Woo hoo, now I can just click through on my mobile to flash video content and just watch it there on my phone.

• Windows Mobile 6.5 build 23075
• Internet Explorer
  • ROMs HTC Elfin (Miky, AHEN)

No one seems to have made any noise about this, but the Zune HD browser doesn’t support watching videos (strange for a music/video/entertainment device) so here’s hoping that Microsoft will soon release a firmware update to resolve this abnormality.

Edit, (cue: some hours later) I guess I should get more intimate with mobile tech. It seems that what I am observing is not flash players, but some sort of integration of Youtube Player and IE. I tried one of my other online video haunts (http://www.stupidvideos.com) and things weren’t so moviesh.

Wired Magazine recently updated their ‘coverage’ of the network construction for Defcon 2009 Las Vegas under the title “Inside the worlds most hostile network”, a follow-up to 2008’s “A First ever look inside the Defcon Network Operations Center” with a clientele that lists:

* circa 10,000 hackers, crackers, feds, spies, corporates, and noobs

* 100 GB Internet download traffic in 2 days

To cater for the connectivity requirements of this hostile collection (excluding voice services, presumably.) The Goons set up:

* 50 wireless access points, each in their VLAN

* 25 wired VLANs

* Mirrored ports for general access to monitoring traffic

* Secured Toilet and Sink (critical)

* Physical separation of sensitive equipment

* Ceiling access (to place and secure the wireless access points)

* Cables

* Booz (better known as liquid refreshments)

The amazing thing are the people/Goons who put the system together, and their choice of tools shortlisted to being:

* 50 wireless access points, Aruba (AP-70 noted as the model for 2008)

* Aruba Rack (handles encryption et. al. for access points)

* OpenBSD pf – firewall

* Cacti for GUI monitoring

Whoo haaa

Requirement

Due to compliance requirements to ‘eliminate’ Single Points of Failure I’m required to put up warm backups or services for most of our company servers.

Having a ‘warm’ backup server (that sits around powered on, doing nothing but waiting to be pushed into production) is such a waste of resources, so we wanted to put anything that’s a backup into ‘live’ systems.

There are many advantages to having a live failover instead of a warm backup, and suffice it to say OpenBSD gives us different ‘simple’ to configure options. Two solutions released ‘out-of-the-box’ with the base OS are:

• carp, and
• relayd

CARP

We use CARP on our firewalls, which essentially means that you have two machines set up to handle the work of a single machine. In a firewall situation, CARP provides instant failover from one host to the other in the event one of the machines fail.

For example, machine 1 as MASTER handles all traffic but also pushes needed information to machine 2 so that if machine 1 blows up, the backup machine #2 can take over the work without any users noticing the change.

CARP allows multiple servers to share the same ‘face’/IP so external hosts see only one machine although 2 or more machines may be behind the CARP configuration.

Major/Minor requirement: All hosts support CARP.

RELAYD

relayd takes advantage of OpenBSD’s firewall facilities so the firewall can act as a gateway between the ‘world’ and your disparate servers.

For example: use relayd infront of 10 web servers, so users always see the same IP.

Nice things about relayd.

1. Target Servers do not have to be OpenBSD boxes, and don’t even have to be running exactly the same thing.
   1. One of our future goals is to provide seamless load balancing for a few Windows Hosted servers.
2. Low overhead
3. Relayd monitors the target servers to make sure they are up before forwarding connections to them.
4. Relayd configuration rules are nice and simple, with simple default examples.

Read It, Learn It, Live It, Love It.

Unfortunately, it had been raining, so the ‘skirting?’ or guards on the trampoline was still hoarding puddles of water and his feet and pants were soaked by the time to go home. Being the little man who spent hospital time as a baby, he didn’t come out of the incident without coughing badly.

So, yesterday (Sunday) Sisitoutai did his ‘no Church’ thing again and ‘Ofa put him in the ‘vaporize’ treatment program. While under the blanket Sisitoutai eventually remarked to his mother.

“Mum, this is boring’

/nuff said but the kid’s breathing has been much better since.

He’s a huge boy now, and older, and his eating habits have changed so he hasn’t been waking up early mornings as regular clock work, in which case the backup system was one of the elder kids waking up to go to the toilets and then wandering in to the room to wake us up so we can be all happily awake together.

I guess Sione Halasika got tired of waiting because at 7:00 am this morning no-one was up so he did a bit of a scream to tell us all he was late for his breakfast.

Always good to have alternate timing systems when critical matters are at issue.

Fai atu ee finemotu’a Tonga ‘i Perth mo ‘ene fanauu ke fai ‘enau talatala, he ko e to’u momoko foki ‘eni pea too ee ngaahi mahaki kehekehe he fonuaa, kau mai ai mo e swine flu …

Fai atu ‘a e sivi ‘a e toketaa, hange hange ki he toketaa ‘oku ‘iai e ki’i angakehe ‘o e kau me’a ni. Faka’eke’eke atu ‘e he toketa ki he fa’e ni ‘o ma’u ai ‘a e tali ni:

Ko e uike ‘eni ‘e ua fai ‘emau faka’ehi’ehi mo e tuku atu ee ‘u me’a kehekehe hange ko e kaukauu mo e ‘u me’a tene pusiaki’i mai ‘aki ‘a e pukee.

‘Ai ‘a e mei to fohake ‘a e toketa, mo ne pehe ange ki he fa’e ni.

“Oi, ‘oi, ‘oi, …, mou ‘alu, ‘alu, … leva ‘o fai ha vakai ki he water. Taa ko e fiu kita he tatala hake ‘a e mahakii ko hono kapau he ‘uli …

P-leeease, …

Te’eki ke tau ma’u ‘a e toenga ‘o e ‘a’ahi, he mahalo ‘oku to e ha toe uike ‘e ua ka e toki a’u ‘a angakehe mo ‘ene fanau ki he’ene polokalama sio water. Ko e ta’emahino foki ia ‘a e faka’osi folau mai mei motu ‘o lii taulanga ‘i Petia … Fetaulaki ‘a e … mei mei kalasi tatau ‘eni mo e hifo mai ‘a e kau ‘Eua ‘i Ma’ufanga?

Mate’i mai ange ‘a e hingoa ee finemotu’a ni ?

Apparently this was/is a call during the preparation of Kava (ya know that nice warm brownish liquid that tastes like mud but has some socio/cultural value which means that to be politically correct you have to say something like … mmmm ‘needs salt.’) Oh and the cultural value … ?

View Full Album

I guess if you want to find out the cultural values of “Kava kuo Heka” you can rock on along to the above exhibition.

Where: Fa’onelua Convention Center (that’s the one across from the main Kauli Bakery in town?)

When: 28 ~ 30 July 2009

And it’s sponsored by all these people with pretty logos (go to the posters for more details.)

There’s apparently a different explanation when nurses, or mum’s, use the term vaporizing.

‘Ofa said yesterday that she keeps forgetting to vaporize Sione Halasika, and I was a little concerned and asked her why she wanted to vaporize Sione Halasika (as in the SciFi et. al. term for terminating, removing all existence, taking all the vapors out of a person leaving only the dust from which we were formed.)

So, apparently vaporizing is some term the ‘medical’ field uses for wafting vapors through someone’s nasal system? Otherwise known as:

• getting a bowl of steaming water with a drop of some ointment (like Vicks)
• getting under blanket
• letting that vaporized ointment up through the nasal system.

Seems to be some old school medication system that still works in today’s Instant Noodle medicine world.

Wii Wii – we need a better name

The kids are on their two week vacation, so there’s four mouths in the house 24/7 for the next two weeks. The weather is quite unhelpful being windy, cold, and on the touch side of drizzling wet.

We can’t get the kids out, they’re locked in all day for two weeks, what’s to keep a mother sane (or dad for the 2 days he’s at home?) Get the Wii.

We went ahead and got the Nintendo Wii as something to help keep the kids sane and active while in doors for the next two weeks.

After a days trial and tribulation, Ma’ata Ngalo’afe asks a poignant question.

Dad, W-I-I, wii. Why is it called the wii, when we go to the toilet it’s called wii wii and the games called the wii. That’s not a good name, we have to think of another name.

so, there you go. After getting exhausted with boxing, bowling, tennis, and kart racing. Today we’ll think of a ‘better’ name for the Wii.

We put the kids to bed by 8:00 each evening and are generally struggling to get them up in the morning to get ready for school.

This Schoolday morning, Sisitoutai comes into our bedroom at around 5:45am, which is a horrid time to be getting everyone up, and boy can Sisitoutai yack yack yack. (I wonder who he takes after?)

We feverishly try to quiet him and put him back to bed before the household is all awake. By 6:00 am everyone’s awake, yarrnnnn, by 6:30 we’re all dressed with no where to go.

Too early for breakfast, and too late to let them get too involved with other things or they wont eat their breakfast. So, mum and dad who are not fully awake yet, are now up entertaining the children while setting their breakfast out.

Of course, as is the nature of children, just being up and ready bright and early doesn’t mean you actually get out the door any earlier than normal. Somewhere between the screaming and tattle-tales as they snatch toys, books, etc, away from each other, we finally get breakfast started and not finished.

Ma’ata Ngalo’afe’s being a little weird, she has a long list of food that she wants for breakfast and lunch and dinner. She of course, mainly doesn’t finish her food.

She’s growing up very quickly and loves both the academic, social, physical challenges at school. She does well at all, but really pushes the social envelope. With the recent Michael Jackson phenomena she’s been raving on about this and that Michael Jackson, and I didn’t even know she had listened to any of his music?

Is this a girl thang?

Sisitoutai is, of course, consistent with finishing his breakfast (the morning breakfast, lunch breakfast, and dinner breakfast) whilst the girls have some sort of requirement to leave 1/5th of the food behind (so if they want to eat more, they ask for more food instead of finishing what they are given.)

He’s doing well at school, recently getting his “Silver Badge” a merit award milestone for having received 20 merit awards. Ma’ata Ngalo’afe is ultra competitive and upset that she hasn’t received her’s yet.

Soana Sesilia’s off to school this morning (she’s doing 3 days of school a week) and mum’s going to let her stay longer today. She’s usually picked up at around 2:00pm but today’s the experimental 3:30pm pick-up. Sesilia loves going to school and prays for her school teacher most evenings, while we pray for her increased ‘patience.’

Sione Halasika got up earlier and mum gave him his breakfast so he nodded off again. Cried out in anger from all the noise, and after we quieted down he went back to sleep. The boy loves his sleep, but when he’s awake he wants his attention, all of everyone’s attention.