Peter's Blog 2004/3

Knocked up huge animated GIF (33k) of my email..

Knocked up huge animated GIF (33k) of my email address in a spambot proof way. It's on the bottom of every page.

Added new keyword meta tag generation to website.

Added new keyword meta tag generation to website. It generates keywords by:

• parsing html page and looking for unique words

• discarding words with apostrophes in such as don't.

• remove words les than three letters: three is important to allow TLA's through.

• seeing if words are in a dictionary of words to avoid. This list is just a dictionary on the basis that most techy keywords will not be in it. I have tweeked the dictionary, removing words like 'Windows' and 'Hardware'.

• sorting the words by the number of times that they appear in the page

• adding the word 'blog' at least three times to skew it a bit

Downloaded SciCalc scientific calculator..

Downloaded SciCalc scientific calculator for**palm**. Looks like a real calculator (remember them?) and does hex plus some useful conversions. Quirks:

• hex range is only up to 7FFFFFFF. Add 1 and get overrange

• have to tap on base display to open menu

Got a message on my palm to say it had put the..

Got a message on my palm to say it had put the clock forward an did I want reminding. I said no and it cleared the thing that has been flashing for two days.

Decided to check my meta tags to see if they are..

Decided to check my meta tags to see if they are why google is shunning me. I found this site: http://www.widexl.com/remote/search-engines/metatag-analyzer.html and it looks comprehensive. I don't see any big problems apart from awful keyword selection. Sounds like a project, automatic optimum keyword selection.

Palm decided to raise an alarm to tell me it was..

Palm decided to raise an alarm to tell me it was 1am and the clocks had to go forward. Wife was not impressed. Silenced the alarm but DateBk5 is still flashing a big alarm asterisk and I cannot figure out how to stop it.

My god, it works and it's speed is ok.

My god, it works and it's speed is ok. Hum, have to see how I can speed things up. The ssh tunnel is compressed which may be making a difference.

Been looking at the ISA firewall/proxy thing at..

Been looking at the ISA firewall/proxy thing at work and studying the logs. It's amazing what people get up to when they are supposed to be working. This has filled me with paranoia (not that I look at naked ladies while I am supposed to be working).

I installed squid on my server at home. I can connect to that through ssh. I don't know how fast it will be because of the uplink speed but it does means I can do banking and stuff from work.

Looked into putting SpamAssasin on server.

Looked into putting SpamAssasin on server. It seems something called sa-exim can do this if using exim4 but my system was on exim 3. I uninstalled exim 3 and installed exim4 and it is all still running. I don't have time right now to install SpamAssasin.

I was worried about leaving my smtp port open so I found the site http://www.abuse.net/relay.html which has done a relay test:

Mail relay testing
Connecting to pinkblobmicrosoft.com for anonymous test ...

<<< 220 oldlap.bisiand.me.uk ESMTP Exim 4.30 Sat, 20 Mar 2004 11:56:03 +0000
>>> HELO www.abuse.net
<<< 250 oldlap.bisiand.me.uk Hello www.abuse.net [208.31.42.77]

Relay test 1

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@abuse.net>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<securitytest@abuse.net>
<<< 550 relay not permitted

Relay test 2

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest>
<<< 501 <spamtest>: sender address must contain a domain

Relay test 3

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<securitytest@abuse.net>
<<< 550 relay not permitted

Relay test 4

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@microsoft.com>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<securitytest@abuse.net>
<<< 550 relay not permitted

Relay test 5

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@[80.3.115.169]>
<<< 501 <spamtest@[80.3.115.169]>: domain literals not allowed

Relay test 6

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@microsoft.com>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<securitytest%abuse.net@microsoft.com>
<<< 550 Administrative prohibition

Relay test 7

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@microsoft.com>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<securitytest%abuse.net@[80.3.115.169]>
<<< 501 <securitytest%abuse.net@[80.3.115.169]>: domain literals not allowed

Relay test 8

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@microsoft.com>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<"securitytest@abuse.net">
<<< 501 <"securitytest@abuse.net">: recipient address must contain a domain

Relay test 9

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@microsoft.com>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<"securitytest%abuse.net">
<<< 501 <"securitytest%abuse.net">: recipient address must contain a domain

Relay test 10

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@microsoft.com>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<securitytest@abuse.net@microsoft.com>
<<< 501 <securitytest@abuse.net@microsoft.com>: malformed address: @microsoft.com> may not follow <securitytest@abuse.net

Relay test 11

>>> RSET
<<< 250 Reset OK
>>> MAIL FROM:<spamtest@microsoft.com>
<<< 250 OK
>>> RCPT TO:<"securitytest@abuse.net"@microsoft.com>
<<< 550 Administrative prohibition

Relay test 12

>>> RSET
<<< 554 Too many nonmail commands
Relay test result
Could not reset connection, test failed.

I think this is all ok, I don't know what the reset connection error means but I trust the debian setup. Domain name above changed to protect me.

Looking at www.blogger.com, pondering whether to..

Looking at www.blogger.com, pondering whether to rearrange blog. Google is reluctant to index my blog, but google own blogger so that might get me brownie points.

Possibilities:

• use it for a seperate blog category, e.g. Baby.

• use server to receive and spam check email from address on site.

• use hello engines to publicise site

• move site to free NTL web space.

Updated website with FileZilla.

Updated website with FileZilla. Best FTP client I've used. WSFTP was unreliable, FTPExplorer was single-threaded.

Bought a JVC SVideo cable to connect laptop to TV.

Bought a JVC SVideo cable to connect laptop to TV. It didn't work. After some trwaling through the Dell support website (over complex, slow, confusing, only works properly with IE) I found a forum where people were asking real world questions. I found a video faq that said the problem was that the SVideo was not plugged in properly so the patronising driver hid that option. So I went to pull the SVideo cable out of the laptop and it would not move. It WOULD NOT move. Pulling it hard stressed the thin plastic case of the laptop and looked like I could do damage to it. After some screaming I cut the cable and chopped the connector to bits. I then poked a screwdriver in to force enough space for a lug to be released. That cable cost me £9.99 and I am not happy. I don't know whether to blame Dell or JVC or Intel for their pedantic drivers. Not impressed with Dell support, buld quality or the quality of their manual that talks about different video drivers.

Played some more with dselect.

Played some more with dselect. It upgraded a load more stuff for me, including font stuff which should be useless on a console system.

Installed vim-python which is vim with integrated python. It Just Worked.

Installed qpopper which appears to be THE pop server. It Just Worked. I could use it to receive email on the laptop. I managed to send email via the server as well, although I had to enable relaying for the laptop's ip address. Looking at the headers, the isp has added a warning about the message originating from a dialup. Cheek.

Anyway, the pop gives me limitless email accounts.

Got the key-based login to ssh working.

Got the key-based login to ssh working. The steps to do this are:

• use puttygen to genera SSH 2 RSA keys.

• Copy the public key to a text file and copy it to the ~/.ssh/authorised_users file on the server

• Save the private key file

• Configure putty to read the private key file when it connects

Login asks for a user name but then goes smoothly in.

Discovered FileZilla..

Discovered FileZilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/) a nice FTP and SFTP client. GPL so I can use it at work. I will disable FTP on my home server, I want to use SSH as much as possible.