MacFuse Issues with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
I started using EncFS to do file level encryption for my Dropbox account after the recent security issues with Dropbox. I opted to use EncFS instead of TrueCrypt since I did not want to deal with an encrypted container file. On my Windows PC, I use BoxCryptor and on my Mac I use the software packages referenced in this guide.
So far this has been working great, I can keep my sensitive data encrypted and leave everything else as is. Even if someone gets into my account the important items are just garbage to them. The only problem I ran into was with the recent OS X 10.7 Lion upgrade breaking MacFUSE.
Overview: Quick and Easy SSH SOCKS Proxy
SSH (Secure Shell) is a very versatile tool that can be used for far more that just remote command line access. In the following example, you can create an SSH tunnel mapped to port 9999 that will allow you to proxy your Internet connection to bypass content filtering, IP Geolocation lockouts, or anything that filters/monitors your connection based on your public IP Address.
How To: Dell Studio Hybrid Home Theater PC/Media Center
About a year ago I purchased a Dell Studio Hybrid (now discontinued) to use as a discreet and silent home theater PC. The hardware in the base model is powerful enough to easily handle 1080p video and maybe even run a virtual machine or two in the background for testing purposes. My first configuration included Windows 7 with Boxee, but this soon proved to be rather unstable and the boot times were horrendous (as in nearly five minutes) with the slow laptop hard drive in the hybrid. After doing some research, I was able to find a much more lightweight approach using Ubuntu 10.04 Server. At the same time I decided to switch from Boxee since development has pretty much stopped after the release of the Boxee Box. The interface was very buggy as well and it would become unstable for no given reason which required frequent application restarts.
Ikea Furniture: A Cheap Datacenter Infrastructure Replacement
I will never get sick of seeing these creative uses...
Lack Rack
wiki.eth-0.nl/index.php/LackRack
Awesome Powershell Script: List mailboxes that are forwarding mail
For Exchange Server 2007:
List all mailboxes that are forwarding mail and where they are forwarding to. No more checking each mailbox individually to see where mail is routing!
Get-Mailbox | Where {$_.ForwardingAddress -ne $null} | Select Name, ForwardingAddress, DeliverToMailboxAndForward
FreeNAS Storage Server
A couple years ago I had purchased the D-Link DNS-321 Network Attached Storage device to centralize my files and backup to two separate HDDs (Raid 1) to help prevent data loss. This worked great, until I needed additional storage capacity and support for making Time Machine backups on my MacBook Pro. I have heard tons of great feedback on FreeNAS and decided to give it a try.
DIY Router/Firewall Build with PFsense
I have been thinking about building my own router for some time to take advantage of the features in numerous open source router operating systems. I finally settled on PFsense and the following parts below. The company that manufactures the board and enclosure (PC Engines) is located in China, however I decided to purchase the parts from a distributor (NetGate) in the US for shipping reasons. It was slightly more expensive this way, but all in all the parts came to just under $200. Not to shabby considering the features included in PFsense, which is the software/OS I finally settled on running since it is much more feature rich than other alternatives like SmoothWall. Even my $600 Cisco Router couldn't do some of the things PFsense can.