August 20, 2010
August 6, 2010
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. ;)
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.
For a very long while I have been playing with and working in PHP. It has served me well over the years and looking back on things I coded even only a few years ago I can tell how much I have learned. I really like the flow and syntax of PHP. Something to be said for all those “{“, “(” and closes. I did at one point look into Python for a few smaller projects, they worked well and are still working away to this day. Most nothing more than glorified bash scripts that would do a automated task every few minutes. In any case I could not stick to Python for the long haul, but I do hope to come back to it again in the future.
Before I ramble on for too long I will get to the point of this post (Yes it does have a point).
Being someone that tends to use PHP for most all of my coding efforts I decided it was about time I started looking into AJAX more. I have being using snippets I find online, parts someones else already coded, etc. But I have never gotten down to the bare coding pad and created something in AJAX myself. Not being very crazy about JavaScript has also helped to build the wall of AJAX free me. But in 2010 you will be hard pressed to not need it now. Everyone wants all the features it has to offer. In order to start down this path of AJAX I will be reading a book called “Foundations of AJAX By Ryan Asleson and Nathaniel T. Schutta”.
I will try to write a little post about my thoughts on the book as I go, Provided I have the time make up some lessons to show the examples with out using examples from the book.
Spent some time tonight playing around with the new WordPress. I changed up the theme (Not overly happy with it yet), redid the ads and am using some ad plug-ins to server them up randomly. Added side content using widgets so next time I change themes I don’t need to edit the theme files by hand.
I am really impressed with how far WordPress has come over the years. Really you can do everything you want from the admin panel and never have to touch the site files or themes. Updating via the web is not so painless you have no excuse not to be up to date with the current version. I am still using a plug-in to filter out spam comments, but might try disabling it and see if WordPress has anything under the hood by default to deal with spam.
Over the past while I have become a widget and plug-in whore. Everything I think of doing seems to have a plug-in. Installing plug-ins from the admin panel allows you to install, play with, and delete in minutes. I was a little worried about using a plug-in to manage google ads, since it would be easy for someone to make it so they got all the clicks (I think I am safe with my 2 clicks a month).
In searching for the above WordPress logo image I used google images. I really dislike the new google images search page and the loading of the image in the foreground of a AJAX window. I wish you could go back to the old image pages with the top frame.
Google Image Search 2010
