It's Saturday... Raining like cats and dogs here in the North Country of Northern New York, the perfect day to stay inside I suppose.

Today I'm planning on starting to read a good book on JavaScript. I recently downloaded an extension from Community MX which is an AJAX form submission extension. This thing works pretty good out of the box, though there are a few small things that I would like to tweak with it but am a little fuzzy on the logic that created it. I'll see how far I can go with AJAX if I first start with JavaScript. I suspect that just jumping into AJAX might be a very ambitious approach... In fact more ambitious than I'm willing to be right now!

I still haven't received my new Lynksys router :-( so I cant configure my network yet. I'm also waiting for Steve at grc.com to produce the long awaited openVPN tutorials so that I can set this up for my home network as well. It'll be cool when it is all up and running.

On a side note... I have a crazy neighbor who is actually out in the pouring rain digging a fence line!!! (lol) This guy has been out there all morning long! If he was planning on learning AJAX I have a feeling he would learn it quickly as he seems far more ambitious than myself :-)

Well... I guess I'll go and do something now!

-warren

Well I'm back! I've taken off a good month from the blogosphere.

I've actually been really interested lately in Internet/Network security. I never really got into listening to podcasts until recently when I stumbled accross a "Security Now!" podcast. The show is hosted by Leo Laporte of TWIT.tv (This Week In Tech) and Steve Gibson of grc.com which is the acronym for Gibson Research Corporation.

Steve Gibson knows his stuff. I am highly impressed by these shows. In fact I was so impressed by his show on WI-FI access point security that I went out and purchased a WPA2 enabled wireless broadband router which I've included a picture of at the left.

The overview from www.Dell.com:

" The Linksys^® WRT54GX4 Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX400 combines the functionalities of three devices into a single device — a wireless access point, a four-port full-duplex 10/100 Mbps switch and a router. The wireless access point lets you connect Wireless-G, Wireless-B devices and other performance-enhanced SRX devices to the network, while the switch connects your wired-Ethernet devices together. Finally, the router function ties it all together by letting your whole network share a high-speed cable or DSL Internet connection. The Router combines antenna technology with standards-based Wireless-G (802.11g) networking. The router serves as a DHCP server, has a powerful SPI firewall to protect your PCs against intruders and most known Internet attacks, and supports VPN pass-through. 'Multiple In, Multiple Out' (MIMO) uses signal reflections to increase the range and reduce 'dead spots' in the wireless coverage area. To help protect your data and privacy, the Router encodes all wireless transmissions with WPA2 encryption to thwart unauthorized access. With the Wireless-G Broadband Router with SRX400 (Speed and Range Expansion) at the center of your home or office network, you can share a high-speed Internet connection, files, printers, and multi-player games with flexibility, speed, and security! "

Needless to say now I'm a little concerned that my hardware (NIC's specifically) will NOT support this router! (lol). Well I guess I'll find out when I connect everything. My wait will be a little while though since this piece of hardware is on backorder :-(

You might be asking "Why are you are upgrading your existing router?" ... Well as it turns out as part of my learning experience from the podcasts, WEP encryption (which is what my current wireless router uses) has been "badly broken" according to Steve and Leo. SSID hiding and MAC Address Filtering isn't even "real" security it simply "prevents" your lovely neighbor from using your wireless connection "without realizing it".

So as soon as my router arrives in the mail I'm going to try and set it up.

I'll report back with my results.

-warren

I'm always looking for new pieces of equipment to use for my web building projects. Also I'm always looking for new informative sites about digital media development. One site that I consistantly browse (on a daily basis) is www.communitymx.com really cools stuff coming out this site on a daily basis. If you haven't checked it out yet... then you really have to.

I stumbled across an article earlier this month about low cost developer tools (basically: browser toolbars) Everyone that developes must know or have heard of the web developers toolbar... pretty cool... I use it sometimes... but I was just reading part two of this article and there is another toolbar for IE... (yes I know IE... but this thing has some pretty cool features). Don't take my word for it check it out for yourself. http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/%5Cinfo.aspx?page=614

Also if you haven't already... check out lodestone.com for their weekly lodebearing podcast... awsome stuff.

Gotta run I'll post again later.

You know, I was just listening to another archived lodebearing podcast episode 3 (to be precise) and the conversation was centered on this whole new buzz of web 2.0.

Josh and James hit the nail on the head here. One of the biggest problems we have (I believe) is that we have to put a label on everything just as they say during the podcast, as a result new technologies get buzz words and more people get confused.

The more I think about it, it really is true what Josh and James say... Basically to sum it up quickly. Designers are making bigger strides in the world of web design and production (at least now) because of the array of tools they have at their disposal... Flash, Flex, AJAX ... ect... Oh and we certainly can't forget Dreamweaver.

I find it interesting that Josh says most design is coming from the "Bay Area" (San Francisco). He says that someone studying design is probably well on their way to working with this so called "Web 2.0".

It's great that the web is becoming more of an open forum for what people (users) are asking for, and more and more designers are getting a piece of this pie, but man us programming folk better look out! As the lodebearing podcast says... The designers are now doing their own programming. I better get my sketch pad out of the closet and start practicing design again...

By the way here is a picture of Lighthouse Point which is across the St. Lawrence River from Moresette Park: (picture courtesy of goldenpath on flickr.com)



im out

Forgot to mention what I am currently undertaking on the technology side of the spectrum... I am as of a week or two again attempting to learn Oracle Database server along with PLsql. Needless to say I've been pretty busy with SQL and PLSql. I'm not new to the whole SQL and RDBMS thing because I've used MySQL in the past and I still use it a lot now but I need to build some applications which will be using Oracle Database... It'll be interesting and a steep learning curve I'm sure...

Also some pretty interesting things I heard on lodebearing.com which has a podcast called lodebearing you should check it out! I wont spoil the suprise...

I'm out.

so this is my first attempt at blogging in the "blogoshere" so to speak. Just a little background on me... that is for those who really care. I'm from Ogdensburg, N.Y. The Maple City and justifiably so since the city is directly across the St. Lawrence river from Canada. In fact I live only about 1/2 mile from the Canadian border! I'll try to post some pictures of Morrisette Park which is where you would go to get a good glimpse of Canada.

I mostly will be posting about technology as I encounter it, but that's not to say that I wont post about other topics as well.

For example one thing that has been eating at me as it has a lot of other people here is the possiblity of a "Sexually Violent Predator" facility beging built to house sexually violent sex offenders (monsters in my humble opinion). I don't want it in my backyard and I'm not alone. Many more people in Ogdensburg feel the same and there was even a group created which is advocating a better Ogdensburg, I believe it is a result of this idea.

I wont rant and rave too much on this today as I am getting ready to log off... You can be sure that I will be back on this topic agin though.

Well I'm out and I'll be posting again soon...