Those of you who are already using Firefox will know exactly what to do. Just download it and install. I have heard there are significant improvements in both speed and security.

For those of you using other browsers such as Internet Explorer, I invite you to give Firefox a try. It is a way better browsing experience. Especially after you add your favorite add-ons.

Firefox changed the internet forever when it became popular at the beginning of the decade. It had become stagnant after the dot com boom. Microsoft had already won the browser war and did not bother to upgrade it’s browser until it upgraded to IE7 within the past few years.

Browsing has become safer and web development is a lot more fun thanks to Firefox.

At Safeco Field, Nintendo is testing an interactive fan network that is downloadable through the Nintendo DS Lite. The program has been available throughout the season, but for some reason, has been getting some buzz on the Internets. The Seattle Times had an article about it and even Engadget gave it a little attention.

So I got my Limited Edition Seattle Mariners DS Lite, paid my 5 bucks and downloaded the software. Actually, the last game I went to I was unable to download the software. Apparently, I was too far away from a download station. But the game I went to previously I was able to reach a download station and get the software. Perhaps they need more download stations throughout the stadium.

My first impression of the software: the idea is good but with some work it would be really cool. I’ll give some more ideas on what needs to be added but first I want to explain what you can do.

Just so you know, it has been at least a month since I played with it. I was going to do a post about this but never got around to it. Hopefully I will remember everything that I wanted to say.

After downloading the software, you need to create a user id and enter a code that was given to you when buying the service from the booth. The code ensures that you do not reuse the service for more than one game. The user id is used for interactive features.

Once the software is downloaded and the initial setup is taken care of, you are presented with the main menu. From the main menu you can:

• Order food and beverages. You can enter credit card data and then order a wide variety of food. The food did seem a little more expensive and you obviously don’t have the selection compared to if you actually left your seat but what do you expect. I didn’t actually order food but it is nice to have the option.
• View broadcast video. This feature is real weak. I was hoping to get a cool list of highlights, bloopers, and maybe some of those great Mariner commercials, but instead they show a camera view of the actual jumbotron in center field. I tried this out once and didn’t even return.
• View MLB player stats. For some reason I can’t remember this too well. I believe it just showed the leaders in major categories. You can also view the stats of each player divided into teams.
• View MLB scores in progress. Just what it says. Gives scores of other games on the MLB schedule for that day. But the scores weren’t very dynamic. You could raise your eyes and take a look at the scoreboard and actually see the scores in real time.
• Fan network games. This was probably the funnest part of the software. I remember two games (not sure if there were more) that were available-Trivia and Crossword. And then when you play, you are playing against others in the stadium. This is where your user id comes into play.

Like I said, the idea is good but there are some things that need to be improved.

• Better video. Give me a selection of videos. Let me watch last night’s highlights. Or highlights from other games. Let me see the great Mariner commercials. MLB could even promote their web site and offer video from it (doubt that would ever happen). Let me see blooper reels. How about highlights from Mariner history? Player interviews. Lots of possibilities.
• Real-time scoreboard. I would love to be able to keep up with how other teams are doing, especially up to date. And if the game is over, let me check out the box score and a brief synopsis of any game.
• Real-time standings. Show me how many games the Mariners are behind in the wild-card.
• Schedule. I want to know the Mariners schedule for the year. And give me the option to buy tickets for a game. Give me the scores of past games. Show the promotions for each night.
• Real-time player stats. I want to see the stats of each players for this year. Let others know that Ichiro is on pace to break his own hits record.
• Promote the game. A lot of the times, younger people will bring their DS to the game to get this service (I’m an exception). Use it as a tool to promote the game so that they become even bigger fans.
• More up-to-date trivia. It seemed most of the questions were centered around the 2005 season. Why don’t they change the questions and offer more categories? I like how you can compete against others in the stadium. Keep the all-time high scorers to shoot for next time.
• Let me keep score on it. This would be real cool. And teach the younger kids how to keep score.

These are the main ideas I could remember. Nintendo just needs to stick with it and they could make this a cool product and offer similar services for other destinations, not just baseball games. I like the service and will get it next time I go. But when I try it next year, I want to see improvements.

What features would you like to see on the Fan Network?

I have had the account for a few months and haven’t taken advantage up to this point. I tried a few times before but quickly found out each time that it would take more than a few minutes to setup. I decided to take the time to finally do it. It wasn’t difficult-it just took a little time.

Please note that I did this on a Windows XP computer.

I had two requirements for the project:

1. Setup the subversion repository.
2. Use eclipse to perform the updates, etc.

I first started out by reading a doc (How to Setup a Subversion Repository) in Media Temple’s knowledge base. It explains how to set up your repository on the command line. The doc does a good job of explaining everything if you are going to use the command line to commit your code. In my case the doc is overkill since I will be using eclipse to do everything.

The only thing that was necessary was to create the directory where your repository will exist. I decided to name my repository ‘subversion’. You can be more original if you would like.

Next I moved to getting eclipse to work with the repository. You’ll need Subclipse, an eclipse plugin that adds Subversion integration to the eclipse IDE.

Since you must have SSH access enable to access your repository, you will add an appropriate connection string when creating a new subversion repository inside eclipse. I used this template for my connection string:

svn+ssh://serveradmin%25<customerdomain.com>@<customerdomain.com>/home/<site_number>/data/<repo-name>

Be sure to substitute your actual domain for ‘<customerdomain.com>’ (twice), your actual site number for ‘<site_number>’ and your repository name for ‘<repo-name>’.

If you need help on how to create a Subversion repository inside eclipse, refer to the help docs.

After doing this and trying to connect to the repository, I was getting the following error inside eclipse:

The system cannot find the file specified.
svn: Can’t create tunnel: The system cannot find the file specified.

This basically means that you need an SSH executable. I tried to get it to work with putty but I was unsuccessful. I did, however get it to work with TortoiseSVN. I found a good write-up explaining how to get everything configured correctly.

After all of that, I was able to successfully upload a few of my projects to the repository. As a porgrammer, I have been needing and wanting to do this for a while.

I admit that after first hearing of the Wii way back, I decided then I would make a comeback to gaming. My wife bought me a DS Lite and I waited patiently for the Wii. It was well worth the wait. For one reason or another, I passed on the XBox and XBox 360 and the PS2. They didn’t seem different. I knew the Wii would be a hit.

Here are the main reasons why I think the Wii is so great:

• The Wii-mote. The remote makes gaming easy and fun. My 3-year old daughter can easily play it and she loves it. It will be interesting to see how the games in the future are developed to utilize the remote. This is the main thing that differentiates the Wii from the rest.
• Entertaining gameplay. I don’t care about graphics. I want a game to be enjoyable. Nintendo has a great reputation for making fun, entertaining games. As long as they keep doing this, I will continue to support them.
• The Mii Channels. Last week my wife and I created Miis of ourselves. Very entertaining. Hopefully, these will be utilized in games as the platform matures.
• The virtual console. This feature sold my wife on the Wii. As soon as we hooked it up on Christmas, we went directly to the virtual console to see which games were available. We downloaded Sonic the Hedgehog. We both had a Sega Genesis as children and had to get it. As we were playing it, it was difficult not to think of old times. As long as worthy titles are released, this will be a big hit for Nintendo.
• The promise of more things to come. They have already released a browser. People are already coming up with hacks. Waiting to see how the Wii connects with the DS. And much more. This will be exciting to see the platform mature.

I’m sure there are more reasons. Tell me what else is there to like about the Wii.

Also today I got my new Wii Remote straps. I ordered a few extra to give to my neighbors. The package arrived a few days late. Their straps broke while playing tennis, resulting in a hole in the wall and a remote that works only part of the time.

I didn’t think much of this when I first read about it. But then I started to think of the possibilities. This allows you to create an awesome search engine that will only produce results relevant to the topic you have chosen. You and google then share the ad revenue generated from the traffic.

It’s easy to do it too. I am working on creating one centered around trading cards. I haven’t yet added a lot of sites to it. Google lets you customize it quite a bit. I have lots of ideas for Trading Card Search. I need a web site for it. If anybody has any ideas, let me know. All the domain names I thought of are taken on the Internet with irrelevant content. I also need a logo.

Since google has made it easy for everybody to create a search engine, what are you going to do about it. Think about it, if you do real estate, create a search engine for it. Think of the possibilities, real estate, teaching references, scrapbooking, politics. There are some great search engines being created.

My computer seems to be a bit faster. But the most noticeable things seem to be the things that aren’t working. I have to always start the print service if I want to print something. The most annoying thing was I couldn’t access stuff over my LAN on either of my computers. I found out I had to turn on my firewall. I was trying to avoid that since I would rather just use my hardware firewall.

But I understand it is much more secure. So if you haven’t upgraded, make sure you do.

After a seamless install, when I try to login, it crashes my server. I’m just getting ready to walk through the code. If anybody out there can help me, let me know.

I tried the IRC node for lyceum but nobody is there to help. I’ll try that again later.

Tags: lyceum

Behind the scenes of blogs exists a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Using RSS, a reader can subscribe to a feed. In other words, if I find a blog I enjoy reading, I can subscribe to it using a blog reader application (online or desktop app).

Suppose you subscribe to my blog. That would mean you would not have to return to my blog every day or week to see if I have updated it. The application you used to subscribe would simply know because of RSS. Using this technology, my good friend Shane will not have to visit his entire blogroll each day to see if each blog has been updated. He simply will need to us his reader to see if they have been updated. These readers really magnify the power of blogs.

Another word for this software is an aggregator. You can read more on aggregators on Wikipedia. There are a lot of different aggregators available-either desktop or online. I prefer online because I read them on multiple computers.

I am currently using Google Reader. They have made it very easy to look at all of my feeds. Just last week they made some really nice enhancements. (Google Reader does require a Google account. If you have problems setting one up let me know.) I have also tried Bloglines and Newsgator and various desktop apps. A lot of email clients also support RSS feeds.
Once you pick your aggregator, you will need to subscribe to feeds. Most aggregators allow you to simply type the blog address and then the app auto-discovers the blogs feed address. Or you can find a link to the feed and copy it into the aggregator.

On Picklewagon, you can find the subscribe box and copy the links. I have to feeds setup, one for just posts and one for comments. It is also possible to subscribe to categories in my blog. The possibilities are endless with RSS.

I invite you to add my blog to your aggregator. If you don’t have one setup, please get one. It will save you a lot of time and you will enjoy reading blogs even more than you do now. It is the only way I do it.

Please let me know if you have further questions. I will explore other things that are possible using RSS in future posts.

What is a Chumby you ask? Here is an excerpt from their web site:

Introducing chumby, a compact device that can act like a clock radio, but is way more flexible and fun. It uses the wireless internet connection you already have to fetch cool stuff from the web: music, the latest news, box scores, animations, celebrity gossip…whatever you choose. And a chumby can exchange photos and messages with your friends. Since it’s always on, you’ll never miss anything.

In other words, it is the perfect gadget. I have thought for some time now that if somebody came up with a gadget that others can hack, both hardware and software, that it would catch on real fast and become very popular. It’s what is wrong with other gadgets.

They’ve even gone the extra mile and are allowing crafters to create mods for it. The outside casing is removable allowing others to create their own. What would be a good hack for it’s external appearance?

I’m thinking of a Chumby in every room throughout the house. A great gift for others, such as grandparents, to show off an RSS feed of you photos. This thing will sell like crazy. Make sure you get yours.

Josh, I too want to be “secure� but for some reason I don’t really give a rat’s arse if one of my ports are open.

To me, this was an interesting comment. I realize that this particular post could have been boring to some, but I felt it was important to document what I did. When doing research to find out how to do this task, it took time that I felt was unnecessary. Making this info public perhaps reduces the time to find this information for the next person looking for it.

The most important part of the post was telling people that I had my network scanned to see if I had any vulnerablities with how I had my networking configured. Everybody should run this test to make sure that their network is not vulnerable to attacks.

Maybe I should explain why it is important to not have any ports open, or more important to be stealth to the rest of the Internet.

A computer has many ports. It is through these ports that it receives incoming communication. For example, when surfing the Internet, you are most likely receiving the information through port 80. As explained on GRC:

Open ports are the result of something in your system or network deliberately preparing to accept unsolicited incoming connections from unknown and anonymous machines on the Internet. Due to the inherent difficulty of writing completely secure programming code, a high percentage of open ports are “exploitable” by malicious Internet hackers. This means that sooner or later some clever “exploit” could be crafted to take advantage of your open ports to gain an advantage without your knowledge or permission.

These open ports come from a number of sources. The main source and most frightening is an “out-of-the-box” Windows computer.

There are many aspects involved in computer security. This is just one of them. And it is easy to figure if you are vulnerable. Is security important to you?