Save Some Dough

Using computers and technology to save money gives me a purpose. I want to help other people do the same.

So... It's official. I hate all TV service providers. DirecTV, Comcast, Dish Network... they all suck. They're big enough that they don't have to care about their customers so they don't. There's thousands of posts online on blogs, message boards, and other places for people to complain that back up what I have to say. I'm still working with a nasty issue with DirecTV because they just don't care about their customers. Awful awful awful.

So here's the deal. I've cancelled my TV service and I've never been happier. I'm saving $50 a month and I get to watch all of the shows I love. How? I'll tell you. There's a variety of websites that provide a TV-like experience.

First, and probably the best of all of them is Hulu. It completely free, has hundreds of popular TV shows, and works great! 

Next comes Netflix. For less than $15 a month, we can check out 2 DVDs at a time, and we have access to TONS of streaming movies and TV shows. You can't beat that price, and they get DVDs to us withing 2 business days. It's amazing.

Third would be the various network websites. Networks like NBC, Fox, and ABC usually post new episodes of their shows within a couple of hours of them airing. I can wait that long for free. 

And a distant fourth would be torrents. What's a torrent? If you have to ask, you're missing out. I'm not sure of the legal ramifications, but with a good torrent you can usually have any show you want within 24 hours - even way old episodes and seasons. Get an awesome BitTorrent client like uTorrent, then you can find the torrents on sites like IsoHunt and Pirate Bay. Like I mentioned, downloading TV shows is kind of a legal gray area. I don't view it any different than using a DVR to record the shows I like and watch them later, but it could technically be considered illegal. Oh, and don't forget an awesome media player like VLC. Some videos you download might have weird formats that idiot media players like Windows Media Player can't handle.

Big Gripe #1: "But I don't want to watch my shows/movies on my tiny computer monitor." There's two approaches to this. First, get a bigger monitor. You're saving $50 (or more) a month, why not? Second, hook your computer into your TV. Huh? Yeah, it can be done and in most cases it's as easy as buying a cable. Let's talk about hooking your computer to your TV.

PC-To-TV Awesomeness #1 - S-Video
Almost all TVs have an S-Video input. And a wide variety of desktop computers have an output, and I've never seen a laptop without one. So go to Wal-Mart, but a $10 cable and hook your PC up. It's way easy.

PC-To-TV Awesomeness #2 - VGA/DVI
All computers have either a VGA or DVI output. The connector is usually blue or white respectively. Some TVs, especially the more modern ones, have a VGA input, and a lot of them have a DVI input as well. If you have HDMI, you can get a DVI to HDMI converter at NewEgg.

PC-To-TV Awesomeness #3 - HDMI
In addition to converting DVI to HDMI, a lot of computers (especially laptops) have an HDMI output. HDMI makes things way easy.

PC-To-TV Awesomeness #4 - Audio
At its easiest, get a 3.5 Stereo to RCA adapter at Wal-Mart. Less than $5. Take the cable from the sound card in your computer to the white and red RCA connectors on your TV. Viola.

Now if you're an audiophile, or just like really nice sound, some PCs (both desktops and laptops) have what's called a SPDIF port on them. This is a digital output that allows for 5.1 and 7.1 audio. There's a coax version that uses regular RCA cables, and a fiber optic version that uses, you guessed it, fiber optic cables. You'll need to make sure your PC and TV/Audio Receiver both support one or the other if you want digital audio. Digital audio is also available if your PC has an HDMI port. And that's way easy. You can pick up any of these cables at Wal-Mart on the cheap.

If your PC doesn't have digital audio, and you want it and your TV/Audio Receiver supports it, you can buy a new sound card for your computer at NewEgg for less than $50.

Big Gripe #2: "But I like to watch sports." What's the matter with you? Sports are boring. Since I don't watch sports, I really don't know what to tell you on this one. There's some websites online that charge a reasonable amount ($50/year) to get access to live, streaming sports, but you're on your own with that one. You want to save money? Ditch sports.

Big Gripe #3: "But I only have one computer." I must admit, this is a tough one. However, you can easily pick up an inexpensive computer on eBay, Geeks, or the Dell Outlet for less than $200. Dedicate it to being your media PC and you're set.

Additional Perks:

1. You can use a music service like Pandora, iTunes (groan) or your favorite radio station's website and listen to music on your nice sound system.

2. Your computer probably has a DVD player. Kill two birds with one stone and save room. You can even get Blu-Ray players for your PC at NewEgg. Nice.

3. Now you can see your family photos on your TV. You can set your screen saver up to show them and now you can brag to anyone that comes over!

4. Umm... you're saving at least $50 a month. That's $600 year (quick math). I wouldn't mind that much to spend on Christmas...

5. Your kids can't "stumble upon" a naughty show.

The Toe!

The big, nasty, pointy bulge on my toe is getting removed! Those of you that know me well know exactly what I'm talking about. It's about time!

How to be secure on an insecure wireless network

This is for all of you Linux geeks out there like me. 

Before we get started, here's a list of requirements:

• A computer or virtual machine running some flavor of Linux
  
• SSH Server installed on that Linux box
  
• Knowledge of PuTTY and the SSH command-line and protocol
  
• Knowledge of IP Ports and IP addressing
  

I'm sure most Linux people know how to use SSH, and I'm sure most Linux people have SSH access to a machine on their network from the outside world through DynDNS or something like it. If you don't have these things, stop reading and do it.

I've seen a couple of articles on how to do this already, but they're usually winded and annoyingly detailed. For those of you Linux geeks that know what they're doing, here's the lowdown on how to encrypt your data on an insecure wireless network (like at a hotel, coffee shop or your neighbor's house).

First of all, I'm assuming you're using PuTTY on a Windows machine to connect to your SSH machine. You can do this from a Linux machine as well, but you have to know how to do port forwarding using the SSH command line (unless there's some ssh GUI out there for Linux, which I'm sure there is). If you've never used port forwarding (known as "tunneling" on PuTTY), you're in for a treat. If you look under the "Connection" category on the PuTTY menu, there's a branch that says "SSH." Open that up and go "Tunnels." Let the magic begin! Using SSH Tunnels, you can access virtually any network resource that the machine you're SSHing into can. 

On the Tunnels screen, you need to know what the different (and poorly named) fields mean. First is the "Source Port." We'll discuss that one later. Next is the "Destination." This is the [host]:[port] that you want to be able to tunnel into. For example, say you have a SSH tunnel into your Linux box and you have another machine broadcasting your music using Icecast or something. That machine has an IP of 192.168.0.101 and Icecast is listening on port 8000. For destination, enter 192.168.0.101:8000. Now here's where the source port comes in. For source port, enter something like 1234. Click Add. Don't forget to go back to the "Session" category and save the settings. Now connect to your SSH machine. To listen to your Icecast stream, open up whatever program you use (i.e. VLC) and for the server address, enter localhost:1234. Now you're listening to your Icecast stream, through SSH. 

Let's review. Destination is the machine and port you want to connect to through your SSH connection. Source port is the port that the machine you are connecting from will use to tunnel with. So if you have the source port as 1234, no matter what protocol or service you're connecting to, you'll use localhost:1234 to connect to it. If you set the source port as 9876, then you'll use localhost:9876 to connect through the SSH tunnel to the destination port on the other end. 

So how can you be secure on an insecure wireless? You'll need to setup Squid (a proxy server) on a machine on the network you're connecting to.  All you need to do is install Squid and use the defaults and it should be good to go. By default, Squid listens on port 3128. So here's what you do for your setup:

Squid Setup:

Squid Server's IP: 192.168.0.200

Squid Server's Port: 3128

PuTTY Setup:

Destination: 192.168.0.200:3128

Source Port: 1234 (or whatever you want)

Don't forget to click "Add," and don't forget to save the settings. Now, once you've connected using SSH, you have an encrypted tunnel into your Squid proxy server. Now open up your web browser of choice and change the proxy settings to use localhost:1234 for your proxy and make sure to set it to use that proxy for all protocols (http, https, ftp, etc). Now when you browse the internet, your browser is sending the data through the encrypted SSH connection, to your Squid server which is actually getting the web page's data. That means all of the data is encrypted, therefore securing your data if you're using an insecure wireless network.

Cool, huh? You can use this same technique for VNC connections, FTP, RDP, or whatever you want to make more secure or have easier access to from the outside world.

Oh, and FYI, you can most likely use this technique to bypass your employer's proxy server,  unless they're really paranoid and block all unnecessary protocols or monitor traffic on all 65,000 ports. Of course, even if they do monitor the traffic on all ports, because the connection is encrypted they can only see the amount of data being transferred, not the actual data. But you didn't hear that from me. :c)

Advanced usage: If you really want to make sure that your connection is safely encrypted, I highly recommend generating a key pair for the machine you're connecting from to the machine you're connecting to. This way, if someone (like you're employer's network admin) tries to man-in-the-middle your SSH connection, you'll get a big, nasty warning that the key pair doesn't match.

Cookie Day

So... we made cookies today. A lot. Somewhere around 20 dozen. And we had some fun with them, too.

We'll probably say more about this adventure later, but for now it's late and I'm going to bed.

-Sean

Experiences With New Computer

So Tenille let me get a new computer! Yes, I needed one because the newest one I had was 5 years old and I needed more than a single core CPU. Really.

So I hopped onto NewEgg for their Black Friday sale and picked up a decent quad-core for $400. Here's the specs:

• ASUS M3A78-EM Motherboard
• ATI Radeon HD 3200
• Realtek ALC1200 "High Definition" Audio
• AMD Phenom 9600 2.3GHz
• OCZ Fatal1ty 4GB DDR2 1066 RAM
• WD SE16 500GB 3.0Gbps Hard Drive
• Sony DVD Burner

So I put Ubuntu Intrepid on it and it runs really nice. Until I install the ATI drivers. I'm sure that anyone that knows Linux knows that ATI and Linux don't really get along. I'm not exactly sure what ATI's problem is, but they make really crappy drivers for Linux. After having X freak out (any full screen game came up garbled and after I rebooted, X wouldn't start) after installing the driver through Envy, I opted to just use the installer from ATI's website. That worked okay, but I have a weird problem where the dual monitor extended desktop changes to cloned after I turn off the monitors. Weird.

I'll post links to some of the cool things I've figured out how to do later. I love Linux.

Computer Oddities

So here's a couple of weird things I've encountered recently with computers.

Problem: Can't boot from CD-ROM
Solution: I had way to many devices plugged into my power supply and it couldn't handle everything. I unplugged a couple of fans, the floppy drive and the black light (yes... the black light) and it booted right up. If I wasn't poor I would get a new power supply... but oh well.

Problem: Computer won't start after moving it around
Solution: The front USB header got smashed and was shorting out. I unplugged the header from the motherboard and away it went.

The Trenches

Ah yes... the reality of home ownership. Plumbing problems. So I got to spend my free time last week digging a trench 6 feet long, 2 feet deep, and about 1.5 feet wide so I could unravel the wonderful piping job the contractor did when building our house. Water can't go uphill, boys.