DISCLAIMER: I'm about to get very geeky...
Right, I'm over a major hurdle. I'm sitting in the living room, on a laptop, connected by a network cable to my server in the attic. The server is connected to the internet via my modem (the cable worked, with a little tweaking and wire squishing, and I got around the system board device resource conflict by experimenting with motherboard jumpers and clearing the NVRAM).

Now, I had a problem in that although the server is multi-homed - i.e. it has an IP address in two networks, one in mine and one in the ISP's, one foot on either side of the fence if you like, well the legs aren't connected. It's not IP forwarding, which means that my other computers can't talk to the outside world through it. I noticed that I had another kernel compiled, and I probably configured that kernel to allow ip forwarding, so I rebooted to that kernel, and still no ip forwarding.

Enter "squid". It's a proxy server, that means it's a program that lives on the server, and other computers can talk directly to it. Because it is independent of IP forwarding, it works, and here I am using IE on a Windows 98 machine, using a connection via a proxy on a linux box going out on my little modem. And I'm happy.

Even MSN works. Problem - outlook isn't intelligent enough to figure out how to connect via a proxy, and I still haven't tried FirstClass, an OU thing which allegedly works through a proxy, but I don't know which one. Ah, well. Good enough for one night's work.
posted by Jeremy Smyth 23:18  |  

I nearly forgot... I ate almost a full kilo of carrots last night. Left one in the bag just for the fun of it.... Juiced them all first, then cooked the remains in various ways - mixed with egg and fried as a pattie, scrambled (with lots of olive oil), and finally, mixed with puréed tomato, basil, and garlic. Ick.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 12:31  |  

Got my course materials last night, including the second revision of a book I already have. The OU have gotten a mega-customised version, with their logo and cover and all. Turns out around 2000 people globally are studying this course this year, simultaneously with my students. Wow.

Finally finished (and posted) my introductory letter to them too, should be getting picked up by postie as I type, they'll get them either tomorrow or Friday, whereupon I'll hopefully get some emails or phone calls from them. Hopefully just as an introduction, mind ;-) I'm not a glutton for work...

Speaking of students - I'm teaching VB Systems Development this week, to an interesting bunch. We're currently at the awkward API / Processes & Threads / DLLs bit. Just used a scary Trousers (his or mine?) analogy to deal with pointers and pass-by-value... Thankfully there's enough material to work around the icky bits, and the course is flexible enough to allow different depths with the syllabus.

I still hate ICS. Going to read up on it today. And kill it, hopefully. Got a cable, but can't use it because of a prob on the server, this system device resource conflict thing. Even though I upgraded the BIOS, and found ancient documentation on the web about it (thanks, Gateway!), still can't use a com port. Grr. And the cable doesn't fit my desktop.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 12:20  |  

Tuesday, January 29, 2002

OK - got my phone line the other night, but the modem's having probs. Not that the modem's having probs, more that my linux box doesn't like having to use an on-board serial port, plus the fact that the serial cable for the modem is the WRONG ONE, plus the fact that when I eventually got connected, it was through a win98 machine with Internet Connection Sharing (a wizard!! ick), that decided to change my network settings. It wouldn't work until I changed the desktop settings too, and that meant I couldn't connect to my server from the other two. Don't you just hate non-configurable undocumented proprietary systems? Give me an /etc/ics.conf and a $HOME/.icsrc anyday. I will keep soldiering on...

In other news, I installed an old version of the OU conferencing program last night, BECAUSE it's more configurable than accessing it over the web (which I tend to do more often). And of course, got stuck in a chat. Stayed up long enough to finish the outline of my introductory letter to the students, which I've yet to merge and print. Just have to make sure my list of students hasn't changed in the last four days. It changed 5 days ago...
posted by Jeremy Smyth 13:00  |  

Friday, January 04, 2002

Found this article saying how a protein links old age to cancer prevention in mice. Interesting, cancer runs in my family, so it's in my best interest to hope they come up with a fix in the next 20 years or so :-)
posted by Jeremy Smyth 11:11  |  

Tuesday, January 01, 2002

Happy new year. Still connectionless, and spending a fortune using the mobile to connect, but hey. It's worth it to talk to you guys ;-)
posted by Jeremy Smyth 14:46  |