Thursday, August 21, 2008

Media crashing into "now"

The Evolution of Faye
I am a connoisseur of serial, archived media content.
For example, I download entire seasons of television programs from the interweb, and watch them when I want to.

One invariable side effect of this approach is your media crashing into "now". That is when your cozy backlog of new material to consume runs out, and you have to wait with every other schlep for the next episode to air.

Bit torrent is good and our friend, so as soon as there is an official airing anywhere in the world, I can has a copy. For example I can see Doctor Who months before it airs here in the states (I actually bought online and gave several of my friends important T-shirts months before the episode "Blink" aired, complete with weeping angels (the design is no longer available online, just text only or no text now!)

Yet still, you feel so mortal waiting for the next episode!

I also read web comics. I have RSS for most of mine, so they are easy to keep track of.

But I began reading Questionable Content a couple of weeks back. I hit "first" and just read through from the beginning since it's a good serial, and I had no hope of properly understanding the backstory without.. well.. reading it.

But now, 10 days and 1213 episodes later. *bam!* it's now-time! whaaanh! I ran out of QC!

I suppose the consolation is now I can make use of JJ's RSS Feed now. No more guessing and searching for where I left off last ;)

Friday, August 1, 2008

How to port forward like a pimp daddy

SSH can tunnel TCP ports for you. But what if you need to tunnel UDP as well? SSH doesn't speak UDP.

Oh. But netcat does. Also, netcat is awexome. Throw in a fifo and you'll be taking over the world in no time. Just ask Guillaume Cottenceau, he will show you how it's done, friend. :3

I had never used a fifo before; I wasn't even sure what they did. They sure seem nice! But notice the end of the article? After patting yourself on the back for making netcat and fifo's dance, you learn that socat laughs and does the job of both of them simultaneously. :)

to be strictly accurate, socat itself is capable of openssh encryption so....... if you work out another authentication method, socat could even replace the SSH client and server in this tunnel!!1!one

I, for one, welcome our new socket forwarding overlords. :D