(Haven’t posted in a long time–sorry for that.  Been busy.  Having twins unexpectedly (as if there were any other way) will do that to a guy.)

Home Networks

My wife and I home school our children using excellent videos from Abeka, and it works out very well.  They can travel with me when the opportunity arises, work from the dentist’s waiting room, or whatever.  Except for the problem of how to let the kids get to the Internet safely.  Well, there’s all kinds of thoughts out there on the subject.  Everything from “Don’t” (absolutist) to the school of thought that says “They’re Going to See It Anyway” (defeatist).  Then there are the people who say, “My kids would never do anything like that…”

Hmm…Since it’s just you and me here, so I hope you don’t mind if I say that your kids are just like you were, Sir or Madam.  And let’s be honest, neither you nor I are so very lily-white, if you’ll just deign to admit it to yourself (the rest of us already know).

Get a clue!  Sheesh.

Look–the Internet serves its purpose as part of life today.  It’s merely a tool–much like plumbing–with the obvious parallels in capacity to transport both the good and the bad.  I make a very good living from this tool in the field of cyber security.  My children watch me work and I fully anticipate that they too will go into technical fields.

Now, listen, I come at this from a Christian perspective.  I believe that we all have a nature to sin (disobey God) and therefore a locked door keeps an honest man honest.  However, you do not have to share my perspective–you may even earnestly come from a feminist mentality that chooses to prevent a son from learning to “objectify” the female body.  We can disagree on the motivation, but either way, I hope that we all can agree that pornography damages the developing mind.  It affects behavior and interpersonal relationships throughout adulthood.  This article doesn’t attempt to make a moral statement or the impetus, but merely seeks to guarantee the results:  Protecting our children from damage!

So, how?  Inaction and half-hearted attempts won’t do.  We want Defense-in-Depth here.  If you have K9 installed on your family computer–then congratulations–that’s a step.  But what happens when it fails (as software does) and you don’t catch it; or they browse the Internet through the Nintendo Wii or on a Kindle reader; or something else completely unexpected (like a neighbor’s unsecured wireless access point)?  What other layers of protection do you have in place?

Stay in the Castle

Think of a castle wall.  Poor kingdoms only had a small wall around the castle itself.  When invaders breached the wall, they stole the crown jewels and made off with the princess.  Slightly better protected kingdoms put an outer ward, or another wall, around the first wall–effectively doubling the effort an invader must employ to break in.  Wealthy kingdoms dug a moat around the outer ward and filled it with sea monsters.  But some of the best protected kingdoms did all of this AND put guards on the wall to sound alerts when the invaders approached.

Do you know when your defenses go down?  Do your kids browse the Internet freely right now and you don’t even know?

The layers of protection I currently use include the following:

• Network-Based:
• OpenDNS – Some basic adult content filtering, good phishing protection.  See my post a few years back about it–but I’ll cover it again in the near future.
• PFSense Firewall – Keeps the bad guys and neighbors out of your Quicken database (you didn’t think I knew about that, did you?) and provides control for the network.
• SquidGuard – Currently running on the firewall…it dies occasionally without any notification.  I hate that.  That’s why I’m re-building my network.
• Network Segmentation – I keep the kids’ computers on a different network entirely.  That way I can control it and still give my wife access to Pintrest (which is like crack cocaine for ladies, btw).
• Host-Based:
• Windows Accounts – The children do not have Administrator accounts on their computers, they have basic User accounts.  Pro-Tip:  If you and your kids all use the same account, as in it automatically logs in–your kids have administrator access.  Even my wife’s laptop locks after 10 minutes of inactivity–because it is on a “unrestricted” wireless network segment.
• iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch /IOS Restrictions – YouTube, Safari Browser, and Adding / Deleting Apps all remain off and password protected.
• Android Seal – Lock out Settings and Task Manager (so the seal task cannot be killed) to prevent Internet access.
• Blue Coat K9 Web Protection – Restricts and logs all Internet activity.  I also blacklist google.com, bing.com, yahoo.com in addition to the usual and obvious settings.
• Wii Internet Restrictions – We occasionally let the kids watch Netflix through the Wii…but only after I temporarily disable the restrictions with the passcode.

The Plan

So, I’m going to try to document this as I go.  The diagram above essentially describes my current configuration (minus the DansGuardian box), but I’m rebuilding with some new hardware and a few new systems, such as the DansGuardian box.  In any case, check back occasionally and see how I’m doing.  This first post deals only with the plan.  Ya got’s ta have a plan.

 Even if you only have one computer and no children, you need a firewall!

Firewall Rebuild

As a firewall, my firewall is a great firewall.  As a web content filter, my firewall is … well … a great firewall.  To start, I’m building a new one, and you should too.  But it doesn’t have to be expensive.  Old PC computer hardware can do all of this–hit craigslist or a salvage shop.  You essentially need a functional computers with no operating system.  Technically, you may just skip monitors and keyboards as well after the first one and buy a cheap KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) switch.  Really–skip Starbucks for a month and you’ll probably have more than enough to make a firewall happen on the cheap.  Usually people find it more difficult to physically find a spot for all of this equipment than anything.  Nonetheless, the firewall remains the first element and really the cornerstone of this entire foundation.  My firewall requires five (5) network cards (See the diagram above – 4 segments plus the Internet connection).  And after all, there’s a new version of PFSense out, and instead of updating, I’m building a new box with some better hardware I’ve run across.

Quick Note:  I’ve worked with just about every brand and distribution out there.  Cisco, CheckPoint, SonicWall, WatchGuard, Endian, IPCop, SmoothWall, etc.  I’ve even written articles for magazines on some of them (paid at freelance journalist rates).  All in all, though, PFSense just seems to run great and it is the only one that works with OpenDNS natively.   And it throws OpenBSD into your operating system mix for some more diversity (i.e. one attack won’t affect on all your systems).

Content Filtering

Second, DansGuardian to proxy and filter all traffic but also with an instance of Squid (proxy) running to whitelist the kids’ network.  The way I’m planning will either be fully functional or it will be down–No guessing, no hope-so.

The firewall rules does not allow ANY traffic from the Home School network to get to the Internet interface.  None.  The Home School network can only send traffic to the DMZ network and the Family network (to print).  To get to the Internet for Abeka school videos, the traffic proxies to the DansGuardian server in the DMZ.  The firewall allows the DansGuardian address out to the Internet–so all traffic stays under control.  If the DansGuardian box goes down–the School Network cannot get to the Internet.  If the proxy service on the DansGuardian box dies, the School Network cannot get to the Internet.  If a kid manages to change network settings on a computer, then that computer cannot get to the Internet.  This is a brute-force engineering mechanism, nuts and bolts style.  I love that.

Hours of Operation

Thirdly, I’m setting up a Windows 2003 domain controller.  As a former traveling network engineer, I obtained a full license for training and certification purposes.  You can do some of the same things with other technologies, but my main goal is to set the kids up with common accounts, have a common administration account, and setup “Hours of Use” so that none of the Home School computers will log in between, say, 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM.  Paranoid?  Not really, I just remember being a kid.  Maybe my kids are suffering from my own memories of cleverness, but they don’t appear to be terribly scared as yet from it.

Minutia

Lastly, the bazillion little things, like the actual white-listing I’ll have to do.  Things like lego.com are fairly easy, but (unless they’ve cleaned it up since I last checked) Abeka Academy has services flung all over the Internet, so the whitelisting was a trial-and-error process.  Right now, just Abeka requires these sites to fully operate:

• abeka.com
• abekaacademy.org
• google-analytics.com
• fplive.net
• verisign.com
• adobe.com
• geotrust.com
• service.abekaacademy.org

Well, maybe not google-analytics.com, but once I got it working I hated to go back and mess it up in some weird and not readily apparent way…

Oh, and one more thing.  There exist services, like CleanInternet that provide filtering and (I think) reporting as well.  That might be another good layer of protection to add. One word of caution:  Filtering simply cannot do it all though.  Keep family computers, even filtered ones, in common areas of the home.  In our case, we have enough children to warrant an entire School Room.  There are too many to keep in a common area, therefore, White-Listing is the ONLY safe answer.

Eternal Vigilance

After all of that, I hope I’m scaring you a little.  And this doesn’t even go into external threats, such as war-driving and Internet attacks, phishing, worms, and such.  Honestly, if I wanted to, I could drive down your street with a laptop and probably be more successful than not at browsing people’s files, family photos, financial records, and anything else.  And just because *I* don’t want to, won’t prevent others.

By the way, it’s a Federal Offense to join a wireless network without the owner’s permission.  So if you’re stealing Internet from your neighbor’s access point–stop it.  And how do you know he’s not stealing it from you and browsing your computer?  Because you put a password on your wireless access point?  Please.  That would last about 20 minutes with a determined attacker, WEP passwords go down like they’re not even there.

Small Businesses and Churches, these same warnings apply for you.

Be back soon!

This album has percolated around my attic for years without much play, now I find that it’s strong and dark flavors keep me up at night.  Some cuts are sweet and sugary, some are dark and bitter, but the cream of the crop are probably “Up for the Daily Grind” and the nutty-flavored “Rain Drips”.

Man.  I think I like coffee.

Everything else came from stuff I already had–so please don’t comment on how lame I am using solid core 14-gauge wire.  I pulled it out of a chunk of Romex I had in the basement.  I didn’t really want to go spend the cash on heat-shrink tubing, the proper hookup wire, connectors, and such.

Here’s my philosophy on the matter:  Whatever I used and however bad the solder joints look, they will still WAAAAAY outlast this $50.00 electric scooter.

This is what I’m going for.  A simple rocker switch that allows the driver to go from forward to reverse.  I added it on the same side as the thumb button to force a stop before changing directions.  It would probably be more fun on the other side, but also a lot harder on the poor little motor.

On to business.  Here’s what the interior looks like.  Pretty simple stuff.  Battery to the switch to the motor and then back again.  No surprises at all.

Disconnect the Battery.  Stop now and do it.  Just remove the whole thing by taking out the screw and the retaining bail.  We want to cut the red and black wire as far away from the motor as possible, but still an inch or so away from the battery connector.  In other words, give the motor leads as much wire as possible but still give yourself an inch or two away from the connector so it’s easy to work with.

Not my best solder job, even with Evan helping I couldn’t hold everything at once.  Sigh.  But, remember, I am trying to go low-rent here.  I suppose you want a diagram.  Reverse will be on the top two terminals and forward on the bottom two of the switch.

Go, Dia, go.

Now, let’s cut a whole in the side to mount the switch.  I punched a pilot hole first, and then pulled out the 3/4″ spade bit.  Took just seconds.

Alright, almost there.  I just wire-nutted all of the motor leads together.  If I had been thinking, I probably could have run just one wire through by joining them closer to the switch…but hindsight’s 20/20 and all.  No big deal.  All the blacks go together, and then the whites and red (your motor may have other colors).

Now, for some really difficult soldering.  Stranded wire to solid.  Ick.  The less said the better.  Anyway, the two new wires from the switch get connected essentially to the battery leads (the ones cut at the beginning).  Black to black, white to red again.  Then I literally just taped it all up into a contained little bundle.  It doesn’t really meet up with my standards, but I promised myself not to get too far down the “perfection” rabbit trail with such a simple job.

Pop over to RecordingHacks and enter the contest–they are giving away a new Royer R-121 Ribbon Microphone!  Here’s the link:

http://recordinghacks.com/contest/

This is the second game in the Journeyman Project trilogy.  And, for me, the most memorable.  The artwork seems a bit dated now, but at the time of release it looked beautiful to me.  The acting didn’t bother me either…back then.  Now, well, any time an actor (in this case the main character) stops to smack his lips between phrases, you know you’re in for a treat!  The best part was the news editorial that was in no way editorial–the “news anchor” had no opinion of anything.  He just reported what other people thought.  Fortunately, the player may suffer through the video clips early on in the game and leave them far behind.

All-in-all, though, the game excells in story–marginalizing even these minor criticisms.

However, getting it to run under a modern version of Windows proved more challenging than I expected.  Two issues immediately presented:

• Some monitors and/or video cards no longer support 640×480 resolution natively…or so it would appear.
• The game hangs on disc changes, probably due to power consumption features of many laptops and desktops.

The goal is the make the game playable on a modern system and not have to swap discs.  Fortunately, the path to victory here turns out relatively short.  Install the game, install the patch, configure settings for Win95 compatibility, image the CD-ROMS, load the images, and edit the registry.  Simple, right?  :)

First

Install the game.  Simply insert Disc 1 and let it go.

Second

Install the Win95 upgrade patch.  Not only does this seem to help overall performance, but evidently the game cannot complete without it.  And that would be a true bummer.

Third

Configure the Windows 95 compatibility mode.  Make sure that it runs in 640 x 480.  Right-click on the Buried in Time shortcut (the new one created after the Win95 patch). and select Properties.  Go to the Compatibility tab.

Fourth

Using Alex Feinman’s tools, image the CD-ROMs to ISO files and store them someplace safe.  I have a post on that with more detail.  (Please note, that the post recommends the Microsoft Virtual CD Tools–now I recommend using VirtualCloneDrive.  See next step.)

Fifth

Using SlySoft’s VirtualCloneDrive, create 3 virtual drives, and mount the images.

Sixth

Now, edit the registry so Buried in Time knows where to find the CD-ROMs.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Presto Studios\Buried in Time\1.1]
“CD Path 1″=”D:\\”
“CD Path 2″=”E:\\”
“CD Path 3″=”F:\\”

If you run into other issues, try this troubleshooting guide.  The same site has some Buried in Time hints and solves.

Good luck!

I’ve never claimed to be an architect, but I love great tools that work well.  One such tool belonging to that category is Google SketchUp.  In the past, I’ve fiddled with 3D software before.  I think that Blender is awesome…but it also has a steep learning curve.  Almost a learning cliff.

It honestly is just to much for my needs.  Case in point, I wanted a quick floorplan diagram to post to the Studio Central forum for comments on my new home studio.  Blender just isn’t the choice for that.  Now, if I wanted to make a cool 3D animated cartoon over the next few years, that’s a different matter…

The image above was completed in about two hours total time.  Yes, that seems long until I add that the two hours include the time watching the tutorials on using the product!  Seriously, from square one, I downloaded, installed, learned, and created in less than two hours.  All of the video training tutorials are available on the SketchUp site.

Or, you can always buy a book

Obviously more complex drawings can be made, but really, that’s true of anything.  Practice and continued use always is a factor.  For my purpose, I received the comments I needed regarding monitor placement and bass-trapping.  And I learned a new skill.  Great stuff.

Try it out.  I think you’ll be surprised how simple it is to use.  A professional architect, who is also a good friend, uses SketchUp to mock up many of his designs for customers.  He’s tried other solutions, but claims it is just too easy to use.

Another great feature is the active plug-in architecture.  The products of which rival high-end rendering packages.  If using doing a lot of with SketchUp, you might consider an entry level 3D puck, such as this one.

See you, Space Cowboy.

Way to go Piriform!  I haven’t seen a defragger that made me this happy since MS-DOS 6.22.  I could continue to gush about this, but really, the proof is in the pudding.

Simple Recipe for Better Performance:

• Download Defraggler now, and run it.
• Let it get finished, reboot, and run it again.
• Now, just tell me your computer doesn’t feel snappier.

It really is that simple.  In the future, activate Defraggler a few times a month, or use it’s handy scheduler.  When opened, the main window looks like this:

Click the Analyze button and let it do it’s thing.  After a few moments of counting on electronic fingers, you should see a report like this:

It has the measure of the drive…now, one more thing…let’s move all the big files out of the Operating System’s way.  Click Settings | Options and go to the Defrag tab.  Check the “Move large files to the end of the drive…” and then “OK.”

Now, click the Defrag button.

Instant…well…almost instant results and better performance.  I wish more software worked this well.  Remember, they also make the remarkable  CCleaner we talked about a few weeks ago.  This is just required maintenance.  There’s really no decision to make, just do it.

Originally published at www.linux.com on December 09, 2008 at 09:00 AM; reprinted with the author’s permission.

Originally published at www.linux.com on December 09, 2008 at 09:00 AM; reprinted with the author’s permission.

Well, if you haven’t been paying attention, apparently Windows will slow down after some time in use…or so they say.  Mine doesn’t.  Mainly because I’m careful about spyware (not such a problem anymore since Google Chrome and Firefox), but also because I use utilities like this.

So if you want your machine to stop dogging out.  First, uninstall all the worthless programs you never use but none-the-less have collected over the last year or two.  Go to Microsoft Update, get any updates you may need.  Update your hardware drivers from each vendor’s website.

But most of all, go to Piriform and download the excellent FREE CCLeaner.  Once installed and started, the interface presents four tabs on the left.  Cleaner, Registry, Tools, and Options.  Start with Cleaner and have it analyze all of the temp files and nonesuch.  Punch the ‘Run Cleaner’ button and away it goes.

Next, go to the Tools tab and select the Startup group.  Turn off all the stupid stuff, like iTunes Helper, Java Update, and etc.  Google the name if you aren’t familiar with it…it may be malware.  Disable anything not necessary.

On the last tab (actually the middle) is the Windows Registry scanner.  Honestly, I’m chicken.  I was burned too many times with RegClean programs back in the Win9x days to feel completely comfortable letting a registry cleaner run.  Personally, this is a last ditch action–but you may feel differently about it–just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Overall, though, it’s a great thing.  I love simple little tools like this, that just work.  Try it out.