with a SQL database via an intermediary application called sql2tinydns this one also has a web interface for management which could be a handy thing.

If you’re looking for a free DNS service, maybe one that provides dynamic DNS or a secondary nameserver, you might want to take a look at FreeDNS by afraid.org. One twist with this service is they encourage sharing subdomains and hostnames on your domain with other users.

If you design it…users will find errors

Posted by on November 22, 2005 Comments Off on If you design it…users will find errors

Mark Hurst has a site called This Is Broken where he takes user submissions of poorly designed products and posts them for the world to see. One of my favorite areas on the site is the signs section where you can find examples of confusing or poorly written signage from around the world. There are a lot worse ways to kill time than looking at this website, if you’re a designer or interested in usability it may even be insightful. Interestingly, the site makes almost no mention of Don Norman and his ideas about affordances though this is much of what he’s talking about.

Standing but not operating

Posted by on November 22, 2005 Comments Off on Standing but not operating

Some weeks ago I was directed to the Heritage USA section of this site. SBNO is dedicated to photographs of amusement parks (mostly in Ohio) that have closed but remain standing. Of course I know about the phenomena of Urban Explorataion, also called UE, and have read the book Invisible Frontier detailing some of the adventures of a New York City UE team. I started scouting around the internet and found a few other interesting sites covering UE or UE related topics.

Defunct Parks has all kinds of information and articles about closed amusement parks including a listing of them by state.

Ruins and Urban Exploration maintains a list of websites and books with additional information on the topic and/or stunning photographs.

The Minneapolis Drain Archive has some information about some early Minneapolis UE expeditions from 1998-1999.

Action Squad is probably the longest running UE team in the Twin Cities though things have tapered off lately. They have an excellent website with detailed trip logs and photos.

Greg Brick has an Urban Speleology site with some information and pictures from caves in urban areas, especially the Twin Cities.