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Showing posts from December, 2015

Odds and ends.

1. What is their ip? $ ./getipinfo.sh walmart.com Getting information for domain: walmart.com [ 161.170.244.20 ]... NetRange:       161.163.0.0 - 161.177.255.255 OriginAS:       AS32851 OrgName:        Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. City:           Bentonville Country:        US NetRange:       161.170.0.0 - 161.170.255.255 OriginAS:       OrgName:        Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. City:           Bentonville Country:        US [code]     #!/bin/bash     # A sample shell script to print domain ip address hosting information such as     # Location of server, city, ip address owner, country and network range.     # This is useful to track spammers or research purpose.     # -------------------------------------------------------------------------     # Copyright (c) 2006 nixCraft project <http://cyberciti.biz/fb/>     # This script is licensed under GNU GPL version 2.0 or above     # -------------------------------------------------------------------------     # This scr

Hunt for Red October

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The basis of this Instructable is based on the dialog from the movie known as "The hunt for the Red October". In the movie, one of the key lines was I think "One ping and one ping only". Pinging was a method by submarines equipped with sonar to detect what is around them. Normally you would use more than one ping. In computing we also have a program called ping that does the same thing to detect what is around on the network. There is a very powerful program called nmap that usually automates such activity. That usually takes some kind of administrative power to implement. We will be using a simple linux batch file (could be easily converted to other platforms) to detect what is around us. This tool is perfect for the home network. It will probably not detect what is known as "Man in the middle devices", but at least you can see the visible systems on your ne

What's in your computer?

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  What happens when computer people get together much like old car talk. What's in you machine? You want to say more than I don's know. The newest devices such as the touchpads, some netbooks, and etc. today are pretty much unfortunately throwaways. As for desktop computers,  at least for a while you can upgrade them. It is very useful to know what equipment and and in some cases what software is on the inside. For insurance purposes, you would be well advised to have such a list tucked away in a safe deposit box or where ever. So I went on a little research expedition to find out what might be used to find out what is in my computer. Macintosh OS/X: (textedit to view) You can go to the system profiler and output a text list of the hardware. More info at: http://www.intego.com/s

Computing came to the Dallas Cowboys

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Whether or not the Dallas Cowboys are America's favorite team any more is not important. What the did do was bring electronic computing to football and spawned the computers in other sports. Now if you watch any major football game you can see electronic tablets at the  benches of many team. not only for statistics, but to replace the photos normally strewn all over the sidelines. Prior to joining the Cowboys, Tex Schramm had worked as a CBS Sports executive, helping broadcast the Winter Olympics, where he became aware of and intrigued by the use of computers. He decided that computers could help the Cowboys choose players from the draft, including young athletes other clubs might miss. "I decided ... that I would have to find an objective method of deciding on the worth of a football player ... I thought we had to find a way to judge players without emotion,” Schramm told Sports Illustrated in 1968. “We used computers to figure scores and standings when I wa

User listing.

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Sometimes you may want to know who has access to a system and even some of the applications that might be installed.  All you have to do is to get a user listing. lsuser.sh [code]  #================================= # lsuser - list users #================================= # Assignments # -------------------------------- datafile="/etc/passwd" # end assignments #================================= # Data input #--------------------------------- while read line do echo $line | cut -d: -f1 done < $datafile [/code] $ chmod +x lsuser.sh $ ./lsuser.sh root daemon bin sys sync games man lp mail news uucp ... ... Note if the batch file is is a user accessible area on another server you can $ ssh oeorgan1 "lsuser.sh" Now the write command $ write eddie test <ctrl-d> Message from eddie@oedt01 on pts/1 at 14:19 ... test EOF write sends a message to another user. Syntax write user [tty] Description The wr

Homemade electronic parts

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Use at your own risk!! Get help before hand from a professional. A device used to store an electric charge, consisting of one or more pairs of conductors separated by an insulator. A semiconductor device with two terminals, typically allowing the flow of current in one direction only. A thermionic tube having two electrodes (an anode and a cathode).   An inductor , also called a coil or reactor, is a passive two-terminal electrical component which resists changes in electric current passing through it. It consists of a conductor such as a wire, usually wound into a coil . When a current flows through it, energy is stored temporarily in a magnetic field in the coil . Transformer: A resistor is a passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element. Resistors act to reduce current flow, and, at the same time, act to lower voltage levels within circuits

Tuxpaint coloring book.

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Make your own coloring book on the computer.  There are sites such as http://azcoloring.com/coloring-on-the-computer They will let you download or even printout pictures for coloring. But you can take a screenshot of just the picture you want, such as Santa. Then you will want to import it into tuxpaint. (I renamed it first.) $ cd Pictures/ $ tuxpaint-import santa.png Using save directory: /home/eddie/.tuxpaint/saved grep: /usr/local/etc/tuxpaint/tuxpaint.conf: No such file or directory Using 832 x 696 images (for 1024 x 800 Tux Paint santa.png -> /home/eddie/.tuxpaint/saved/20151224100844.png pnmtopng: 173 colors found Then go into tuxpaint to import the file Import the file. Then start coloring to your hearts content. So far I have just only used the magic/fill commands. Have fun!

Free as in speech and some things even free as in beer.

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As mentioned in a recent Linux foundation video, there is so much software available for the open source world it boggles the mind. The software is not just for the desktop but servers, embedded systems, routers and whole lot more. Not only that you get the source code in most cases so you can change it yourself to fit your needs. Everyone knows that one size does not fit all. Take for instance the proprietary world where you get nickeled and dimed to death with every software add-on. Excepting until recently even the proprietary operating systems required a tax so to speak. Open source has the competition changing their tune. so they can compete. Then you can consider open source options. Options you can install with linux without paying an extra penny not to mention the terminal server also, $ tasksel --list-tasks i desktop    Debian desktop environment u web-server    Web server u print-server    Print server u database-server    SQL database u dns-server    DNS Serve

Make your palmtop more valuable.

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Do  you feel as if your palmtop is a one trick pony now. Can your palmtop do all this? They can! Either through a web browser or a remote desktop viewer.  having a local web server, you can install applications that will run without the internet but do work with the local intranet.There is even software that will emulate a computer desktop. Most palmtops have terminal server clients.  With the remote desktop viewer you can access another working computer on the network be it Linux, OS/x, or even Mswindows. You start the rdp (remote desktop protocol viewer) software and then enter the hostname address. Of you will need to set up a login and password on the host for if nothing else minimal security restrictions. Once your in, you can use the hosts as if that operating system was on your palmtop! Here we have access a remote Linux computer. You can even get a remote Raspberry Pi desktop, so the RPi does not need a monitor. For more information see: ht

Were the Wright brothers first?

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Being from Pittsburg, Texas my step grandfather used to talk about this contraption a lot.  In fact he said of Baptist ministers "they were always a lot of hot air." Methodists and Baptists were of different breeds. Never found out whether the family had stock in that firm, but I doubt it or he did not want grandma to know. Text reprint from http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11610 A handful of obscure, motorized airplanes claim to have been flown before the Wright brothers did so in 1903. But none has the civic support, or the biblical pedigree, of the one in Pittsburg, Texas, where a life-size replica hangs in an annex of the Depot Museum. The Rev. Burrell Cannon, a local Baptist minister, read in the Book of Ezekiel of "living creatures" rising from the earth and a "wheel within a wheel." He believed that these Bible passages contained the secret to powered flight. Cannon formed The Ezekiel Air Ship Mfg Co., sold $20,000 i

Yet another rabbit ears.

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TV free-way antenna seems very special and different. it is the third incarnation of their free over the air tv antenna. I will say that it is compact and relatively easy to use. As shown, it looks like one long about 17 inch strip. but what they do not show you is that the one long strip spreads out into a "Y" configuration that is much like a good old fashioned rabbit ears. The rabbit ears work extremely well for me, Just look in the closet for some rabbit ears or buy a set cheap at a garage sale.  You probably will be as well off.

Great AM radio.

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Did you know you could build an intercom with homemade power. AM (amplitude modulated) radio makes it very easy to do.  To do am radios you need and audio source such as a microphone. We could transmit that signal but it might be hard to demodulate and the transmission signals would not be standardized so to speak. So you mix the audio signal with  a transmission signal. So that signal gets transmitted over the airwaves. So so good. What to we do to turn that signal back into something we can use? If we receive the signal as is the speaker will not play it as the signal cancels it self out. So we must divide the wave in half or demodulate it so to speak to make it useful. So we will use a rectifier or diode to do just that. The the signal becomes: Now the signal looks much more like the audio signal we first used to send in the beginning. More has to be done, but that is the gist of the conversion. Circuits: Transmitters: Receivers: Add a .002 pf

Commmand line pluses.

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Open source and the command line is a match made in heaven. The command line allows porting of age old rock solid code to nix. Most command line programs survive in the fact they can do one thing well and be used to pipe data from one form to another all without the fancy gui environment. Text based programs port very well. Of gui front ends can always be added later. For example an old spreadsheet program originally written many years ago for cpm using mbasic still lives with the ability for free basic to recompile (with changes) the code.The following flatfile database originally developed in the DOS environment  is being expanded to have the abilities for a relational database.   Lastly there is a text editor developed in the TRS-80 days that can still be easily used in the command line environment when compiled with freebasic. Programs like dosbox can make the conversion easier.     A bit rusty with it but: Native linux version: So now you