Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

State of the Blog

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I thought I would spend a few minutes looking back at my adventure into the online digital world. I’ve been writing this blog for more than 6 months now and was curious if it’s worth the time and effort and more importantly “is this information useful to anyone?”

It would seem, looking at the statistics from StatCounter.com that there are an average of 250 page loads daily during the week from 130 unique visitors (105 first time, 25 returning). I won’t be making any fortune by rushing to sign-up for a Google Adwords account but that was never the intention.

I think the content has been good but certainly not great. I’m the first to admit that I’m not the best writer in the world (nor will I ever be). I have had quite a few very interesting and intriguing conversations with a number of different individuals. Some on the other side of the country and some on the other side of the pond (Atlantic Ocean).

I think we’ll keep this blog going for another 6 months and then re-evaluate at that point. If you have suggestions for articles please post them as comments to this article.

Cheers!

Update: August 25, 2008
I thought I would just post a quick update. This blog appears to be gathering some steam as of late. I’m currently getting around 250+ visits daily and the site has a nice number of pages indexed by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search. The Adsense account is also making approximately $9.00/month which is almost enough to offset the costs of hosting on GoDaddy. All in all I’m enjoying the opportunity although it does take a small bit of work and I’ve noticed that I really need to proof-read my articles at least twice.

Cheers!

IKARIAM – Live the ancient world!

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I’m going to step out of my normal subject matter and blog about a game I just recently discovered on the Internet. I don’t generally have too much time to play games but I’m not a complete book worm either. The game is called IKARIAM and is a free web-based game.

It’s a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the same genre as Sid Meier’s Civilization and built completely around Javascript with some very nice graphics. It can be monotonous for some but it’s also a very easy game that is played in real-time. It provides a nice balance of action and strategy and was truly fun to play. It appealed to me in that I could spend just a few minutes every day (or every few days) and enjoy it just as much if I had spent a few hours playing it.

What was just as interesting was the enormous support for Ikariam within the Greasemonkey community. Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that “allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to most HTML based web pages”. I personally use a number of Greasemonkey scripts that really enhance my web browsing activity.

If you’re feeling stressed out and have a few minutes to waste I would highly suggest you make your way over to IKARIAM, you’ll probably feel like a little kid again — or perhaps like the emperor Julius Caesar!

Cheers!

UPDATE: May 2, 2008

I’d like to thank ecmanaut for his hard work. Here’s the link to his Kronos Utils project on Google Code;
http://ecmanaut.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/sites/ikariam.org/kronos-utils/kronos_utils.user.js
And don’t forget his two other scripts;
http://ecmanaut.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/sites/ikariam.org/ikariam_friend_list.user.js
http://ecmanaut.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/sites/ikariam.org/ikariam_score_linker.user.js

Cheers!

Update: May 21, 2008

Here are some additional links to the Kronos Utils for Ikariam;
http://code.google.com/p/ecmanaut/source/list
http://corentin.jarnoux.free.fr/kronosutils/index.php

Cheers!

CAPTCHA

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I recently had to delete several dangerous SPAM comments from my blog. While most of the comments were just plain old SPAM there was one or two that were very dangerous and had links to sites that would almost immediately infect a computer with all sorts of nasty spyware including root kits.

While I’m not a security expert I do spend a lot of my time performing network security related tasks. So I started wondering how is this SPAM was getting by Google’s CAPTCHA engine?

After performing some research I found a very interesting Google Tech Talk presentation on Human Computation. The initial part of the discussion describes CAPTCHA and how some folks are trying to circumvent the solution.

You can find all the Google Tech Talks here.

Cheers!

Verizon’s FiOS TV

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I’ve been a Verizon FiOS Internet customer for almost two years now and have enjoyed the service. I had been a Comcast Cable Modem customer prior to the Verizon FiOS Internet installation but had grown frustrated with the large amount of packet loss, frequent disconnects and the poor bandwidth/throughput.

The time came today to cut the last ties with Comcast. The Verizon technician and myself had everything installed and cabled within 60 minutes. I should explain that my house is only eight years old and was cabled with RG-6 to every room in the house. We also replaced the original D-Link Wireless eXtreme G router with a Verizon Actiontec MI424WR router (pictured to the right). I had heard of some horror stories with the Actiontec MI424WR router and anyone using AT&T’s Call Vantage VoIP service. It just happens that I’m an AT&T CV customer and a happy one at that. Thankfully though it looks like Verizon and Actiontec have worked out the problems that were affecting the MGCP protocol that AT&T uses.

Once the technician had registered the Motorola set top boxes with the Verzion backend systems everything came right up. I went with the following equipment;

  • (2) Motorola QIP6200 HD
  • (1) Motorola QIP6416 HD DVR
  • (1) Motorola QIP2500 SD

I have three HD TVs in the house and a few SD TVs as well. The QIP6416 HD DVR was placed in the family room attached to a Sony KV-30HS420 26″ Widescreen HD CRT (this beast is almost 200lbs). One of the QIP6200s was placed in the basement attached to a Hitachi 51″ 51SWX20B HD Projection TV. The second QIP6200 was attached to a Samsung 19″ LNT1953H HD LCD. The QIP2500 was connected to an old RCA TV.

It looks like I’ll be saving about 25% over what I was paying Comcast.

I’m happy to recommend Verizon’s FiOS service to anyone that might be so lucky to have FiOS available in their area. The picture quality is awesome and the price is right too!

Cheers!

Update: February 23, 2008

I’ve had Verizon’s FiOS TV for almost a month now. The entire family including myself are generally very pleased with the service. I still need to refer to the channel guide in order to find a specific channel or station because there are just so many channels. I’ve observed a few occasions where the program data contained in the guide was wrong but that’s to be expected from time to time. I was disappointed when I set the DVR to record Lost and it recorded 30 minutes of Jerry Seinfeld along with the first 30 minutes of Lost.

I would agree with those folks that call the Verizon FiOS Interactive Guide very “busy”. There is a lot going on and it’s sometimes difficult to focus and read through the content with it being so busy.

On another note I’ve only had one issue with the Verizon Actiontec MI424WR router. It seems from time to time that the router is unable to resolve DNS requests. If I statically configure my PC to use the Verizon DNS servers directly I don’t have any issues.

Cheers!

Update: May 2, 2008

I jut recently received a letter from Verizon informing me about a change in Verizon FiOS TV that may impact my service.

Over the next year, Verizon will continue to improve the Verizon FiOS TV experience by transitioning all analog FiOS TV channels to a 100% digital format. In addition to extending the quality of digital to all TVs in your home, this change will enable Verizon to bring you even more of the great HD and special interest content you’ve come to expect from FiOS TV. Customers subscribing to Verizon FiOS TV will experience this transition to an all-digital service beginning in June. Shortly after this transition, you’ll see even more great content from Verizon.

It seems that Verizon will be providing FREE equipment to all current subscribers that still have analog TVs connected in their house.

This should be very interesting period as the looming all-digital conversion gets closer.

Cheers!

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