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August 20, 2010

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August 6, 2010

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July 30, 2010

After installing my new file server I started to notice the large amount of ssh attempts to log into the box. For a very long time I have been using hosts.allow to tighten things up a little. Figured a good place to keep this info and help others might be to make a blog post of how I use this.

edit /etc/hosts.allow

sshd : localhost : allow
sshd : 192.168.2. : allow
sshd : 192.168.3. : allow
sshd : 199.12.12.12 : allow
sshd : ALL : deny

Enter the above info in your hosts.allow file. You can add as many IP address as you want to be allowed. End this all with the last line to deny everything else that is not listed above it. I would suggest setting this up at a time you have physical access to the box. This might not work for everyone since some people might just around from place to place and have random locations. I tend to just be logging in from home and work. Although I have not used it you could also use a range of ips. If you are always on a certain ip range but not the same ip you could do this.

sshd : 199.12 : allow
sshd : ALL : deny

Enjoy and don’t lock yourself out of your own box. ;)

I have been in the mood for a classic style RPG to play for the last week. I ended up trying “Lunar: Dragon Song”, and was horribly disappointed in the game. Next I tried Magical Starsign, which seems to have promise, but could not keep me interested for very long. Some small points started to annoy me, but it looks like a decent game to come back to. Thats when the realization set in that for a classic RPG game I would have to look back to the classics. To much 3D and more complicated combat systems get in the way off a good classic RPG feel.

Last night I started up a copy of Dragon Warrior III for the gameboy color. I have logged about 2 hours into the game thus far, and still feel like getting more time into it. I am guessing 30 min of that time was just grinding to level up the characters and farm some gold. The story line so far is as basic as it can get… I am a 16 year old boy who is now old enough to go out on a journey. My father died on a journey to defeat The Baramos, when he fell into a volcano and burned to death.. My people are now passing that journey onto me. The game has a classic over head view that we see in most the old RPG’s of the day (Final Fantasy). Graphically the game is prob the best I have ever seen for the gameboy color. Loading times are next to none and going from room to room is instant. I was going to actually play the 3rd remake of it for the SNES (was originally a NES game) but after looking at the comparison of graphics for all three I decided to go for the gameboy color version.

The battle system is very classic but stripped down more than I expected for easy controls on the gameboy. When you are fighting more than one creature of the same type it will group them as one. An example of this is if you are fighting 3 slimes and 2 ravens it will show up as attack “3 slimes” or “2 ravens”. Once you pick it seems to sort out the attacks on its own to best eliminate the monsters you picked with the characters you used. It would have been nice to have more options when attacking, but it seems to do a pretty good job.

Like I said the story line is not the most exiciting thing I have ever heard, but I am hoping something more will happen in the game and give it a little more direction. In any case is nice to have a large selection of classic RPG’s I can go back to for now till some developers realize that a market for classic 2D RPG’s still exists.

So my trusty laptop (Thinkpad T61) that I have been using for the past few years finally gave up the ghost on its battery. I knew the battery was failing cause it would charge less and less. I almost never use it off AC, so it is prob my own fault. Looking around online I found several people that had the flashing orange battery light. Some where saying that the T61 was known to have issues with the battery connector on the mainboard and that it may not be the battery. Having the laptop still under warranty (not the battery) I figured I better get one while I still have less than a year of warranty left.

Well I got the battery today and it is charging as I type this post up. Guess its not the mainboard connector. Other than the pain of having to get it warrantied, it would have been nice to get a new mainboard with less than a year to go.