A homeless man and his dog

A homeless man and his dog

I ran across this powerful picture which lead me to a bit of research on the homeless problem. Although difficult to measure, it is estimated that between 2.3 and 3.5 million people will experience homelessness.

Installing an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Reporting Interface

An intrusion detection system (IDS) can perform log analysis, check file integrity, monitor policy changes, and keep an eye out for rootkit installations and alert you when a threat is first suspected. The IDS that I chose for my host was OSSES HIDS, an open source host-based Intrusion Detection System offered by Trend Micro. Here’s how I installed OSSEC on my hosted Linux VPS and Splunk on a local Windows machine to monitor.

IFTTT Remote trigger system ties all your “services” together

Iftt.com. It stands for (if this then that). It’s basically a “trigger”system that ties into tons of services including RSS, Dropbox, Evernote, Gmail, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, general email, Flickr, LinkedIn, Last.fm, Read it Later (which I love), Wordpress, etc. It even has triggers for text messages, phone calls, stocks and bonds, and the weather.

Google engineer mistakenly posts internal memo to public forum

Making the equivalent of mistakenly hitting the reply all button, Google Engineer Steve Yegge posted a very well written rant on the importance of architectural planning and the importance of building products around a platform. The neat thing about his post is that he is almost “spot on” with his logic. Long post but well worth reading.

The jaw-dropping 3D murals by John Pugh

He works on a large scale in public and residential areas and his paintings can be seen all over the world from New Zealand to Hawaii – with many telling a story of the area where they are positioned. Pugh is used to people’s amazed reactions when they pass his murals. He said: ‘They say “wow did you see that. I thought that was real.” ‘Public art can link people together and stimulate a sense of pride within the community. ‘These life-size illusions allow me to communicate with a very large audience.

Computer built into the desk

A Dutch man built this and posted it on tweakers.net (a Dutch website but translates to English pretty good using Google Chrome). He took a gaming computer system that he had and rather than change out the case, built a desk around it. He mocked up the design using Google Sketch, had his friend weld the aluminum frame and desk, installed thick glass as the desk top, and assembled the computer hardware into the desk frame. I believe the cooling system is in the drawer section to the right.

How to hide entertainment system wiring

I ran across this photo and thought it was brilliant. A common problem, what to do with the entertainment center wires, and this guy took a tack I had never thought of – just hide the wires in plain sight but bend them in such a manner that the represent the angular lines of a circuit board. In essences, he’s taken the ugly mess of wires and turned them into “art”.

The Speed of the Internet at Google (Googleplex)

Recently Google hosted a thread on Reddit where they answered questions from the general public. The question of Internet connection speed at Googleplex came up. To put things in perspective, the average connection in European countries is 12 Mb/s and 10 Mb/s in the United States. Personally, my connection with U-Verse is a blazing, or so I thought, 25 Mb/s. Google’s pipe is a mind blowing 523 Mb/s!

New 3D Tri-Gate chips coming from Intel

Silicon wafers used in computer chipsets (processors) have typically been two dimensional. On May 4, 2011, Intel announced a 3-D transistor technology, called Tri-Gate, that ensures Moore’s Law, which predicts that chipset transistor density doubles every two years, keeps pace. Dense chipsets allow Intel to pack more computer cycles (with less power usage) onto a single chip. By building above the chip’s surface, Intel can build chipsets that are smaller, faster, and use less power. The Tri-Gate transistors will be used in a line of 22 nanometer processors (code named Ivy Bridge) and ready for production use by 2012.